Gagarin's Falsified Flight Record

[cleanhippie]

On April 12, 1961, the world met Yuri Gagarin, a former Soviet Air Force pilot who shot from obscurity to international fame after making one full orbit around the Earth in his Vostok 1 spacecraft.

But the mission records the Soviet Union submitted to international authorities to secure Gagarin's place as the first man in space present a very different mission. Specifically, his landing was deliberately falsified. During the year, lies about the Vostok landing system called into question whether or not Vostok 1 deserved its place as history's first spaceflight at all.

In 1905, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI, known as the International Air Sports Federation in English) was established to manage and maintain all records of accomplishments in aviation. By the 1950s, the FAI had grown to include aeronautic and astronautic categories under its umbrella. With spaceflight on the horizon, the organization established a set of guidelines for what constitutes a spaceflight -- if two nations were going to vie for the record of first in space, the FAI should have clear rules to determine a winner.

The terms of spaceflight reflected the organization's roots in aviation. For a flight to count, the pilot-astronaut or pilot-cosmonaut would have to land with his spacecraft. After all, if a pilot fails to land with his aircraft, it's usually because something has gone wrong and the flight has been a failure. Why should spaceflight be any different?

The Soviet Union statement presented to the FAI stated that the cosmonaut had landed inside Vostok 1 as per the organization's guidelines on spaceflight. Signed by the sports commissar of the USSR, the document asserts that "at 10:55 a.m. Moscow time on the 12th of April 1961 ... the pilot-cosmonaut Yuri Alexeyvich Gagarin landed with the 'Vostok' spaceship."

He hadn't. He couldn't have even if he'd wanted to.

The Vostok spacecraft was basic and unsophisticated and lacked a braking system. Gagarin did as he was trained to do: He ejected during the final phase of his descent. He and Vostok 1 touched down separately by parachutes.

http://news.discovery.com/space/the-technicality-that-nearly-cost-gagarin-the-first-spaceflight-record-120412.html#mkcpgn=fbsci1

Very interesting. Entire story at link.

[MADem]

1. I still give it to him.

Even if he had to bail out of a shitbox, he was the guy who went up, and he motivated us to get our asses to the moon. I don't buy that rule. The Russians also motivated children all over the world to name their dogs "Laika." I'll tell ya, I still get a sad feeling when I think about that good dog. She died--does that mean her flight didn't count, either?

[cleanhippie]

2. I agree, he was the first human in space.

[YankeyMCC]

3. Guy rides a rocket into orbit...

pilots it outside the atmosphere...comes back down through a fiery violent experience that no human ever had to experience before...jumps out at the last bit and lands safely, and coincidentally his vehicle lands intact enough, and lives to tell about it all.

If any FAI official wanted to walk up to such a man who dared and accomplished this to tell him he was not successful at becoming the first human in space. He'd either be very stupid or...no just stupid.

[LongTomH]

4. BFD! Yuri was still first in orbit.

Yuri's Night is still celebrated by pro-space groups every April 12 around the world.

[cleanhippie]

5. As it should be. His flight was a milestone in human achievement.

[denbot]

6. In 1905 the FAI did not anticipate early spaceflight conditions.

The record is his, and through him, humanity's.

[Confusious]

7. If we want those standards

Then no one actually had a successful flight until the shuttle.

US astronauts didn't land their capsule either, they just dropped into the ocean with them.

Seems like a busybody trying to make a controversy where none should exist.

[Odin2005]

8. He still made it back on the ground in one peice, it counts.

The machine is irrelevant, the person is what is important. Gagarin made it to orbit and back down alive.

Those early astronauts, both American and Russian, had guts, they are amazing people.