04/12/2017
Today, April 12, Cosmonautics Day is celebrated in Russia and many other countries of the world. It is also known as the World Day of Aviation and Cosmonautics and the International Day of Human Space Flight. 56 years ago the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to travel in outer space, to the orbit of our planet. It is known that in order to arrange the first manned flight into space as quickly as possible, the designers removed some elements of the spacecraft meant to provide the cosmonaut with additional security. However, even without taking it into account, it was difficult to guarantee that the first human space flight would be successful.
Yuri Gagarin was not sure that he would return to the Earth unscathed, that’s why two days before the flight he wrote a farewell letter to his Russian wife. And then, during the landing, the astronaut for a moment suggested that he only had a few seconds to live. Gagarin thought so because he saw a fire in the porthole. Only later it became known that this was a "natural" result of the friction of the cover on the atmosphere, and the ship, in spite of fears, was not caught by the fire. The phrase "I'm burning, good-bye, comrades!" said Gagarin hasn’t been mentioned anywhere for a long time.
People on Earth were also ready for disaster. The Telegraph Agency had a pre-written text for this case. Fortunately, only the text for the successful landing was needed. It is worth noting that during the first flight to the moon of American astronauts, held eight years later, the official speech was also prepared for both the successful mission and a catastrophe.
