TOP-10 life-threatening situations of Gagarin in space

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

TASS was the first to report: "On April 12, 1961, the Soviet Union launched the world's first spacecraft-satellite" Vostok "with a man on board into orbit around the Earth. The pilot-cosmonaut of the spacecraft-satellite" Vostok "is a citizen of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, pilot major Gagarin Yuri Alekseevich ".

“Few know that during the flight 11 emergency situations of varying degrees of complexity occurred. For example, on the day before the launch vehicle was taken to the launch pad, when Gagarin was weighed in a spacesuit with a chair, an overweight of 14 kilograms was found. work was developed and carried out to lighten the spacecraft, which, in particular, included cutting a number of cables, which subsequently led to a number of emergency situations during the flight, recalls Boris Chertok. Important pressure and temperature sensors were cut along with the cables needed for unmanned flights, he said. “For some reason, we thought that there would be enough sensors inside the ship,” Chertok noted.

Gagarin's heroic flight was accompanied by various technical problems, almost all of which could lead to tragedy. TASS talks about these 10 emergency situations.

1. Problems with the hatch

Morning April 12, 1961, Baikonur cosmodrome. Prelaunch preparation. After Yuri Gagarin landed in the Vostok ship and the landing hatch was closed, it was discovered that one of the three Luke closed contacts had not closed.

The state of this contact was fundamentally important: due to its triggering on the descent, after the hatch cover had been shot off, the astronaut's ejection timer had to be started. At the direction of General Designer Sergei Korolev, the hatch was opened, the contact was corrected, and the hatch was closed again.

“I heard how they were closing it, how the keys were knocking. Then they began to open the hatch again. I looked, the hatch was removed. contact for some reason is not pressed. Everything will be fine. "The calculation soon rearranged the boards on which the limit switches were installed. Everything was corrected and the hatch cover was closed," Gagarin reported to the State Commission after the flight.

2. Too high

At 09:07 Moscow time, the Vostok launch vehicle with the spacecraft of the same name was launched from site number 1, which was called from that day the Gagarin launch. The launch proceeded normally, but one of the instruments broke down, and the command to turn off the engine of the rocket's central unit did not come from the Earth. The shutdown took place as a fallback with a delay of half a second and exceeding the design speed by 22 m / s.

As a result, when the third stage finished its work, the spacecraft found itself in an off-design orbit with an apogee (the highest point of the orbit) about 85 km higher than planned. The rocket was supposed to put Vostok into orbit with parameters 182.5 km at perigee and 217 km at apogee, but its parameters were 175 by 302 km.

The nominal orbit was calculated so that the ship could return to Earth due to friction against the atmosphere in about four days, if the braking propulsion system did not work. The spacecraft could stay in the reached orbit for up to a month, while the Vostok's life support systems were designed for a maximum of 10 days.

If the braking propulsion system had not worked, the first cosmonaut would have died.

3. The brakes are incomplete

The brake engine, as expected, worked on the 67th minute of the orbital flight, and the Vostok with Gagarin began its descent. However, there were some unpleasant surprises here too: the braking propulsion system did not give out a full impulse due to the loss of part of the fuel.

The reason was the incomplete closure of the fuel tank pressurization check valve. The engine shut down due to its maximum operating time (44 seconds), but the Vostok's orbital speed was reduced by only 132 m / s instead of the calculated 136 m / s. The ship descended on a flatter trajectory. Subsequent operations also did not go according to plan.

4. "Corps de ballet"

As a result of abnormal operation of the brake motors, the logic of the ship's stabilization was violated, and it was spun up to a significant angular velocity.

"The rotation speed was about 30 degrees per second, no less. The result was a" corps de ballet ": head-legs, head-legs with a very high rotation speed. Everything was spinning. I see Africa, then the horizon, then the sky. so that the light did not fall into my eyes. I put my feet to the window, but did not close the curtains. I was interested myself what was happening. I was waiting for separation, "Gagarin later said.

5. Instrument compartment

There was no separation, because if the braking impulse was incomplete, it was blocked by the control system: separation is permissible when there is a guarantee of a quick entry into the atmosphere, but if there is a risk of remaining in orbit, separating the instrument compartment with its powerful batteries and orientation system is tantamount to death. Therefore, the descent vehicle with the cosmonaut entered the atmosphere in conjunction with the instrument compartment.

“I knew that by calculation this (the division of the ship into compartments. - Approx. TASS) should have happened 10-12 seconds after the braking propulsion system was turned off.) extinguished. According to my feelings, more time has passed, but there is no separation. On the device "Descent" does not go out, "prepare for ejection" does not light up. Separation does not occur. the second and then the first team. The movable index is at zero. There is no separation. "Chorus line" continues. I decided that everything is not all right here. Checked the time on the clock. Two minutes passed, but there was no separation. Reported on the HF channel. (shortwave. - Approx. TASS) that the TDU worked fine. I figured that I would still sit down normally, since there are six thousand to the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union is eight thousand kilometers, which means I’ll sit somewhere to the Far East.” The noise "did not come under take it. He reported by phone that the separation had not taken place, "Gagarin later reported.

Only 10 minutes after braking, at an altitude of about 110 km, as a result of heating to 150 degrees Celsius from friction against the atmosphere, the temperature sensors of the backup separation system were triggered and the command to separate the instrument compartment was unlocked. The descent vehicle began an independent descent.

6. Overload

At this moment, Gagarin recalls, he experienced maximum overloads, apparently up to 12g, which almost ended in loss of consciousness for him.

“According to my feelings, the overload was over 10g. There was a moment, about 2–3 seconds, when the readings on the instruments began to“blur”. My eyes began to turn a little gray,” the astronaut recalled.

Loss of focus and darkening of the eyes are a clear sign that the matter is going to loss of consciousness. This usually happens at 10-12g, but Gagarin was able to withstand this test too.

7. Undershoot to the landing site

The estimated landing point of the "Vostok" was in the Khvalynsky district of the Saratov region.

Since the spacecraft entered a higher orbit with a longer orbital period, the braking impulse was issued at a greater distance from the calculated point, which led to undershoot. But to compensate for the undershoot, the incomplete output of the braking impulse and a higher orbit, due to which the extra-atmospheric descent section was about a minute longer, worked. On the other hand, the entry speed and angle were slightly higher than the calculated ones, increasing the undershoot. All these factors partially compensated for each other, but the descent vehicle with Gagarin did not reach the estimated landing area.

When the chair with Gagarin ejected from the descent vehicle, the cosmonaut's gaze opened up a view of the Volga. “I immediately saw a large river. And I thought it was the Volga. There are no other such rivers in this area,” Gagarin recalled.

He said that the ejection took place over the coast, and the astronaut was afraid that the wind would carry him to the river and have to splash down. Meanwhile, the search and rescue forces were waiting almost 200 km from this place.

8. On two parachutes

After the ejection over Gagarin, the brake and main parachutes were sequentially deployed, and then the reserve parachute came out of the chest pack. This was provided for by the descent scheme, although it posed some danger. First, the reserve parachute fell down without opening.

"I began to descend on the main parachute. Again I was turned to the Volga. Undergoing parachute training, we jumped a lot just over this place. We flew there a lot. I recognized the railway, the railway bridge across the river and a long spit that juts out into the Volga. I thought that this is probably Saratov. I am landing in Saratov. Then the reserve parachute opened, opened and hung. So it did not open. Only the knapsack was opened, "Gagarin said.

After some time, "a little bit blew in the cloud, and the second parachute opened." “Then I went down on two parachutes,” says the report of the first cosmonaut. Because of this, he could not effectively control the flight.

"According to Yuri Gagarin's statement, he did not manage to fly with parachutes, he descended almost to the very Earth facing the wind," says the OKB-1 report on the results of the launch of a satellite ship with a pilot on board. Only at an altitude of about 30 meters was the astronaut turned face downward, which made it possible to land confidently and softly.

9. Without air

Gagarin descended in a sealed spacesuit. After opening the main parachute, the astronaut had to open the valve in order to breathe atmospheric air, but the opening cable was lost in the folds of his clothes.

"It was difficult with the opening of the breathing valve in the air. It turned out that the ball of the valve, when put on, fell under the unmasking shell. The harness was so drawn that I could not reach it for about six minutes. Then I unbuttoned the unmasking shell and using a mirror pulled out the cable and opened the valve normally, "Gagarin himself recalled.

10. Without a boat and a pistol

During the descent, a wearable emergency supply (NAZ) dropped out of Gagarin. The 30-kilogram box with the essentials for survival was to descend under the astronaut's feet, attached to the spacesuit with a long sling. There was an inflatable boat inside, it would be useful in case of splashdown on the Volga, food, medicine, a radio station and a pistol.

"The NAZ opened and flew down. Through the harness I felt a strong jerk and that's it. I understood, the NAZ went down on my own. I could not look down where it was falling, since this cannot be done in a spacesuit - it is tied rigidly to the back." spoke Gagarin.

However, the loss of these 30 kg made the astronaut lighter, and he was carried even further from the coast.

About 108 minutes after the start from Baikonur, Yuri Gagarin returned to his native land. He landed in a field near Engels in the Saratov region. Gagarin said to local residents, who could have mistaken him for a downed American pilot: "I am a Soviet man, I flew in from space."

Dmitry Strugovets

TASS would like to thank Igor Lisov, the observer of the Novosti Kosmonavtiki magazine, for the advice. Quotes by Yuri Gagarin are given from the collection of documents "The first manned flight", volume one.

10 little-known facts about the flight of Yuri Gagarin

1. Not one, but two understudies accompanied Yuri Gagarin to the spacecraft. In addition to the well-known German Titov, Grigory Nelyubov was the understudy. Unlike Gagarin and Titov, he did not put on a spacesuit, but was ready to carry out the flight in case of special circumstances.

Nelyubov's life was tragic: some time after Gagarin's flight, he was expelled from the cosmonaut corps for violation of discipline, and a few years later he died in an accident.

2. Two days before the flight into space, Yuri Gagarin wrote a farewell letter to his wife in case a catastrophe happened. In 1961, this letter was not required. Gagarin's wife Valentina Ivanovna will be given this letter after the plane crash on March 27, 1968, in which the first cosmonaut of the Earth died.

3. The flight of Vostok-1 was carried out in a fully automatic mode. This was due to the fact that no one could give guarantees that the cosmonaut would maintain his performance in zero gravity conditions. In the most extreme case, Yuri Gagarin was given a special code that made it possible to activate manual control of the ship.

4. Initially, three prelaunch appeals of the "first cosmonaut to the Soviet people" were recorded. The first was recorded by Yuri Gagarin, and two more were recorded by his backup German Titov and Grigory Nelyubov. In exactly the same way, three texts of the TASS message about the first manned flight into space were prepared: in case of a successful flight, in case of a search for an astronaut, and also in case of a disaster.

5. Before the flight of Vostok-1, an emergency occurred: when checking the tightness, the sensor on the hatch did not give the required signal. Since there was very little time left before the start, such a problem could lead to a postponement of the launch.

Then the leading designer of Vostok-1, Oleg Ivanovsky, with the workers demonstrated fantastic skills, to the envy of the current mechanics of Formula 1, in a matter of minutes unscrewing 30 nuts, checking and adjusting the sensor and again closing the hatch in the prescribed manner. This time, the tightness test was successful, and the start was carried out at the scheduled time

6. During the final stage of the flight, Yuri Gagarin threw a phrase about which for a long time they preferred not to write anything: “I am burning, goodbye, comrades!”.

The fact is that before Gagarin, no one had a clear idea of what it would look like for a spacecraft to pass through dense layers of the atmosphere during its descent. Therefore, Gagarin, like any pilot, seeing a raging flame in the window, assumed that the spacecraft was engulfed in fire and in a few seconds it would perish. In fact, the friction of the spacecraft's heat-resistant skin on the atmosphere is a working moment that occurs during each flight. Now the cosmonauts are ready for this bright and impressive spectacle, which Gagarin was the first to see.

7. Famous footage of the negotiations between Yuri Gagarin in the cockpit of the ship and chief designer Sergei Korolev at the command post is an imitation made in a later period. However, it is hardly worth blaming the participants in the historical event for this - at the moment of the real start, they simply had no time for it. Later, they decided to recreate the missing chronicle, asking Gagarin and Korolev to repeat the same words that were said by them on April 12, 1961.

8. The Vostok spacecraft did not provide for the landing of astronauts inside the descent vehicle: at an altitude of 1500 meters, the pilot ejected. This was due to the fact that there were no soft landing engines on the Vostoks, which ensure a safe landing. In addition, the specialists feared that the hatch would "weld" under the influence of high temperatures in dense layers of the atmosphere.

However, due to the landing outside the ship, the International Aeronautical Federation refused to register Gagarin's record flight. And then the Soviet representatives cheated, announcing that the first cosmonaut had landed in the cockpit. The actual circumstances of the landing of the USSR were officially recognized only in 1964.

9. One of the most heatedly discussed topics related to Gagarin's flight is the inscription "USSR" on the astronaut's helmet. It arose due to the fact that in recent years the inscription on Gagarin's images very often disappears somewhere. In this regard, the question arose - how did it appear on the helmet of the first astronaut? Strange as it may seem, there is no final clarity on this issue either. Hero of the Soviet Union, test pilot Mark Gallay, who trained the first cosmonauts and was present at the Gagarin launch, said in the book "With a man on board" that the inscription appeared at the very last moment. Allegedly, 20 minutes before Gagarin's departure to the start, they recalled the spy flight of American Powers that had happened before and decided to put the letters "USSR" on the helmet so that the astronaut would not be confused with the saboteur. The letters were drawn in a hurry, without removing the helmet from Gagarin's head.

At the same time, veterans of the Zvezda enterprise, which produces spacesuits for cosmonauts, claim that the inscription was made during the preparation of the spacesuit for flight, in advance, and even indicate the name of the worker who completed this task - Davidyants.