See how it looked in 1961

Man Leaps Free of Earth Shackles

By Robert C. Cowen | Natural Science Editor of The Christian Science Monitor

Considered apart from national rivalries, the successful orbiting and return of the Soviet cosmonaut, the first man in space, is a magnificent achievement on behalf of all mankind.

Maj. Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin’s satellite flight is a culmination of the development begun when men dropped superstition and magic and turned to reason and objective study to understand and deal with their environment.

Considered in the context of the cold war, his flight is another pointed reminder of how determined the Soviet space effort really is, both for military and scientific research purposes.
It was completely predictable on the basis of previous Soviet performances and announced intentions. It likewise was to be expected that the United States would most likely place second in the race to put a man into orbit.

This is the hard fact of the matter that must be faced by those in Western nations, especially in the United States, who wonder why the Soviets are walking away with this and other spectacular first prizes for space achievement.

On this first trip through space, April 12, the cosmonaut rode in a satellite ship named Voslok. Including the passenger, but excluding the final stage of the launching rocket, it reportedly weighed 10,640 pounds.

Low Orbit

The orbit was a relatively low one, ranging between 189 miles and 109 miles at its farthest and nearest points. It took 89 ½ minutes to make a complete circuit of the earth.

During the flight, Major Gagarin was strapped into a specially designed couch within the sealed cabin. According to the Associated Press, he reported over the radio that he was “withstanding the state of weightlessness well.”

Later, after being brought safely to the ground at a predetermined location, he said, “I feel well. I have no injuries or bruises.”

The Soviets have been pushing their space program hard for a number of years. The United States began to take such a program seriously only after the first sputnik was launched in the fall of 1957.
Before that time, space flight was generally considered a wild idea in the United States, not worth the expense of a substantial national effort.

A Determined Runner

It is hard to catch up with a determined runner when one starts the race so late. As Dr. H. Guyford Stever of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a leading government consultant on space research, has been quoted as saying, the United States manned satellite program is “running a fraction of a year to one year behind the Russians. We did not have a chance of beating them.”

Moreover, the Soviet success is due entirely to Soviet engineers and scientists.

Questions are frequently raised, particularly in the United States, as to whether the Soviets may not be using German experts to bolster their own technical manpower in the rocket field. This does not appear to be the case, although there may be some East Germans associated with the Soviet work.

Prof. Eugen Sänger, renowned German rocket and space flight authority, has said he believes the Soviets are more or less going it alone.

Germans Drafted

During a visit to the United States last month, Professor Sänger explained in conversation that in the earlier years of the Soviet space program shortly after World War II, many German specialists were pressed into service. They worked along with Soviet engineers in special camps.

Later, Professor Sänger said, the Soviet engineers went off on their own, and the Germans were generally free to return home. This took place before any of the sputnik work. He said he believes the visible space successes of the Soviets are more or less the work of their own engineers.

Thus the breakthrough in human adventure and scientific exploration which the Soviets have announced would seem to be a fully expectable result of a hard-driving, well-supported, and ably manned domestic program.

In any event, and considered in the perspective of human history, this is one of the great moments of all mankind.

Purists may object that it was a “technological” rather than a “scientific” achievement. They may note that Major Gagarin is more of a pilot than a scientist.

Spark to Success

This certainly is true as far as the immediate developments leading to the flight are concerned.
But in the larger context of the full history of space research, this is the fulfillment of the vision and the researches of many pure scientists.

It is the questing drive for new knowledge, the urge to explore ever further into the unknown that characterizes scientific research that has supplied the long-term drive toward space flight over the decades of the past.

Major Gagarin’s flight is also a beginning as well as a fulfillment. It dramatically symbolizes the opening to human experience of a bit more of the grand universe of which the planet Earth is such a tiny and circumscribed part.

What effect this broader horizon will have on human thinking is virtually impossible to foresee. Its long-term impact should be as revolutionary as the rise of scientific research itself.