"Live From Cape Canaveral": Covering the Space Race, From Sputnik to Today by Jay Barbree Page A
Authors: Jay Barbree
Tags: United States, General, History, Military, 20th Century, State & Local, Technology & Engineering, 21st Century, Aeronautics & Astronautics
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explosive fury of 900,000 pounds of thrust. There were twenty main rocket motors and a dozen small vernier control engines firing. The first man to leave Earth headed for an orbital track around his planet.
It was 11:07 A.M . local time.
It was 9:07 A.M . in Moscow.
It was 1:07 A.M . in New York.
America slept.
Only a few in this country’s intelligence groups were aware that on the steppes of Kazakhstan, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was shouting, “Off we go,” bringing smiles and grins to his launch team and flight controllers. With the SS–6 well clear of the launch site, many of those whose duties were completed rushed outside to watch their rocket roar skyward—to see Yuri Gagarin travel faster than any man in history. They watched and jumped and cheered until the rocket was far above the Aral Sea and about to disappear over the eastern horizon.
On board, in spite of his constantly increasing weight under the pull of gravity, Gagarin maintained steady reports. He was young and muscular, and he absorbed the punishment easily. The acceleration generated a force of six times normal gravity.
Gagarin now weighed more than a thousand pounds.
Suddenly, he heard and felt a loud jolt, then a series of bumps and thuds as the protective shroud covering Vostok was jettisoned. Through his portholes, he looked out at a brilliant horizon and a universe of blackness.
His sightseeing was short lived.
His rocket shut down on time.
All was silent.
Then more jolts and thuds as his spaceship was released from its rocket’s final stage.
The miracle was at hand. Gagarin, in Swallow, had entered Earth orbit.
Those on the ground listened in wonder to the cosmonaut’s calm reports of what he was feeling, how his equipment was working. Then he went silent as a never-before-known sensation overwhelmed him. He was feeling the magic of weightlessness, feeling as if he were a stranger in his own body. Up or down had no meaning. He was suspended. He was being kept from floating only by the harness strapping him to his seat. About him papers and pencils drifted.
He shook his head to clear his mind. He reported the readings of his instruments. He checked Swallow ’s critical systems. All was okay. Now he could continue his tales of what he saw and felt: “The sky looks very, very dark and the Earth is bluish.” He told those on Earth about the startling brightness of the sunlit side of their planet. And by the time he had raced through a rapid orbital sunset and marveled at the wonders of a night in space, he was through an orbital sunrise, nearing the end of his single scheduled trip around Earth.
It was time to come home and Gagarin relaxed his body, exercised his fingers in his gloves, and began monitoring the automatic systems that were turning Swallow around, setting the ship up for retrofire.
Suddenly, he was rammed hard into the back of his contoured couch. The retro-rockets had ignited. He smiled. Everything was working perfectly. Wham! There it was. He had felt the sharp explosion, and Swallow and its electronics pack were now separated from the equipment module.
Around the world in eighty-nine minutes , not eighty days.
That was all. He was coming home, flying backward. Swallow was plunging downward into thickening atmosphere, and he felt weight again. It was building from the hammering deceleration. He was a passenger inside a blazing comet. Outside, he could see flames, thickeningand becoming intense as friction from the atmosphere heated his spaceship to 4,000 degrees. Inside, Gagarin was enjoying temperatures in the comfortable 80s.
Six minutes later, Swallow had slowed to subsonic speed, and at 23,000 feet the escape hatch blew away. The first man into space was now seeing blue skies and white clouds again as ejection rockets beneath his seat fired, sending him and his contour couch flying away from Swallow.
He and his couch were all that were left, and Gagarin watched as the stabilization chute billowed upward.
It was 11:07 A.M . local time.
It was 9:07 A.M . in Moscow.
It was 1:07 A.M . in New York.
America slept.
Only a few in this country’s intelligence groups were aware that on the steppes of Kazakhstan, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was shouting, “Off we go,” bringing smiles and grins to his launch team and flight controllers. With the SS–6 well clear of the launch site, many of those whose duties were completed rushed outside to watch their rocket roar skyward—to see Yuri Gagarin travel faster than any man in history. They watched and jumped and cheered until the rocket was far above the Aral Sea and about to disappear over the eastern horizon.
On board, in spite of his constantly increasing weight under the pull of gravity, Gagarin maintained steady reports. He was young and muscular, and he absorbed the punishment easily. The acceleration generated a force of six times normal gravity.
Gagarin now weighed more than a thousand pounds.
Suddenly, he heard and felt a loud jolt, then a series of bumps and thuds as the protective shroud covering Vostok was jettisoned. Through his portholes, he looked out at a brilliant horizon and a universe of blackness.
His sightseeing was short lived.
His rocket shut down on time.
All was silent.
Then more jolts and thuds as his spaceship was released from its rocket’s final stage.
The miracle was at hand. Gagarin, in Swallow, had entered Earth orbit.
Those on the ground listened in wonder to the cosmonaut’s calm reports of what he was feeling, how his equipment was working. Then he went silent as a never-before-known sensation overwhelmed him. He was feeling the magic of weightlessness, feeling as if he were a stranger in his own body. Up or down had no meaning. He was suspended. He was being kept from floating only by the harness strapping him to his seat. About him papers and pencils drifted.
He shook his head to clear his mind. He reported the readings of his instruments. He checked Swallow ’s critical systems. All was okay. Now he could continue his tales of what he saw and felt: “The sky looks very, very dark and the Earth is bluish.” He told those on Earth about the startling brightness of the sunlit side of their planet. And by the time he had raced through a rapid orbital sunset and marveled at the wonders of a night in space, he was through an orbital sunrise, nearing the end of his single scheduled trip around Earth.
It was time to come home and Gagarin relaxed his body, exercised his fingers in his gloves, and began monitoring the automatic systems that were turning Swallow around, setting the ship up for retrofire.
Suddenly, he was rammed hard into the back of his contoured couch. The retro-rockets had ignited. He smiled. Everything was working perfectly. Wham! There it was. He had felt the sharp explosion, and Swallow and its electronics pack were now separated from the equipment module.
Around the world in eighty-nine minutes , not eighty days.
That was all. He was coming home, flying backward. Swallow was plunging downward into thickening atmosphere, and he felt weight again. It was building from the hammering deceleration. He was a passenger inside a blazing comet. Outside, he could see flames, thickeningand becoming intense as friction from the atmosphere heated his spaceship to 4,000 degrees. Inside, Gagarin was enjoying temperatures in the comfortable 80s.
Six minutes later, Swallow had slowed to subsonic speed, and at 23,000 feet the escape hatch blew away. The first man into space was now seeing blue skies and white clouds again as ejection rockets beneath his seat fired, sending him and his contour couch flying away from Swallow.
He and his couch were all that were left, and Gagarin watched as the stabilization chute billowed upward.
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