Public Loneliness: Yuri Gagarin's Circumlunar Flight (3 page)

I headed out to a blue and white
bus, customized with two wide seats. All around were technicians. But not all
were there for a purpose. Some were just trying to see. And of course there
were photographers. A small taste of things to come.

Titov was on the bus already,
sitting towards the back. Suited up like me. We’d only known for a few days
that I would be flying and he would be backing me up. When I boarded, we
exchanged pleasantries. Banalities. We were not positioned to be able to talk
to one another after that. Was he hoping something would go wrong with my suit?
I can forgive him for those dark unspoken thoughts. Everyone wants to be first.
Everyone in our line of work, anyway.

Then the long silent ride to the
launch pad. Staring out at the railcars full of kerosene and the endless grassy
plain. On a morning such as that, even the empty steppe looks beautiful and
golden.

I knew that, if everything went
well, I would not have a lot to do. The spacecraft was designed to stay under
automatic guidance for the duration of the flight. The Americans had recruited
experienced test pilots for their astronaut corps, but we were plucked from the
ranks of the air force. So every cosmonaut in those early days was a junior
fighter pilot. And it occurred to someone that if we had manual controls we
could do something wrong and bring the spacecraft down somewhere other than the
planned spot, and possibly even miss the Soviet Union entirely. Make a mess of
all the well-laid plans. Turn the state’s great triumph into a worldwide
embarrassment.

(This is how the thinking goes.
The apparatus of fear: concerned not so much with doing things as with
preventing things. It’s ugly and limited, like the scaffolding of the launch
tower next to the rocket. These days I sometimes wonder if it will fall away in
time. But it has been a necessary part of the journey.)

Of course, the engineers knew we
needed a manual option. They figured there would be a failure somewhere, and if
it happened in the automatic system and I couldn’t fire the retrorockets, I’d
be stuck up there in orbit until my food and water and oxygen ran out. Like
Laika. An animal with no way to come home.

So: a compromise. They designed
the manual controls to be unlocked with a combination, which they would then
read to me over the radio if something went wrong. Assuming the radio was
working correctly.

It was not my biggest concern,
but it was there. A thought out of place like a pebble in my shoe.

But as I waddled from the bus to
the rocket, Sergei Pavlovich came up for some last words. He leaned in close so
no one could hear. I expected fatherly advice, but he said: “Yura, we put an
envelope with the code to the manual controls inside the craft. And…well, if
you can’t reach it, the combination is 1-2-5. Got it?”

“Got it. 1-2-5.” I smiled.

“All right, my little falcon.” He
patted my shoulder and lingered for a second. A lifetime of hopes and dreams in
his tired eyes. Then he receded through the crowd, headed for the bunker.

There was movement in the mass of
people. Ivanovsky, anxious. (In case you don’t know, he was lead engineer for
the ship, working under Feoktistov.) There was something he needed to say, a
hot coal in his mouth he needed to spit out. He pulled me towards the ladder
and cupped his hand over his mouth. Then he, too, whispered in my ear the three
numbers.

“Got it,” I said with a nod.

“That’s it?” He seemed to think I
was insufficiently grateful—which was understandable. He was risking his career
to give me information that might save my life.

“Korolev told me already.” I
grinned. (You can’t discuss the foibles of the lowly with the mighty. But to do
the opposite is all right.)

He, too, smiled and gave me a pat
on the shoulder.

Then came the ladder to the
elevator. Green steel. As solid as my confidence. I clambered up excitedly,
with Ivanovsky backwards in front of me, waiting to offer a helping hand. The
support arms clasped the rocket above us, creating the illusion of a soaring
interior space. Awe-inspiring, like a metal cathedral.

Up top, I turned to wave to
everyone before I got into the elevator. I was surprised: so many smiles!
Surely they all knew I would not be up there without all of them. But they
seemed genuinely happy. Glad to be part of something so great. They knew my
life was in their hands, and so my hopes were their hopes.

Then the elevator door closed and
I left them behind. Watched through the round window as they got smaller and
the ground fell away. The start of my ascent.

And then the capsule. Its
gleaming circular hatch. The portal to my future. When I went in everything was
the same as it had always been. But I knew when I came back through it
everything would be strange and new.

I put my hand on the rim of the
hatch as I climbed in. Saw my gloved fingers against the capsule’s green skin.
I remember thinking: this will be in space. Then burned by the atmosphere.
Although I knew it, it did not seem possible. But nothing happens without
change.

Once on my back in the capsule I
settled in. Shifted my weight around. By then it was all comfortable and
familiar. The pale green interior. The little control boxes with their switches
and dials. The globe.

Ivanovsky was above me, his
narrow diamond face upside-down in the circular hatch. He explained again the
communications tests we needed to run. The blockhouse was Dawn-1, Kopashevo was
Dawn-2, and Elizovo was Dawn-3. We’d run through it already, but it was a
welcome refresher. And he kept talking, running through the last-minute issues.
On a project this big everyone has thoughts and tips and suggestions that have
been lingering in the corners of their mind like lint.

And at last: Kamanin.

He leaned in close. “I don’t know
if I should tell you this, but the combination to the manual controls is
1-2-5.”

“Got it,” I said, smiling so hard
it hurt. A real, genuine smile. Gagarin, the laughing one. This is who I was,
who I still am. This is what they expected from me. What they still expect.
“Thank you, sir.”

Ivanovsky stepped back up and
armed my ejection seat.

For a long time after they closed
the hatch I was talking to Korolev in the blockhouse. Communicating and
identifying issues. I gave them readings on temperature and humidity. They had
to fix an issue with the hatch sensors. In the meantime they piped music in:
songs about love. I was feeling good. Ready to start.

As they resolved various issues,
they announced the readiness. One-hour readiness. Ten-minute readiness.
One-minute readiness.

Then they said they were giving
the signals to start the ignition and I heard valves opening beneath me and
there was a rumbling and a growing noise. And in the middle of that I realized
I was feeling the rocket rise.

“Here we go!” I called out. (Or
so they told me—I don’t remember it, but there it is on the tapes, my voice!)
“Everything is going well, I am feeling fine, I’m in a cheerful mood, everything
is normal.”

From the ground: “We all wish you
a good flight!” and I replied: “Goodbye! See you soon, dear friends!”

And the rumble continued and
there was an anxious voice in the headset as I rose: Korolev kept asking me how
I was feeling—he was a nervous wreck!

And it occurred to me, there on
the rocket, that he hadn’t slept a wink. “I’m fine,” I yelled over the noise.
“How are you feeling?”

The G-forces were making it
difficult to speak, and there was a bright light for the television camera in
my face. But I made sure to keep telling them I was feeling fine.

Then came a quiver beneath me as
the four booster blocks separated. Nothing unexpected. And the nosecone, the
protective covering, separated as planned three minutes in to the flight, and I
peered through the porthole and saw dark blue sky and thought: It is real, it
is happening. I will be the first.

More G-forces. Old Number Seven
was working exactly as it was supposed to, or so it seemed. And the central
core fell off and there was another lurch and I rode the upper stage to orbit.

Soon the vibrations and the
G-forces were gone. Everything had fallen away. There were still the familiar
noises of pumps and fans, and the same side panel with its switches and the
front panel with its dials and globe, but it all felt different. Although I was
strapped in tightly, I felt my arms floating up and my torso moving against the
straps, almost as if I was hanging suspended.

Just like that, I had gone from
being just another earthbound mortal, to something else entirely: the first.
Only nine short minutes had passed. And I’d done nothing. They’d strapped me in
and I’d read the gauges and told them I was feeling good—but I’d done nothing!
Another Ivan Ivanovich, a mannequin with a pulse. Surely you can understand why
I felt a little awkward after that, a little humble, certainly, compared to
someone like Alexey Maresyev, a real hero who was shot down by the Germans and
lost both legs and went through the trouble of getting cleared to fly again so
as to get back to killing Germans. How could I compare with that? (If you don’t
like me and have nothing in common with me, perhaps you’re latching on to this
fact, the fact that I did nothing, as proof that I’m not as impressive as all
the posters and the parades would suggest!) Nine minutes. How often in your
life has so much changed in so short a time? 

•••

But I’m in a new spacecraft now.
Manual controls. The chance to really fly. Which is the only thing I’ve wanted
all along. (I have that in common with Maresyev, at least!)

My path slashes across Chile and
Argentina. In the orbital night I can see stars, stars, stars: clusters and
clumps, and the bright swath of the galaxy. More stars than you have ever seen
on the clearest darkest night on earth. And I’m headed northeast across the
Atlantic for the final burn. Second cosmic velocity.

“This is Cedar, this is Cedar.”

Somewhere in the dark ocean, the
relay ships are re-transmitting my signal to Yevpatoriya. I hear a slight
delay, then Blondie’s voice, crackly: “Cedar, this is Dawn-2.”

“Dawn-2, I am just about to head
back into daylight.” I scan my panel. “Buffer batteries have been working as
expected. Electrical current is still 25 amperes, 27 volts. Realigning with the
100-K.”

Again, a transmission: crackly,
inaudible. There are strange readings on the ionic control system. My globe
indicator shows I’m off the South American coastline.

“Dawn-2, I am passing through the
Brazilian Magnetic Anomaly. Please repeat your transmission.”

I hear something that sounds
like: We are monitoring your telemetry. Everything is as expected.

And now: orbital sunrise. I feast
my eyes on it, for I may not see it on the way home.

I am moving faster than the
planet spins. So my sunrise is earth’s sunset. The effect is the same as
before, only in reverse: I see arcs of color appear in the blackness and then
swell as the sun fills the center. And then I must look away, for the sun, once
it is up above the horizon, is even brighter than on earth, more brilliant than
you can imagine, impossibly bright against the black sky. One of those
incomparably strange things: to have full sunlight when the sky looks like
night.

And then I’m across the
terminator and the Atlantic is beneath me, bright blue. Very few clouds today.

“Yura, you have go-ahead for
Block-D firing,” I hear. “Ten minutes to go.”

This is the big new thing. What
nobody has done before. If something had gone wrong they could have held me
back.

The big computers downstairs have
been spinning. Vacuum tubes and lights and mechanical contraptions churning out
calculations. Blondie reads out the expected values for the burn time and
delta-v based on my orbit. The sun is rising higher in the black sky. There is
still some static and I have him re-read the values before I’m content that
I’ve heard them correctly.

The burn will take place over the
Gulf of Guinea. That last little bight of the Atlantic Ocean. The armpit of
Africa.

“Five minutes to go.”

I key in commands to stop the
solar rotation and align the spacecraft for the burn. The ionic control system
is still acting strangely, but the 100-K tells me I’m properly oriented.

I transmit: “I’m ready up here.”

I am excited, even though I know
how final this will be. During East-1, if something had gone wrong I would have
at least returned to earth eventually. But on this mission, once I hit second
cosmic velocity I will be leaving the planet behind. Trusting my life yet again
to equations and calculations, scribblings on forgotten chalkboards and
discarded pieces of graph paper. The spacecraft will have to stay on course and
approach the moon at just the right angle and in just the right spot so that
the lunar gravity will send me whipping around back to earth. We will of course
be able to make a couple of mid-course corrections. But at best, it will be six
days until I can make it home, and if I’m not on a very narrow course, I will
not be able to survive reentry. Still, I think of the years when it seemed like
I would never make it back up here. And I am here and it is real and I am
excited.

“One minute.”

I see the seconds count down.

Then the rocket ignites. Gravity
returns and I am pressed back into my form-fitting couch and I watch the timer
climb. White numbers on black dials, like the odometer on a car, counting seconds
towards the magic number: 459. Watching, watching, watching. Will something go
wrong even now? At 440, I bring my hand up to the control panel. If the rocket
keeps firing past the appointed time I will need to cut it off manually.
Everything has been calculated precisely, but if it is executed sloppily it
will all be for naught.