The+Development+of+Vostok+Erin+1

To Prepare for the Launching
The Soviet Union was launching a series of Vostok test rockets. The first rocket could not return to earth. The second rocket had exploaded in midair. The third rocket, however, did successfully launch and it brought two dogs into space with it. The Soviets asked for approval to launch the first manned, Vostok craft. To take Vostok into space, the Soviets wanted cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin to "go for the ride."

The final assembly of Vostok was approved to launch on April 11, 1961. The flight was to be at the Soviet space center of Tyuratam. Once Yuri Gagarin entered Vostok, he had to wait an hour and a half, until the countdown. All control of the spacecraft was going to be happening by the ground control crew. Vostok took off at 9:07am on April 12, 1961.

While in space, he experienced gravity. He felt how it was to float. Yuri Gagarin had made a full orbit around the earth in 108 minutes. Once the Vostok passed over West Africa, retro-rockets fired Gagarin back into earths' atmosphere.

About the Design
Vostok was the the first manned, Soviet Union spacecraft. It is a two-part space program. The top part of this was a spherical shape in which the passenger would be with some of the materials he would need to survive. The bottom part was shaped as a double cone which contained the retro-rocket system.



The overall mass of Vostok was 4.73 tons. The length was 4.4m, and the maximum diameter was 2.43m. The Soviet designers made an escape system, which would allow the man to exit from his craft, at the time where he reached an altitude of 7km.

Yuri Gagarin
(Extra Focus) By the 1950s the Soviet Union and the United States had already been competing in their space exploration for quite some time. Having, Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin as a cosmonaut, was a big help in the rivalry for the Soviets. Yuri Gagarin was born on March 9, 1934. His mother and father worked on a farm. Gagarin was forced to quit school when the Germans invaded during World War II. The German troops took two of Gagarin's sisters, and forced them to work.

After Gagarin was allowed to finish school, he moved to Moscow. Yuri Gagarin was there for a year, until he was invited to attend a technical college in Russia. During his fourth year in college Gagarin enrolled in aviation courses at a flying school. Gagarin was intrigued with flying therefore he, joined the Soviet Air Force. He soon became secretly accepted, to be the first man to go into space. As soon as everyone heard about the Vostok being successful. Yuri Gagarin was honored and considered a hero. He was awarded the Order of Lenin. Yuri also recieved streets, towns, and schools named after him. On March 17, 1968 Gagarin and another pilot were killed on a jet training flight. Shocked by this death, the Soviet Union gave him a state funeral. The cosmonaut training center was also renamed to remember him.



Vostok was a very important mission. It was the first manned space craft to go into space. It put the Soviets ahead of the United States. We also learned a lot about what it is like for a human to be in space. We now could build other space crafts like Vostok, and send them into space, to perform further research.

Resources

"Gagarin, Yury (1934-1968)." UXL Biographies. Online ed. Detroit: UXL, 2003. Student Resource Center - Gold. Thomson Gale. Cook Memorial Public Library. 13 Feb. 2007

Clark, Phillip. The Soviet Manned Space Program. New York, NY: Orion Books, 1988. 6-192.

"Space Race." Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History. Ed. Thomas Carson and Mary Bonk. Detroit: Gale Group, 1999. Student Resource Center - Gold. Thomson Gale. Cook Memorial Public Library. 6 Feb. 2007

images: a) www.spacefacts.de/.../ gagarin_yuri.jpg b) www.geocities.com/duppim/vostok.jpg