• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

9 Gagarin, The Road to the Stars, quoted in Golovanov, Our Gagarin, p. 125.

10 Golovanov, Our Gagarin, p. 123.

11 Suvorov & Sabelnikov, The First Manned Spaceflight, p. 62.

12 Burchett & Purdy, Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, p. 25.

13 Suvorov & Sabelnikov, The First Manned Spaceflight, pp. 64–5

14 Interview with Oleg Ivanovsky. See also: Hooper, The Soviet Cosmonaut Team, Vol. II, pp. 198–9; Oberg, Uncovering Soviet Disasters, pp. 157–9.

6: 108 Minutes

1 Quotes taken from original tapes of ground-to-capsule dialogue, quoted in Golovanov, Our Gagarin, pp. 127–8, 131–42.

2 A full account of the flight, including extensive quotes from Gagarin himself, can be found in Belyanov, V., et al., ‘Tomorrow is Space Programme Day: the Classified Documents on Gagarin’s Spaceflight’, Rabochaya Tribuna, April 11, 1991, pp. 124–8. For an English translation, see Joint Publications Research Service-USP-91–004, September 20, 1991, pp. 71–7. Further details of the flight can be found in ‘Yuri Gagarin’s Immortal Day’, Spaceflight magazine, April 1991, pp. 124–8. See also: Baker, David, The History of Manned Spaceflight, London: New Cavendish, 1981, pp. 70–73; and Burchett & Purdy, Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, pp. 110–17 for a highly censored account of the flight.

3 Burchett & Purdy, Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, p. 143.

4 Golovanov, Our Gagarin, pp. 146–7.

5 Ibid., pp. 146–7.

6 Ibid., pp. 149–50.

7 Joint Publications Research Service-USP-91–004, September 20, 1991, pp. 71–7; Belyanov, ‘Tomorrow . . .’ See also: Broad, William J., ‘The Untold Perils of the First Manned Spaceflight’, The New York Times, March 5, 1996.

8 The Vostok flight plan and ejection sequence are described in Newkirk, Dennis, Almanac of Soviet Manned Spaceflight, Houston: Gulf, 1990, pp. 7–21.

9 Murray & Cox, Apollo: The Race to the Moon, p. 76.

10 Shepard, Alan & Slayton, Deke, Moonshot, London: Virgin, 1995, pp. 105–6. See also: The Times, April 13, 1961, p. 12, ‘We Are Asleep’.

11 Swenson, Grimwood & Alexander, This New Ocean, p. 335. See also: ‘Ups and downs in Space as US gets set to launch man’, Life magazine, May 5, 1961.

7: Coming Home

1 Quoted in Golovanov, Our Gagarin, p. 150.

2 Golovanov, Our Gagarin, pp. 150–51.

3 An English-language report, prepared for the International Aeronautics Federation and signed by Gagarin, Borisenko and other officials, featured as Lot 39 in Sotheby’s auction of March 16, 1996. Full details of the document can be found in the reference for Lot 39, Sotheby’s Sale Catalogue 6753, Russian Space History, March 16, 1996.

4 Golovanov, Our Gagarin, p. 151.

5 The conversation between Gagarin and Khrushchev was widely reported in the press. A full transcript appeared in the 1961 TASS pamphlet Soviet Man in Space, p. 24.

6 Quoted at length in The Times obituary for Gagarin, March 29, 1968.

7 Conversation with the historian Phillip Clark.

8 Gagarin, The Road to the Stars, quoted in Golovanov, Our Gagarin, pp. 187–8.

9 BBC archive footage, originally from a live broadcast on April 14, 1961 – the first live Western television broadcast from within the USSR – clearly shows the flapping shoelace.

10 See Lynch, Michael, Stalin and Khrushchev: The USSR, 1924–64, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1996, pp. 96–102.

11 Golovanov, Our Gagarin, pp. 191–2.

12 Burchett & Purdy, Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, pp. 118–23.

13 Oberg, Red Star in Orbit, p. 55.

14 Isvestia, August 28, 1961.

8: The Space Race

1 Murray & Cox, Apollo: The Race to the Moon, pp. 77–8.

2 Young, Hugo, Journey to Tranquillity: The History of Man’s Assault on the Moon, London: Jonathan Cape, 1969, p. 110. In addition, Kennedy’s original memo is reproduced as a photograph in the picture section following p. 136.

3 See Trento, Prescription for Disaster, pp. 12–13, for a description of Lyndon Johnson’s involvement in the creation of NASA in 1958. See also: Lambright, Henry W., Powering Apollo: James E. Webb of NASA, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995, pp. 95–6, 132–5;Archives of Dr John Logsdon, Space Policy Institute, George Washington University, Washington,