Remembering Yuri Gagarin - The Orbital “Flying Dutchman”
- markdestewart
- 4 days ago
- 2 min read
Image courtesy of Jackie Burns.
“He called us all into space.”
Neil Armstrong on Yuri Gagarin
What did it mean to be the first? Not to walk on the Moon, that wouldn’t come for another eight years, but to fly in space? And was such a thing even possible? Such thoughts seemed entirely reasonable back then, with the metronome of Sputnik 1 still ticking in the collective consciousness of a world dazed by the audacity of the Russians. Eyes raised skywards waiting for the next record-breaking milestone.
Did he know about the spaceplanes, the winged rockets, the Americans had been flying to the outer edge of the sky, into that liminal zone where the stars seem to beckon? Did he even care, preferring to place his faith in Korolev’s sturdy rockets, the ones that looked, perhaps to Western eyes, like something from the pages of a Jules Verne novel. Utilitarian in their design, almost Victorian in that respect, as though they were powered by steam, as if they’d been designed and constructed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
Did he walk the desolate tracks at the Baikonur Cosmodrome on his own, a lonely figure wanting some quiet time to himself, before the deafening roar of the rockets took over? While his deflated spacesuit waited for him, that second skin he would wear like the iron plating of a Mongolian knight ready to joust with the sky. His ride into space a ramped-up version of the tough little ponies those fierce marauders once rode.
Did the thought of expiring in his capsule, somewhere in the tombless wastes of space, cross his mind? The possibility that he might forfeit all the years that lay ahead, the calculus of mortality snagging his peace of mind to the point of obsession. Or had such thoughts been jettisoned long ago as a result of all the psyche evaluations and the training protocols? The cosmonaut as coldly rational as his American counterparts.
He must have known he would be writing his name in the history books, either way, whether he survived or not. Not knowing that Karma would spare him this time around, coming back later to reclaim its due when his luck run out and his MiG fighter plane went down on a routine training flight some seven years later.
Maybe the laws of Fate are a bit like those of thermodynamics – nothing can ever be truly lost. Which means, despite the crash, that he’s up there still, at the summit of the sky in his Vostok capsule, the first of its kind, radioing back the message the whole world heard. Red star in orbit. "I see Earth... it is so beautiful!" An orbital Flying Dutchman whose pilot can never come ashore.
Where have you been these many years, Yuri? We’re still waiting for you to return.
Image courtesy of Nick Stevens.
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