Introduction

It could be said that the history of space flight began almost from the dawn of mankind. From the moment that first person looked up upon the heavens, we have dreamed of exploring.

From the very ancient times of humanity, our ancestors had been marveling at astonishing deeps of night sky, watching Moon, stars and comets. People dreamed of spaceflight for millennia before it became reality. Nowadays another upcoming satellite launch or human outer space walk is an ordinary event.

The first launches, which made daring dreams of space flights a reality, are well-known to every man on Earth. But few of us know that some of these flights were just a small step before failure and could become a dramatic disaster.

We’ll give you a report of the most famous, influential space flights, that could end dramatically, but, fortunately, they did not.

Sputnik-1

The event that marked the start of space exploration was successful launch of soviet satellite called Sputnik-1.

In March of 1954, Russian scientists Keldysh, Korolev and Tikhonravov discussed the idea of orbiting an artificial Earth satellite. Two months later, they proposed to the Soviet government that a satellite be launched before the start of the International Geophysical year (1958) and specifically before the Americans did it. The project was approved and team in OKB-1 started to work.

PS-1 was a spherical satellite 58 cm in diameter and weighing 83.6 kg. It contained two 1-watt radio transmitters and three batteries, two powering the radio and one for a ventilator fan. It was a very simple apparatus; in fact it was just a flying radio transmitter with all necessary support systems.

Sputnik-1 was launched at night, on October 4, 1957 and every man in the world could listen to its sound.

But the launch of PS-1 was far from perfect.

On schedule, booster separation occurred 116 seconds into the flight, and sustainer stage burnout occurred at 314 seconds. The R-7's booster-tank balancing system failed, which caused increased fuel consumption and a slightly early engine burnout. When the flight data was received, it turned out that if the breakage happened fractions of second earlier, Sputnik-1 would have never reached the orbit. Just imagine - several hundreds of milliseconds saved first human artificial satellite from failure.

In spite of this Sputnik-1 was successfully launched. Powerful radio transmitter had been delivering radio signal all over the world – the famous “beep” sound was received even from the Soviet base in Antarctica. The radio signal from Sputnik-1 was specifically meant to be heard by radio enthusiasts throughout the world. The effect of successful launch was unspeakable – it was a truly prove of Soviet science superiority.

First man in the space

The most influential and famous event not only in the history of space exploring, but in the history of humanity was the first man in space.

Both Soviets and USA had manned spaceflight projects. They had a lot of differences, for example, Russian cosmonauts had to be younger than 30 years old and shorter that 170cm, while Americans requirements were fewer than 30 and a bachelor degree.

The launch took place at 9:07 a.m. Moscow time on 12 April. Fifteen minutes after being launched, Gagarin radioed that he was over South America. He drank water and ate a jelly specially prepared by the Soviet Academy of Sciences as the stunning news of his launch swept across the globe.

By 10:15 a.m., Gagarin was looking down on Africa, announcing that the flight is normal and he withstands well the state of weightlessness. The landing sequence began soon after. Seventy-nine minutes into the historic flight the vehicle's retrorockets burned for forty seconds, slowing it sufficiently to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere. At this time, according to plan, the eight-foot diameter descent module should have separated explosively from the accompanying equipment module, but a cable holding the two components together did not detach. The tethered spacecraft began to spin and tumble erratically, exposing less protected areas of the descent module to the intense heat of re-entry. As the temperature inside his spacecraft began to rise dramatically, Gagarin could only watch helplessly as crimson flames raged around the spacecraft. "I was in a cloud of fire rushing toward Earth," he would later recall.

Ten minutes later the cable holding the two segments together finally burned through and sheared off with an audible bang. As the descent module continued to fall through an increasingly thicker atmosphere the wild rotation and swinging was gradually dampened, and Gagarin, who had come perilously close to losing consciousness, regained his full senses. 23,000 feet above the Saratov region of the Soviet Union the spacecraft's hatch blew off on schedule, and moments later Gagarin was automatically ejected, finally touching down near the village of Smelovka. He landed successfully and was safe. His spacecraft thudded down under its own parachute two miles away

An epic journey lasted 108 minutes, including just over 89 minutes in orbit. His Vostok spacecraft had reached a speed exceeding 27,000 kilometers per hour, or about three times faster than any person was known to have flown previously. Following a post-flight debriefing he returned to Moscow amid a vast outpouring of jubilation, relief and pride in his accomplishment, and was wildly feted across the Soviet Union. Gagarin would later embark on an extensive world tour, with crowds eagerly flocking to see and cheer the world's first spaceman. It would be some thirty years before any news of his one-step-to-death re-entry would be revealed.