The spaceship was meant to function autonomously, for fear that separation anxiety from Earth might cause the cosmonaut to go mad once in space. Inside the spherical cabin of his Vostok capsule, engineers tightened Gagarin’s harness, armed his ejection seat, and fastened his oxygen hose. At the launch site, unable to share the Russian going-away tradition of three kisses on alternate cheeks, Gagarin and Titov instead clinked their helmets together in brotherly solidarity.
They then donned their orange pressure suits and were bused to the Baikonur launchpad on the windswept Central Asian steppe of what is now Kazakhstan. On April 12, 1961, Titov and Gagarin breakfasted on meat puree and toast with blackcurrant jam.
According to fellow cosmonaut Gherman Titov, the backup pilot for the flight, Gagarin was “a lad who made his dream come true, all by himself.” Gagarin represented the ideal communist pinup: a humble farm boy who rose up from rags to reach the stars. But it was also the ordinariness of this fresh-faced 20-something that helped him win selection as the world’s first space traveler, aboard Vostok 1. Gagarin excelled in training, exhibiting a sharp memory, quick reactions, and a keen grasp of mathematics. A love of aviation ultimately drew him to the Soviet air force, where he flew MiG-15 fighters out of Luostari airbase in Murmansk until he was hired for cosmonaut training in March 1960. He learned to read from old military manuals, pestered his father into helping him build miniature gliders, and found work as an apprentice foundryman. Born March 9, 1934, into peasant stock in the Russian village of Klushino, his formative years were brutalized by World War II. After nine years, he had grown tired of the newspaper business, and became a freelance writer for various newspapers.Gagarin’s upbringing betrayed little of the icon he would become. That lasted for a few months, then I joined the staff of the Beloit Daily News, where I stayed for nine years." During that time, Mohan worked as everything from a sports writer, an editorial writer, the state editor, and the wire service editor. "I decided that what I really wanted to do was write, so I sort of fell into a job working for the Lake Geneva Regional News as a reporter, and dropped out of college. He attended Beloit College, switching majors between philosophy, mathematics, and other subjects. He became an avid science-fiction and fantasy reader and occasional wargamer, and graduated third in his high school class. Mohan was born in Chicago, Illinois, and moved to Williams Bay, Wisconsin when he was five. He attended Beloit College, switching majors between philosophy, mathematics, and other subje Kim Rudolph Mohan (born in Chicago, Illinois) is an American author and editor. Kim Rudolph Mohan (born in Chicago, Illinois) is an American author and editor.