Gagarin - First man in space

[Alisoncc]

Just watched the biopic/movie of Yuri Gagarin's life, preparation and flight into space. It was very matter-of-fact, no melodrama. Seemed to just end with him landing on the end of a parachute. Brilliant. (Available on Netflix)

In 1961, Yuri Gagarin blasted off from Vostok to become the first man in space. It was a mission fraught with danger as he rocketed into an uncertain fate. This stunning biopic charts Gagarin's momentous journey.
Directed by Pavel Parkhomenko

[TheGreenGoblin]

Just watched the biopic/movie of Yuri Gagarin's life, preparation and flight into space. It was very matter-of-fact, no melodrama. Seemed to just end with him landing on the end of a parachute. Brilliant. (Available on Netflix)

In 1961, Yuri Gagarin blasted off from Vostok to become the first man in space. It was a mission fraught with danger as he rocketed into an uncertain fate. This stunning biopic charts Gagarin's momentous journey.
Directed by Pavel Parkhomenko

Looks excellent. Am going to watch it on Amazon Prime today. Thanks for noting it.

[Slasher]

Looks excellent. Am going to watch it on Amazon Prime today.

Gob would you have the name of that movie?

[Boac]

'First in Space', I believe.

[Slasher]

Ta Boac.

[TheGreenGoblin]

Sorry Slash missed your request. Ta muchly Boac...

[Slasher]

Your ‘missed my request’ was missed by me just now Gob. This poster now acknowledges via this post it is not missed anymore.

Let me know if I’ve missed something!

[TheGreenGoblin]

It is a slow day here so I took the opportunity of watching First in Space. A really interesting film, with Russian subtitles, as one would expect, but fascinating for the Russian stylised spin on their, and our, hero and is well made and beautifully filmed in places. Some parts of the film are very affecting, for example the scenes with Gagarin's wife and daughters and his peasant family's privations under German occupation as well as his carpenter father's obvious reluctance to allow his son to follow a career in the Soviet air force, one that the grizzled old man himself could hardly have conceived of. The scene where the father is mobbed by the village when they hear one of theirs has made it as the first man in space is particularly poignant. The role played by the Chief Designer, Sergei Pavlovich Korolev is highlighted and it is clear that it was through his offices that Gagarin was chosen to be the man that rode Vostok 1 to ultimate glory.

Some interesting facts learned through watching the film was that Vostok 1's orbit was some 100 kilometers above what was planned and if the retro rockets had not fired automatically, Gagarin would have had some two seconds to manually fire the retro rocket. Any delay could have meant that the space craft would have been forced into a slowly decaying orbit that would have taken much longer than the Gagarin's available air, water and food reserves allowed for a safe return to earth.

The film consist of flashbacks to biographical events leading up to the orbit and ends with his safe arrival on earth. In fact Gagarin's real more mundane travails started when he got back to earth, leading to marital problems, depression, boredom, alcoholism and ultimately his death in circumstances that are still not entirely clear.

https://www.history.com/news/what-reall ... n-in-space

I also recommend First Orbit, which is probably a less dramatized version of the man and the history but excellent as a documentary nonetheless.

[tango15]

Some years ago, when glasnost was at its height, I made a visit to the MiG factory in Moscow. On one floor there was a museum, in which there were many photos of Gagarin. On several of them, I noticed a significant scar on his forehead, something I had never seen before. Later, over a few vodkas I asked one of the guides about this and after looking over both shoulders, (old habits die hard!), he told me that at one point, after his career as an astronaut had finished, he spent some time on the Black Sea and after an incident with a motor boat, he was attended to by a pretty nurse. That evening, while his wife played cards, the intoxicated Gagarin slipped away to the nurse's room, where his wife found him later. He tried to escape by jumping from the nurse's balcony on the second floor, but his foot became tangled in vines growing up the wall and he landed face first, hence the scar.

His take on the accident which took Gagarin's life was that there was no conspiracy. "Just Soviet inefficiency" he said, which they did not want to reveal to the wider world. I tend to think he was telling the truth.

[TheGreenGoblin]

His take on the accident which took Gagarin's life was that there was no conspiracy. "Just Soviet inefficiency" he said, which they did not want to reveal to the wider world. I tend to think he was telling the truth.

+1

I agree with your opinion.

The circumstances surrounding the death of the first man in space Yuri Gagarin, who was killed in a 1968 jet crash, have long been clouded in theories and rumors. Now, the first man to walk in space says he can reveal what really happened to his friend and fellow Russian cosmonaut.

Alexei Leonov, who in 1965 became the first man to leave a spacecraft and float in the open vacuum of space, has worked for years to learn what led to Gagarin's death. He finally gained permission and spoke about the details in an interview released on Friday (June 14) by the state-funded Russia Today (RT) television network.

Another test pilot's error - Space.com