My name is Yuri Gagarin...
How do you feel, yuri?
Feeling good, ready to start.
A love song? A good choice, I’d say, yuri.
Ready to start accepted. Everything is going well.
Oh now they’ve done it, they gave me a love song!
Nothing yet... Will try to comply with your request... can you hear it?
How about some music?
Got you. Perfectly calm.
And this is my moment to make history.
This Is
Launch key to “go” position...
Not Just A Scientific Endeavour.
...Air purging...
This Is Not Just A Military Mission.
...Idle run...
This is man’s first journey among the stars.
And I am the first man to take it.
I wonder if I Will return from this journey...
How are you feeling?
I can see earth. I am looking at the clouds. Beautiful, so beautiful!
How do you hear me?
We hear you fine, keep on flying.
Keep on flying...
I fly on over the earth, and watch the stars through the porthole of the capsule...
They are pinpricks of strange light in the vast black mantle of infinite space.
They seem to me cold... even alien, yet... enchanting. The feeling of weightlessness is interesting. Everything floats. Everything swims...
Beautiful.
Yuri...
Yuri, it’s time to come home.
Starting reentry sequence, initiate braking engine... I think Something separated after the braking engine shut down!
I’m tumbling wildly but I think I’m on track for reentry...
I’m coming back to earth!
Yuri, it’s time to eject!
It wasn’t revealed until many years later that there had been problems with Vostok-1’s braking system, nor even that Yuri had ejected from his capsule for a parachute landing. If the Americans had known that there had been issues with the Soviet’s first orbital flight, they might not have reacted so quickly in sending their own astronaut into space, and if anyone had known that Yuri hadn’t completed his flight inside the capsule he launched in, his space flight record might not have been certified by the Fédération Aéronatique Internationale (FAI), who at the time required pilots to land with their craft. But Yuri’s flight was certified, and later reaffirmed by the FAI when they had revised their rules. Yuri Gagarin continues to be recognised around the world as the first man in space.