NASA has the Mercury Seven. The Soviet Union has the Vanguard Six.
09:07 a.m. on April 12, 1961,
A 27-year-old Soviet cosmonaut sits atop the R-7 rocket – the world’s first intercontinental rocket, inside the Vostok-1 (Oriental 1) ship. His name is Yuri Gagarin. Minutes later, he changed human history forever to become the first person in the world to fly into space. Exactly 11 minutes later, Yuri Gagarin was in orbit, flying at 10 times the speed of a rifle bullet. Be the first to leave the planet. On the 60th anniversary of that legendary space voyage (1961-2021), British author and filmmaker Stephen Walker wrote a book titled “Beyond: The Incredible Story of the First Man to Leave Our Planet and Travel into Space” to tell the whole new story of Yuri Gagarin and the US-Soviet special forces. Invite readers to track. APRIL 1961: THE BEST DAYS OF THE COLD WAR America and the Soviet Union confront each other through an iron curtain. Their new battlefield is Space. 01. Mercury Seven Vs. Vanguard Six Deep in the birch grove in the Shchyolkovsky district northeast of Moscow, far from the main highway to the city and hidden from prying eyes, is a small, old-fashioned two-story building, faded in the white snow. No one expected it to be the site of one of the most secretive Soviet facilities. Its codename is Army Unit 26266, also known by its initials TsPK – or Tsentr Podgotovki Kosmonavtov: Cosmonaut Training Center. And here it is, on a special Wednesday, January 18, 1961 — two days before the inauguration of US President John F. Kennedy in Washington; the day before Alan Shepard was selected as America’s first astronaut — 6 men after rigorous tests became the first Soviet space travel candidates, they were part of the detachment Vanguard Six . 
If NASA (USA) has Mercury Seven (left photo), the Soviet Union also owns Vanguard Six. Photo: Stephenwalkerbeyond.com Like the astronaut squad Mercury Seven of NASA in Langley, Virginia, six Vanguard Six elites were also sitting in a classroom. But the similarities (between the US and the Soviet Union) stop there. Because the members of the Vanguard Six are younger than the American Mercury Seven, in their 20s, not 30. All of them wear military uniforms instead of the usual Banlon shirts favored by American Mercury Seven pilots. And the height and weight index of Vanguard Six members are smaller. All to meet the condition of sitting inside the spherical capsule of the Orient spacecraft, mounted on top of an R-7 rocket, which they all hope will one day fly into space soon. The building in the birch forest is the first structure in its time, a large, heavily guarded complex closed to the outside world and dedicated solely to the training of its astronauts. Soviet Union. Not only is it sheltered by the forest, this site is not far from Moscow. It is also just a few kilometers from the Chkalovsky airbase, the largest military airport in the Soviet Union. And also located near OKB-1, the secret design and production plant in Kaliningrad, where capsules of the Orient spacecraft were being built at the time. 02. Squad in the dark No one at Chkalovsky knew why the six men were there or what they were being trained for. So did their parents, their friends, or their former colleagues in the air force. Even their wives are discouraged from asking too many questions. Unlike the Mercury Seven – astronaut candidates famous throughout the US if not the whole world – The Vanguard Six squad only exists in the dark. There is one key difference between the Vanguard Six and the Mercury Seven. These six aren’t the only astronauts in training. There are 14 others left. In an even more ruthless selection process than American astronauts have gone through, these 20 were selected from an initial pool of nearly 3,500 military pilots. 
Vanguard Six at the Baikonur launch site in Kazakhstan before Yuri Gagarin’s flight. From left: Grigory Nelyubov, Valery Bykovsky, Yuri Gagarin, Andriyan Nikolayev, Gherman Titov, Pavel Popovich. Photo: Astronaut Training Center / Roskosmos The Soviet space program had ambitions to conquer space, or at least to get people out of Earth’s gravity, and they needed manpower to do so. All 20 men began training in the spring of 1960, just two months after Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev urged his chief space engineers that they “should be quick to aim for space to avoid risk of being overtaken by the US”. At that time Mercury Seven had been training for almost a year. The Soviet Union needed to catch up quickly and these 20 cosmonauts were the answer. Rocket boosters, spacecraft capsules, designers, engineers, training centers, launch sites, and of course the astronauts themselves – all in the dark. By the fall of 1960, the Soviet manned space program had become a top national goal, especially since NASA was aiming to send an American into space as early as December. 1960. To speed things up and prioritize training on a single simulator, a shortlist of the top 6 was drawn up, which included, of course, Yuri Gagarin. In essence, they were the top detachment to face the Mercury Seven head-to-head, with the difference being that the Soviets knew about their American opponents, while the Americans knew nothing about the Soviets. 
Yuri Gagarin trains on a treadmill for her spaceflight. (RGANTD) “All 6 astronauts are wonderful people,” Lieutenant General Nikolai Kamanin, their head of training, wrote on the day the Vanguard Six took their final test. “Which of these six people will go down in history as the first in space?” “Who will be the first of them to pay with their lives in making this daring endeavor?” – Lieutenant General Nikolai Kamanin wrote in his diary. Flying in space can completely die in space. That is what the Soviet Union and the Vanguard Six cosmonauts were clearly aware of. Therefore, the pioneering mission to fly into space is a suicide mission. Back in December 1960, all 20 astronauts were asked to vote on which of their colleagues should fly first. The majority voted for Yuri Gagarin. But even after the exams at Army Unit 26266 were over and the results were known, a decision on who would carry out the mission had not yet been made. In Langley, Virginia, Bob Gilruth, the head of the Space Mission Team responsible for the Mercury Seven, was able to summon his seven astronauts into a class and speak to them, simply and according to his authority. , that who will be first. In the Soviet Union – Unlike the Mercury Seven, the Vanguard Six would have to wait — and they would have to wait until the very last moment. The first candidate chosen by the Soviet government was Yuri Gagarin. Second place went to Gherman Titov. The third is Grigory Nelyubov. Finally, history has glorified Yuri Gagarin. Not defying the expectations of Soviet leaders, Yuri Gagarin made history after completing a 108-minute mission around the Earth aboard the Orient 1 spacecraft, helping the Soviet Union surpass the US as the world leader. The first country in human history to send a man into space. Yuri Gagarin beat the Americans, defeating NASA astronaut Alan Shepard – The first American to fly into space on May 5, 1961 (3 weeks behind the Soviet Union). Yuri Gagarin’s achievement is a blow to American pride. When Alan Shepard heard the news, he slammed his hand on the table so hard that NASA staff thought his arm was broken. Back in the Soviet Union, leader Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev called Yuri Gagarin “Christopher Columbus of the Soviet Union”. Until now, this feat is still mentioned by many people because Yuri Gagarin herself has opened a new cosmic era in human history! Yuri Gagarin – full name is Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin – is the son of a carpenter, born (March 9, 1934) and raised in the idyllic village of Klushino in Smolensk, Western Soviet Union. At the age of 16, Yuri Gagarin moved to the capital to study as a foundry in a metal foundry in Lyubertsy. The opportunity to spread wings in the sky came to the young man when he entered a technical school in Saratov. There, he joined a flying club and had his first exhilarating experience from above. Yuri Gagarin decided to enter the Soviet Air Force Officer School to realize her dream of flying more in the sky. In 1957, at the energetic age of 23, Yuri Gagarin graduated with honors and became a full-fledged fighter pilot. In the same year, he met and married Valentina Goryacheva (then a medical technician, just graduated from Orenburg Medical School) and had two daughters later. Refer: Air Space Magazine
You must log in to post a comment.