Yuri Gagarin

Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin (Russian: ???? ?????????? ???????; March 9, 1934 ? March 27, 1968), was a Soviet cosmonaut who in 1961 became the first human to travel into space.

Death and Legacy

Gagarin then became deputy training director of the establishment. In the process of this, he began to requalify as a fighter pilot. On March 27, 1968 he was killed in a crash of a MiG-15 on a routine training flight near Moscow together with his instructor. It is uncertain what caused the crash, but a 1986 inquest suggests that the turbulence from a Su-11 interceptor airplane using its afterburners may have caused Gagarin's plane to go out of control. Weather conditions were also poor, which probably contributed to the inability of Gagarin and the instructor to correct before they crashed. Rumor that he was drunk is incorrect — he passed two medical examinations before the flight, and postmortem tests found no evidence of alcohol or drugs in his system. A new theory, advanced by the original crash investigator in 2005, hypothesises that a cabin vent was accidentally left open by the crew or the previous pilot, thus leading to oxygen deprivation and leaving the crew incapable of controlling the aircraft http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=352912005.

Related Topics:
March 27 - 1968 - Moscow - 1986 - Su-11 - Afterburner - Oxygen deprivation

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The Russian press reported he stayed with the aircraft to prevent it hitting a school, although this may have been apocryphal.

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Although Gagarin is indisputably the first man to survive space travel, there is a conspiracy theory that the Russians had previously launched two human beings into orbit prior to Gagarin, but both cosmonauts died en route or alternatively, one died while one landed off-course and was held by the Chinese government. The subject named most often in these theories is Vladimir Ilyushin, son of the famous Russian airplane designer. The Soviet government then supposedly suppressed this information to prevent bad publicity for their space program. According to Gagarin's biography, Starman, these rumours were likely started in a similar manner to the Roswell conspiracy theories; two Vostok missions, equipped with dummies and tape recordings of the human voice (to check if the radio worked), were made in the period just before Gagarin's flight.

Related Topics:
Conspiracy theory - Vladimir Ilyushin - Roswell

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