r from the sides of the rocket as its 20 engines, with an explosive yield of 1.9 million pounds (862,000 kg), roared to full power.
Gagarin would later describe the initial sensation of liftoff as “an ever-growing din,” albeit no louder than the sounds he had experienced flying high-performance jets in his previous career as a Soviet Air Force pilot. His helmet muffled much of the R-7’s rumble, although the vibrations remained apparent. At some point, a few seconds after leaving Earth, he yelled the immortal words “Poyekhali!” (“Let’s go!”) over the radio circuit. Within two minutes, as the G loads began to build, he found it increasingly difficult to speak and would later compare the sensation to the stress of a harsh turn in a MiG. The pressure lifted momentarily as the R-7’s four strap-on boosters burned out and separated; after a brief pause, the central core of the rocket picked up the thrust and the G loads began to rise again. By three minutes into the flight, at 9:10 a.m., the rocket’s nose fairing was jettisoned from around Vostok’s ball-like cabin, giving Gagarin his first glimpse of the dark blue sky and the clear curvature of Earth as he reached the edge of space.
The R-7’s core, now exhausted of propellant, finally fell away some five minutes into the flight, leaving Gagarin reliant on an upper-stage engine, which inserted him into orbit promptly at 9:18 a.m., exactly as Korolev had planned. Unknown to the cosmonaut, the core had actually burned for longer than anticipated, leaving Vostok in an orbit with an apogee (high point) of 200 miles (320 km), rather than the intended 140 miles (225 km). It added a little more height to Russia’s already-won World Aviation Altitude Record. As Muscovites arrived at work and the Western world still slumbered—figuratively and literally—a new era of human exploration had begun. Gagarin, whose heart rate soared from 66 to 158 beats per minute during ascent, had won the first lap of the space race.
Although the noise and intense vibration of the R-7 was now gone, it was overcome by the steady murmur of fans, ventilators, pumps, and the hiss of static in his ears. His first experience of the state of weightlessness, properly termed “microgravity,” was hampered by the fact that he was tightly strapped into his ejection seat. However, he had purposely carried a small Russian doll as a gravity indicator and watched as it floated comically in midair. So too did a notepad and pencil. In fact, this would not be the doll’s only experience of space travel: In 1991, cosmonaut Musa Manarov would carry it on his mission to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Gagarin’s flight.
As the capsule slowly rotated to avoid wasting propellant on unnecessary maneuvers and also to ensure that various sections of Vostok did not become too hot or cold, the First Cosmonaut had his first opportunity to view the world. In his official statement, made in Moscow a few days later, he would describe “a smooth transition from pale blue, blue, dark blue, violet, and absolutely black … a magnificent picture.” He started jotting down observations in his notepad, but after the pencil floated away he turned instead to the on-board tape recorder to log his thoughts, describing weightlessness as “not at all unpleasant” and confirming that the food and drink were good.
Ten minutes into the mission, Vostok was heading eastward in the direction of Siberia and Gagarin gradually drifted out of radio range with the Baikonur launch site, to be picked up in turn by other listening posts at Novosibirsk, Kolpashevo, Khabarovsk, and the easternmost station on Soviet soil, Yelizovo, near Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka Peninsula. To attract Gagarin’s attention, each station transmitted musical themes to him: Muscovite tunes, Waves of the Amur, Baglanova songs, and others. “During that early period,” Alexei Leonov wrote in his memoir, Two Sides of the Moon, “the Mission Control Centre at Yevpatoria in the Crimea … was still under construction, so communication and control from the ground … were performed from the radio stations 