reared its head. A series of electrical contacts encircling Vostok’s hatch should have registered a signal—known as “KP-3″—to Sergei Korolev and his control team in the nearby blockhouse, informing them that it was secure. Furthermore, the signal was supposed to confirm that explosive charges around the hatch could jettison it at a millisecond’s notice in the event of an emergency and enable Gagarin to eject. On the gantry, the contacts seemed fine and the enormous hatch—which “weighed about a hundred kilos and was a meter wide,” according to Ivanovsky—was manhandled into place and the laborious process of screwing its 30 bolts began. No sooner had they finished, the launch pad’s telephone rang. No KP-3 signal had been received, barked Korolev, and he demanded that they unscrew and remove the hatch. After more fiddling, it was done. This time, thankfully, the KP-3 signal came back clearly.
It was now less than 40 minutes away from the projected 9:07 a.m. Moscow Time launch. Ivanovsky, Gallai, and the remaining personnel left the pad for the nearest control bunker. Vladimir Suvorov, determined to seize the most important photo opportunity of his career, stayed out in the open and would record some of the 20th century’s most remarkable imagery as the first man headed into space. Elsewhere, Gherman Titov was midway through stripping off his own space suit and his neckpiece was halfway over his head when the attending technicians disappeared to watch the launch. Meanwhile, alone in his tiny capsule, the young Soviet Air Force senior lieutenant, who had celebrated his 27th birthday and the birth of his second daughter a few weeks earlier, appeared calm, clear, and confident in his communication with Sergei Korolev.
Finally, at 8:51 a.m., Korolev gruffly announced that it was time for Gagarin to seal his gloves and close his helmet visor. With steady rhythm, Korolev barked out in turn: “Launch key to ‘go’ position … Air purging … Idle run,” and, finally, at 9:07 a.m., “Ignition!” The gantry’s hold-down arms sprang clear 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 