Posted on 04/13/2002 9:23:24 AM PDT by dighton
PRAVDA.Ru has already mentioned that April 12is celebrated as the Space Exploration Day in Russia. Yuri Gagarin became a national hero as the first man in space -- the name Gagarin became a symbol of the era. The representatives of the presidential administration and Federation Council, the managers and veterans of the Russian space and rocket industrial branched laid wreaths on Yuri Gagarin’s grave today.
March 27 was the day, when Russia commemorated a mournful day. Thirty-four years ago Yuri Gagarin tragically died at the age of 34. The newspaper Izvestia wrote that cosmonaut’s widow Valentina Gagarina refused to give any interviews on that day. She is still not satisfied about the official conclusions of her husband’s death. However, cosmonauts Vladimir Shatalov and Aleksey Leonov were sure that the conclusions of the official investigation were correct: the plane that was piloted by Gagarin crashed because of flying very close to another pursuit plane. Leonov said (Aleksey Leonov was a member of the governmental committee, which was investigating the reasons of the crash) the air wave of another plane made Gagarin’s aircraft spin, and it crashed. No one ever said anything on that in the past, since it was believed that it could not happen in the Soviet Union, no one was punished.
The newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda published an article about Yuri Gagarin today. As it was said in it, Gagarin’s capsule landed on the territory of the secret missile division. As he said himself, his biggest fear was to fall down in the Volga river. When the capsule started entering the atmosphere, the casing of the capsule went on fire. The cosmonaut catapulted at the height of seven thousand meters. When there was less than a kilometer left to reach the ground, Gagarin thought that he had a lot of chances to swim in the ice-cold water. He started throwing heavy things off, and managed to do it on the ground. The first question that he heard on the Earth was: “Your ID, please!” Such a funny thing happened because there was an incident, when a foreign spy plane was downed above the Ural region. So, there was an opportunity that spies could land on USSR’s territory. A vehicle with military men arrived very quickly to the site. The place, where Gagarin landed, was totally not good to appear in press and on television: there was a military plant Signal and a missile division over there. So they decided to “move” the landing site a bit farther. As a matter of fact, Gagarin’s capsule landed on the line between the village and the missile division.
Well, at least they waited until after the flight.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.