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During a meeting of the space craft constructors, Energia, a veteran of Soviet astronautics, Boris Chertok, who worked closely with Sergei Korolev during the preparations for Gagarin's historic flight, made a series of surprising revelations about the risks run during the first manned mission. His comments have been made public by the news agency, Interfax.
The first risk was caused by the fact that Gagarin, in his space suit, was 14 kg heavier than expected. To compensate for the excess weight, Vostok technicians eliminated some of the cabling, but accidentally cut connections to pressure and temperature sensors.
Another worrying risk was related to the fact that the orbit into which the Vostok capsule was placed was a few kilometres in error, both in apogee and perigee. If the re-entry procedure had not worked as planned, and it had been necessary to rely on atmosphere breaking to decay the orbit, rather than taking 7-10 days to return to Earth it would have taken a month. As he was equipped with supplies for only 10 days he would probably have died of thirst.
The timing of the launch was also arguably rushed: up to that date, two flights with animals had been fatal for their occupants and there had been only two successful unmanned flights, and these using a Vostok design modified only a month before the launch.
The re-entry also presented risks, given that the cosmonaut had to parachute from an altitude of 7000 metres (which was planned) because, although the capsule was also slowed by a parachute, its landing would have been too fast for a passenger to endure.
He also landed some 600 km from the planned landing site and had problems opening the air vent on his helmet. To sum up, things could have gone a lot worse!
More information can be found on this historic mission in Paolo Laquale's article, "50 years ago Man reached the stars", recently put on-line on our site.
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