Stepping into the 'Beyond': New book celebrates 60th anniversary of first man in space
Stepping into the 'Beyond': New book celebrates 60th anniversary of first man in spaceon Apr 13, 2021 Today marks the 60th anniversary of the daring launch that sent the first human into space, paving the way for manned space exploration of the cosmos. On April 12, 1961, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin became the first person to leave Earth's orbit and travel into space. His historic flight lasted 108 minutes, during which he orbited Earth in the Soviet Union's Vostok spacecraft, guided entirely by an automatic control system. This amazing feat set a significant milestone in the space race, as competition grew between the United States and the Soviet Union to develop more advanced spaceflight capabilities. With the success of Gagarin's flight, the Soviet Union had beaten the United States at putting a human in space by just about three weeks, with American astronaut Alan Shepard's suborbital flight on May 5, 1961 In his new book, Beyond: The Astonishing Story of the First Human to Leave Our Planet and Journey into Space (Harper, 2021), author and documentary filmmaker Stephen Walker recounts intimate details of the months, and years, leading up to Gagarin's historic flight, revealing the true stories of the Soviet space program as the agency prepared to launch the first human into space. Walker also explores the many parallels between the Soviet space program and NASA as the two space agencies worked separately toward a common goal: to be the first Space.com sat down with Walker to discuss his new book, the early days of the space race and the historical impact of Gagarin's flight. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You can find the book on Amazon here, on sale starting April 12.
Buy Beyond: The Astonishing Story of the First Human to Leave Our Planet and Journey into Space (Harper, 2021) by Stephen Walker
Space.com: Could you talk a little bit about your research on the space race between the Soviet Union and the United States?
Stephen Walker: I was asked to develop a movie [based on] some of the secret footage that we knew had been shot in the Soviet Union in the late 1950s, early 1960s, specifically about [Yuri Gagarin's] incredible flight. I knew that this stuff had all been shot secretly and so I thought, 'well, where's the footage? I've got to find this footage.' When I was commissioned to go to Russia, starting in 2012, I found some of [the footage]. Some of it is absolutely incredible — it's stuff that's never been seen before ... So our idea was going to be that we were going to press it so that it could be put on the big screen.
However, it became more and more difficult to secure this material, and we don't know to this day why that actually happened — it got to the point where I thought I would have to let [the movie] go. But whilst I was doing it, I was also interviewing some incredible people. I found this wonderful couple who'd been rocket engineers in Baikonur in the late 1950s and early sixties, and they were right there — not just for Yuri Gagarin, but for Sputnik — for everything. They were husband and wife who had relocated to the middle of nowhere and they were working on this secret program that they couldn't tell their parents or anyone about. I had all these amazing interviews shot in high definition for the big screen, but we didn't have enough to make the film, so I had to let it go and it was absolutely heartbreaking.
About a year and a half, two years ago, I suddenly thought, the anniversary is coming up — the 60th anniversary of the first human in space is a kind of big deal. It's not just a Russian thing, it's not just an American thing — it's a human thing. And when you think of it like that, it becomes terribly pivotal in all of our history. We have been on this planet for millions of years, and on April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin was the first to escape the biosphere and look at it from the outside. So I saw and met and interviewed a lot more people, and I delved into a lot more archives and read a lot more books and came back. On the first day of lockdown in London in March of last year, I started writing this book.
Space.com: Many of your books have relied on extensive research, interviews and personal artifacts. What do you find most rewarding about this style of writing?
Walker: It's the confluence of ideas, places and things that are happening. Putting the two sides together so that you're in America [for one chapter] — you might be in Houston, Washington or Cape Canaveral — and then you're in Moscow or the Baikonur Cosmodrome. I was amazed when I put the timelines together: something was happening in Moscow at the same time something else was happening on the other side of the world in America. One example I wrote about was two days after Yuri Gagarin's flight, there was this massive party — the biggest party in Moscow's entire history. As that party takes place, president Kennedy is sitting in the White House, grim-faced, tapping his teeth with a pencil and saying, what can we do? And really, the decision to go to the moon — to start a new race — starts there in that meeting.
Space.com: That's actually a great segue to my next question, which was going to be about a quote you included from President John F. Kennedy when he says during that meeting, If somebody can just tell me how to catch up. Let's find somebody — anybody. I don't care if it's the janitor over there if he knows how. How would you describe America's reaction to the Soviet Union's success?
Walker: I think [Kennedy] realized that, politically, he was in a bad way. Three months into the job and then suddenly this thing happens. If you actually look at the news conference that [Kennedy] gives on the day of Yuri Gagarin's flight ... he looks broken and he extends his congratulations to Soviet Premier Khrushchev. He can't even say Gagarin's name, he just says I extend my congratulations to the man who was involved. So now America's on the back foot, while a nation that was so comprehensively destroyed by the second World War ... put a human into space. This was a signal to the world that America had lost. So, it's existential this moment — it's literally about changing the course of history. And Kennedy knows that, which is why he had that emergency meeting. We then see Kennedy on May 25, 1961 ask for money from Congress to support this bold adventure to get to the moon within the decade, which starts the road to Apollo.
Space.com: With that said, can you talk a bit about how Gagarin's first orbital flight in 1961 ultimately jumpstarted NASA's Apollo program?
Walker: The moon landings happened because Gagarin went first into space, not Alan Shepard, who was the man designated to go first on the American side. Gagarin gets there because the Soviets see Americans hesitating, while they were taking such huge risks to get there first. Arguably, if Shepard had gone first, Kennedy would not have committed the enormous funds to the [Apollo Program].
So what prevented Alan Shepard from going first? It's what went wrong with that first flight of the chimpanzee, Ham, when the fuel ran out half a second early, as a result of which, Ham's capsule aborted and the poor chimpanzee went through this horrific flight and nearly drowned in the Atlantic ocean. Literally that half a second, I argue, changed history. If the fuel had lasted 0.5 of a second longer, Ham's [capsule] would not have aborted and Alan Shepard would have likely [flown] in March ... and beaten the Soviet Union. Then, Kennedy would not have felt the humiliation and embarrassment, and therefore the need, to commit to a massively chancy and expensive manned lunar program.
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