Why couldn't Yuri Gagarin photograph?

Before the State Commission after his legendary flight, Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, agreed to specify a very important detail: “I took a couple of photos there to rejoice.By then I had already removed my space suit.I wore only blue thermal clothes, and I didn't take photos with orange and gray housings or hermetic helmet.We put the suit in the car. ”

In fact, in all the photos taken after landing, the cosmonaut appears with a coat jacket (shelter garment that in the mid -nineteenth century used the soldiers of the Russian imperial army as uniform and subsequently began using the prisoners).It is a B-3 coat suit, used by Gagarin under a space suit.But the space costume is not seen anywhere.

But why do you have to hide the space suit?

That fly without space suit

The battle that revolved around a space suit for the first human space flight was intense.The first man travels to space.What should he wear on such a dangerous trip?

Now it sounds absurd, but at the time some experts seriously believed that Yuri Gagarin could go there with this thermal shield suit.It was designed to save the astronaut only after landing and in case of hypothermia.If there was a referenturization of the ship in space, it was of no use.In other words, the astronaut should be sent without any space suit.

This option was considered, because in February 1960, the designers of the Vostok spacecraft realized that they had serious problems of excess weight, and it was necessary to save on equipment.At the same time, they gave very optimistic predictions: the probability of decoration of the cabin was unlikely, so a space suit was unnecessary and only added extra weight.

The dispute on whether an astronaut needed a space suit lasted until summer, when the father of Soviet astronautics, designer Serguéi Koroliov, gave the end point.He said he was willing to "give 500 kg [at the expense of the ship's technical filling], but to have a space suit with a vital support system ready by the end of the year."

Thus, there were eight incomplete months before the flight planned to invent the first space suit in history: Gagarin's SK-1.

The first suit

It was decided to take a shortcut and create a Vorkutá suit prototype for the pilots of the SU-9 fighters, in which the regulation of pressure and the oxygen supply was also fundamental.

The SK-1 was a soft two-layer suit.One of the layers was from Lavsan, or polyethylene terephthalate, a thermoplastic.At that time, it was the newest material, it was obtained in the laboratory of high molecule compounds of the Academy of Sciences relatively recently, in 1949. It was used to manufacture the resistance layer of a space suit (today,It is used to make plastic bottles, for example).

The second layer, the so -called hermetic layer, was rubber.The outer layer, in view of all, is an orange waterproof case.It was orange to facilitate the search operations of the astronaut, in case he was ejected from the cabin and land in parachute.

The helmet was not removable and the pressure sensors were connected to it.In case of a pressure drop, the helmet was automatically turned off and the hose that blew the cabin air to the inner layer of the suit was cut.The air supply would then come from the oxygen tank.Of course, this suit would not be suitable for making space walks, but the astronaut could carry it inside the cabin for five hours regardless of the ship.By the way, even the first space suit was already equipped with a sanitary device, so it was not necessary to remove it to do the needs.

The SK-1 was strictly manufactured according to the standards of the first group of astronauts, that is, it was not universal.The space suit along with the helmet weighed 20 kg.It was impossible to put it without help.There was a clear instruction on how to do it: in what order to put the legs, arms, etc.But the suit had to remove yourself.

Actually, Gagarin wore several layers of clothing: underwear, a heat proof suit, a layer of lavsan, a layer of rubber and, finally, an orange case.But why shouldn't he have been captured by the camera in this?

The man of the secret mission

This is the special secret of the space suit.It is rightly considered a Soviet creation: the materials and all the creations of the space race were a state secret.The bright orange outer jacket had, among other things, the intention of hiding the indiscreet looks under.

Yuri Gagarin, among other instructions, received the order to take measures to save or destroy the space suit after landing, regardless of where it occurred.To control the process, one of the suit engineers, Ota Mihrabánovich Bajov, was sent to Gagarin.On April 12, 1961, he carried out a secret mission that only a few knew.

Bajov had to receive a space suit from Gagarin or the head of the search and rescue team in the landing zone.That day, an engineer with a secret mission was captured in several fans photos.The inhabitants of the city of Engels confused a large man with a hat and sheep skin coat with a cosmonaut bodyguard and a member of the State Security Service in charge of caring for the national hero.But the truth was much more prosaic.Bajov had simply gone to look for a suit.

Read more: the mortal maneuver that ended Yuri Gagarin's life, in the Russian hunt Su-57

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