Stephen Walker: came across a book that was written by a guy called Suvorov who had kept a diary, a secret diary of the secret Soviet space program which he was filming from about 1959 right the way through into the 60s and it was fascinating because it was so secret that he wasn't even able to tell his wife what he was doing but he was away filming all this stuff and he says in his diary this felt like science fiction. And today, my guest Stephen Walker and I will talk about a legendary astronaut and a super secret space mission that changed everything. This is Pakinam Amer, and you’re listening to Science Talk, a Scientific American podcast. a solitary journey that is still celebrated as monumental and game-changing 60 years on. … 106 minutes or 108, man’s first pilgrimage around the planet we call home One man, five feet five, in an orange space suit, strapped into a seat inside a capsule attached to a modified R-7, the world’s first intercontinental ballistic missile. It is said that Gagarin whistled a love song as his capsule prepared for launch It sparked a space race between the US and Russia that, 8 eight years later, put other men on the moon for that small step hailed as a giant leap. Give or take a few minutes, that space venture aboard Vostok 1 - orbiting the earth at a maximum altitude of roughly 200 miles and putting the first man in space - still set the record for space achievement.
Stephen Walker, my guest today and the author of a new book on Gagarin’s historic feat and the world it happened in, puts at 106. The spherical capsule was blasted into orbit, circling the Earth at a speed of about 300 miles per minute, 10 times faster than a rifle bullet.Īccounts vary on exactly how long Gagarin spent circling our blue planet before he re-entered the atmosphere, hurtling towards Earth, gravity rapidly pulling him in. Yuri Gagarin, 27-year-old Russian ex-fighter pilot and cosmonaut, was launched into space inside a tiny capsule on top of a ballistic missile, originally designed to carry a warhead. On that day, without much fanfare, Russia sent the first human to space and it happened in secrecy, with very few hints in advance. Pakinam Amer: It was at 09.07 am Moscow time on Apthat a new chapter of history was written. He talks about his hunt for eyewitnesses, decades after the event how he uncovered never-before-seen footage of the space mission and, most importantly, how he still managed to put the human story at the heart of a tale at the intersection of political rivalry, cutting-edge technology, and humankind’s ambition to conquer space and explore new frontiers. Walker, whose films have won an Emmy and a BAFTA, revisits the complex politics and pioneering science of this era from a fresh perspective. and the Soviet Union and sparked a relentless space race between a rising superpower and an ailing one, respectively.
Walker discusses his new book Beyond: The Astonishing Story of the First Human to Leave Our Planet and Journey into Space, out today, and how Gagarin’s journey-an enormous mission that was fraught with danger and planned in complete secrecy-happened on the heels of a cold war between the U.S. In this new episode marking the 60th anniversary of this historic space flight-the first of its kind- Scientific American talks to Stephen Walker, an award-winning filmmaker, director and book author, about the daring launch that changed the course of human history and charted a map to the skies and beyond. It’s been 60 years, to the day, since Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was the first human to travel to space in a tiny capsule attached to an R-7 ballistic missile, a powerful rocket originally designed to carry a three- to five-megaton nuclear warhead.