There’s nothing dumber than a technicality, especially when people are putting their lives on the line to do something incredible. If there’s ever a clearer illustration of the critics against Theodore Roosevelt’s “man in the arena,” it’s Soviet space pioneer Yuri Gagarin and the naysayers who believe he wasn’t the first human to break the surly bonds of Earth.
On April 12, 1961, after saying the epic line, “Poyekhali!” (“let’s go!”) Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin blasted off from Kazakhstan’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in the Vostok 1 capsule, notching a win for the Soviet Union during the Space Race and a huge victory for humanity. Even if it didn’t seem that way at the time, the world would never be the same. His flight would last just 108 minutes, and he would experience weightlessness and get a look at the planet. It would make Gagarin an international celebrity and truly be one for the record books.
With all this information in mind, we know definitively that Gagarin was the first man in space. But it’s the record books that have doubters keeping the bizarre technicality that dogged the achievement for more than six decades. It was the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI – or International Air Sports Federation in English), the governing body for all aeronautical records. Founded in 1905, the nonprofit FAI doesn’t belong to any government and exists to certify and register world records, as well as arbitrate any disputes over those records.
Manned spaceflight didn’t exist when the FAI was founded in 1905. Some scientists still believed that space was filled with an invisible medium that carried light from the sun to Earth. There was no term for a galaxy, and some believed what we see as galaxies were just nebulae, part of the Milky Way – and that the Milky Way was the known universe. So the idea of going to space in 1905 was a little absurd. Fast-forward a few decades, and it’s suddenly an issue the FAI has to contend with.
The Soviet Union and the United States were making incredible strides toward manned spaceflight, so it became clear that records were about to be set and broken. The FAI was respected by both countries and thus became the one who would certify any achievements made by either side in the Space Race. The FAI apparently decided to make it easy on themselves and rolled a number of rules and stipulations from air travel to space travel, and this is where some people get stuck on Yuri Gagarin.
The FAI’s rules for manned spaceflights stated that, just like the aircraft pilots had to land inside their craft in order for the record to be valid, space pilots would also have to land inside their craft for valid records. It’s an understandable rule for aircraft pilots, especially when the FAI was founded. Parachutes were an emerging technology and not landing an aircraft pretty much meant certain death.
Of course by the 1960s, parachutes were better and so were airplanes, but still: not being able to land an aircraft doesn’t really advance aviation technology or performance. There was no trophy for “most spectacular crash landing,” and if there was, it was set by the Hindenburg when it went up in flames in 1937.So the FAI’s rules on landing the spacecraft remained fully in place – but Yuri Gagarin didn’t land in his spacecraft.
The Soviet Union had the technology to send a man safely to space, but not to land him back on Earth in the same vehicle in which he left. The USSR’s scientists never planned for him to come back in the Vostok capsule, because there was no way for them to slow its velocity enough for a human to survive inside. Yuri Gagarin ejected from the spacecraft at 20,000 feet and thus did not land with the craft, technically, some say, not setting the record as per FAI rules.
The Soviet Union kept Gagarin’s ejection a secret for months, letting the world assume he landed with the capsule. But the FAI isn’t Major League Baseball and was willing to change the rules for their Pete Rose. It recognized that launching a human into space and successfully returning him to Earth without killing him was a monumental achievement, one worthy enough to change the rules for. The only method of landing worth considering, the FAI agreed, was that the pilot or crew was still among the living.
So, despite the fact that the arbitrary rules for setting a record were changed to fit the achievement, it was still quite an achievement and Yuri Gagarin was undoubtedly the first human in space.