Scrapbook 1: Aug 1961; Apr 1962? — Gherman Titov

FEELING fine. Again and again yesterday the Eagle sent this message back from Space . . .

Eagle is the code name of Major Gherman Stepariovich Titov, the fourth man in Space and the second man to be put into orbit.

The first man into orbit was Major Yuri Gagarin, a Russian colleague of Titov. The Americans have yet to put a man into orbit, but two of their astronauts have made quick up-and-down trips into Space.

Late last night Titov, twenty-six-year-old Russian Air Force major, was still whirling round the Earth at 18,000 m.p.h.

He paused from his work in his craft for a “three course lunch” and for “dinner”—special food preparations squeezed from tubes like toothpaste.

Last night Major Titov radioed that he was going to have a seven-hour sleep. His base cut off all radio communication so that he should not be disturbed.

As he settled down he sent this message: “Everything is going fine. Please say goodnight to the dear Muscovites. I am now going to bed.”

Major Titov was rocketed up in the Spaceship Vostok II at 6 a.m.

He was expected down this morning—after circling the earth 17 times—once every 88½ minutes.

As Vostok II rushed round, at a height of between 110 and 160 miles, Titov sent greetings to Asia, Africa, Australia, South America and Europe.

Jubilant

Moscow Radio broadcast a recording of a conversation Titov had with colleagues on Earth.

He was told: The whole of Moscow is jubilant. Muscovites send their ardent greetings and wish you to complete your flight successfully.

Titov: Thank you, dear Muscovites. Will soon be back on Earth. We shall meet soon.

Moscow: During the fifth-revolution note the time of the entry and exit from the Earth’s shadow and report back during your sixth revolution.

Titov: I understand. I shall try to determine the time and report back during the sixth revolution.

Moscow: Report pressure in cabin.

Titov: The pressure remains at 1.05 atmospheres, temperature 20 degrees, humidity 75 per cent.

The Spaceship is thought to be almost exactly the same as that in which the first man in Space, Major Gagarin, went up.

But unlike Gagarin, whose flight was controlled from Earth, Titov was said to be partially piloting the craft himself.

Yesterday’s flight almost certainly began from Russia’s “Cape Canaveral” at Baikonur, in Kazakh republic.

Fine

On his second orbit, Titov, son of a schoolteacher, sent Soviet leader Mr. Krushchev a message over his two-way radio link with Earth.

He said he was feeling fine and that all was normal.

Mr. Krushchev radioed back his congratulations and added: “We embrace you.”

Meanwhile, Titov’s reactions to the flight were televised to Russian scientists.

They said he was smiling. . . .

In Red Square, Moscow a crowd gathered . . . and gazed skywards when Vostok II was due to pass over the city.

They saw nothing. An official explained it would be impossible to see the Spaceship with the naked eye.

Drama

The BBC’s listening station at Caversham, Berks, picked up fragments of the Spaceman’s messages.

They included his call sign—“I am Eagle, I am Eagle”—and assurances that he was “feeling fine . . very well.”

Spaceman Titov is married. His twenty-four-year-old wife is called Tamara.

Russia’s second venture into Space sets the stage dramatically for Mr. Krushchev’s speech tonight on the Berlin crisis.

He is known to like a major accomplishment to precede an important pronouncement, and the new Space shot has been freely predicted by Muscovites.

Cosmonaut ‘Saw No God or Angels’

From Press Dispatches

SEATTLE — Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov said he saw “no God or angels” during his 17 orbits of the earth.

The question came up at a news conference at the Seattle World’s Fair whether the 25 hours he spent in space had changed his philosophy or way of thinking.

“Some people say there is a God out there,” the 27-year-old Soviet major replied. “But in my travels around the earth all day long I looked around and didn’t see him. I saw no God or angels.

“Up to our first orbital flight by Yuri Gagarin no God helped build our rocket. The rocket was made by our people. I don’t believe in God. I believe in man, his strength, his possibilities and his reason.”

Titov expounded on his materialistic faith after he and his wife had spent nearly two hours touring the U.S. science exhibit at the fair. They were personally conducted by Dr. Athelstan Spilhaus, federal commissioner of the exhibit.

Takes U.S. ‘Space Ride’

Titov took a simulated trip a billion billion miles into outer space in the science pavilion’s spacearium, but said the moving picture did not depict the return to earth the way he saw it when he finished his space flight.

“I couldn’t see all of the earth as you would from outer space,” he said. “The height of my capsule was lower and the angle of the earth’s dimension different.”

Titov praised the $6 million U.S. science display, saying he “liked it very much” and felt it was something everyone should see. He was particularly interested in a complex electronic computer which sent an imaginary satellite into orbit, and in a tracking station for a Transit navigational satellite now orbiting the earth.

Later, in San Francisco, Titov smilingly criticized the U.S. space program.

He told a news conference that if he were invited to join an American in a U.S. spacecraft, “I would be a bit afraid because there have been quite a lot of failures in your program.”

He said he had seen the spacecraft in which U.S. astronaut Alan B. Shepard made a suborbital space flight. Titov remarked: “It’s not even good enough for flying in orbit.”

As for American automobiles, the cosmonaut said, “it seems to me you have to pay more attention to this problem.” He said that it’s just a matter of time before Americans will be able to get places faster by walking than by driving.

Mum on The Moon

The handsome Russian major parried questions about which country would land a man on the moon first and about the existence of God.

He said his grandfather believed in God, but that his grandmother did not, and kept throwing religious pictures out the window. The grandmother, he said, is still alive, and grandfather is not.

“We have an example here that belief in God does not always help. I believe in toil and labor and the reason of man.”

TITOV GETS ICE-COLD ‘WELCOME’

From JOHN EDWARDS New York, Monday

RUSSIAN Spaceman Gherman Titov thrilled the Soviet Union with his cry: “I am an eagle!” as he whirled seventeen times around the world.

But he has not thrilled anybody in New York, where he is staying on the first leg of his trip to the United States.

Few people have paid the slightest attention to him.

When he arrived in New York yesterday he got the back door treatment.

Dismal

His Russian turbo-jet was ushered to the dismal side of New York’s international airport, where the glamorous, glittering terminal building peters out into a collection of wooden huts and sheds.

His reception committee, entirely Russian, stood out in a cold wind. Some Russian girls shouted and threw flowers.

But no American Government official was there to say “Welcome.”

Unfriendly

One man who saw the waiting Russians asked me “Who’s flying […] pop singer or something?”

Gherman Titov must think the Americans are an unfriendly lot. Last night he went on a few orbits around Manhattan. He tried to look at home. He offered a couple of waves out of the window of his car. Nobody waved back.

I don’t think they knew who he was, or what he had done.

He went to the United Nations today to have lunch with Acting Secretary-General U Thant and to shake hands with a few other top officials

Boos

Very formal and slightly more friendly.

But there were some definitely unfriendly people around when Titov went to Wall-street.

As he watched the bustling activity of the New York Stock Exchange most of the stockbrokers cheered him.

But there was scattered booing.

I hope the Russian hero gets more than the cold shoulder when he goes to Washington to address a Space conference and meet another Space hero, John H. Glenn.

After all, he was invited.

“Goodnight, Moscow,” He was blasted off in his 4½-ton Spaceship, Vostok II, at 6 a.m. yesterday.

Throughout the day, Titov, married and a pilot in the Soviet Air Force, reported that he was “feeling fine.”

If all goes well he should land “somewhere in Russia” this morning—after twenty-four hours in Space and seventeen trips around the Earth.

GREETING

Major Yuri Gagarin, the first Spaceman, who made ONE circuit of the Earth lasting 108 minutes, decided yesterday to break off a visit to Canada and return to Russia to greet Titov.

His first duty was to phone Mr. K. And he confessed that while resting during the night, he overslept. He woke up half an hour later than planned.

Mr. Krushchev, hugely delighted with the flight, thought nothing of this “lapse.”

Titov, in Space, had about eight hours’ sleep. His wife, Tamara, 23, waiting anxiously by the radio in Moscow, had no sleep at all while he was in flight.

The Spaceman told Mr. Kruschev that Tamara, at first, did not want him to make the flight . . . but later she approved.

RUSSIA’S second Spaceman, handsome 26-year-old Major Gherman Titov, who was blasted off yesterday, was whirling triumphantly round the Earth at 18,000 mph early today.

He had a “three course lunch” of concentrated foods squeezed from tubes. A few hours later he had “dinner”—again squeezed from tubes.