“Poyekhali!”
Dressed in an oversized orange spacesuit and equally large white helmet, the initials CCCP stamped in red across the front, an unknown Russian air force pilot prepared to make history.
It was the morning of 12 April 12, 1961, and moments earlier Yuri Gagarin had said his farewells to the gathered dignitaries and made the brief bus journey across the tarmac. Ahead of him, rising from the flat landscape of the Kazakhstan steppes, was a towering, shining rocket.
Gagarin had only learned that he had been selected to become the first human being to orbit the earth three days earlier – even his wife and young family did not know what lay ahead.