male translator: Yuri Gagarin invited us all into space.
male translator: He paved the way to the stars.
female translator: He opened a new chapter
in the history of mankind.
male translator: It's clear that it was the era
of confrontation, the race between the two camps.
And the Soviet Union was trying to show the world
its achievements, technical and political.
Until then, only dogs and chimpanzees
had been in space.
It was necessary to launch a man,
to demonstrate that a person could be in orbit for a while,
and to return alive and safe on Earth.
male translator: I was very lucky to be part of the group
that designed the Vostok spacecraft.
They were not just important engineers and scientists,
they were true visionaries.
female translator: The cosmonaut was selected
from a great number of volunteers.
Three and a half thousand, I think, all jet pilots.
The top 20 passed initial training,
then a group of six men were selected
for the first division.
And finally the one, Yuri Gagarin,
was chosen to make the first space flight.
male translator: It's like dressing a man in a suit
and shoving him into a blast furnace saying,
"Don't be afraid. The suit will protect you."
But nobody knows for sure
if it will actually protect you or not.
It's exactly the same thing here.
"Don't worry, everything will be fine.
"We just don't know what, exactly, it'll be.
It's up to you to tell us when you return."
male translator: It's a known fact
the flight lasted 108 minutes.
Nine minutes for the orbit insertion,
then a single orbit around the Earth.
Compared to modern achievements, it seems,
well, big deal, just one orbit.
We now fly for months on the International Space Station.
But it was the first time man flew into space,
and that's what Gagarin's achievement is about.
male translator: He didn't actually get
to pilot the spacecraft,
although he had all necessary controls to conduct
a manual descent and landing.
That was in case the automation was out of action.
All the people were truly, truly jubilant.
In our design studio, we celebrated
this joyful event massively.
male translator: I went out in the center of Moscow
and found it full of crowds,
all dancing, singing, laughing.
I asked, "What's all the joy about?"
Girls ran by saying, "Where have you been all this time?
Gagarin returned from space!"
And only then I realized the scale
of what had happened.
Until then, it didn't seem extraordinary.
It was just work for us.
Gagarin strived to fly again.
He was training to pilot
one of the first Soyuz spacecraft.
He wanted to test that ship,
and I think if fate had been different,
he would have made many more flights.
male translator: He was one of those who discovered
a whole new world for us, for all of humanity.
He was the exemplary man of that era--
the model of his time.