German Stepanowitsch Titow
| German Titov | |
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| Country: |
 Soviet Union
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| Organization: | PWO |
| Call sign: | Орёл (Oryol - "eagle") |
| selected on |
March 7, 1960 (First cosmonaut group) |
| Calls: | 1 space flight |
| Begin: | August 6, 1961 |
| Landing: | August 7, 1961 |
| Time in space: | 1d 1h 18min |
| retired on | June 1970 |
| Space flights | |
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German Stepanowitsch Titov ( Russian Герман Степанович Титов , scientific transliteration German Stepanovič Titov ; born September 11, 1935 in Verkhneje Schilino , Western Siberia Krai , today Altai region ; † September 20, 2000 in Moscow , Russia ) was a Soviet cosmonaut .
Life
Selection as a cosmonaut
Even as a child, German Titow wanted to be a pilot, like his uncle. He joined the Soviet Air Force in July 1953 at the age of 17 and graduated from the Kustanai Aviation School by 1955 . From 1957 he served as a jet aircraft pilot in the Soviet army.
When cosmonauts were sought for the upcoming manned space program of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1959, Titov was one of the 3,000 military pilots who met the minimum criteria. He passed all exams and from March 1960 was a member of the first cosmonaut group , which consisted of 20 young men.
Vostok 1
Titov was among six pilots shortlisted for the first space flight in January 1961. In the oral and written exams on January 17 and 18, 1961, he and Yuri Gagarin achieved the best results. On April 4, it was officially confirmed that the first spaceman of the Soviet Union would be selected from the three candidates Titov, Gagarin and Nelyubov . On April 9, Titov learned that Gagarin had been chosen the day before and that he had been nominated as a substitute.
For the next few days he was always ready to stand in for Gagarin if for any reason he should be canceled at short notice. However, that was not the case, and so on April 12, 1961, Gagarin became the first person to travel into space with Vostok 1 .
Vostok 2
As a substitute for Vostok 1, Titow was automatically set as the crew for Vostok 2 . Under the callsign Orjol (eagle) he started on August 6, 1961 with the spaceship Vostok 2 for the second orbital space flight in history. The flight was technically without any problems and, unlike Gagarin during his flight, he was even able to take control of the spaceship. At times, however, he suffered from the hitherto completely unknown space sickness and vomited . At the time of launch, he was only 25 years and 11 months old, holding the record as the youngest space traveler until 2021, when 18-year-old Oliver Daemen took part in the Blue Origin NS-16 suborbital flight . However, Titov remains the youngest person in Earth orbit.
After more than 24 hours of flight time, Vostok 2 returned to Earth. Like Gagarin, Titov left the landing capsule at a height of about 7,000 meters with the ejector seat and landed on the parachute. In contrast to Gagarin, however, this was also officially communicated. After Gagarin and the two suborbital flights completed by NASA astronauts Alan Shepard and Virgil Grissom , Titov was the fourth person in space.
On August 9, 1961, he was awarded the Order of Hero of the Soviet Union . When the Soviet space agency applied to the international aviation association, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) for the world record for the longest space flight, it was rejected. According to the rules of the FAI, the pilot had to land together with the aircraft. But since Titow used an ejector seat and parachute, John Glenn's flight of February 20, 1962 with Mercury Atlas 6 was recognized as a record with a duration of just under five hours.
Fame and antics
Upon his return, Titov instantly became a national hero who was worshiped in every form.
He enjoyed the fame and privileges he received, but kept getting himself into trouble through inappropriate behavior. He caused several car accidents, got drunk in public, and insulted senior military officials. Only his status as a cosmonaut saved him from the consequences.
From April 29 to May 12, 1962, he and Nikolai Kamanin , head of cosmonaut training, were on an official visit to the United States, where they met President Kennedy and Vice President Johnson, as well as NASA greats such as Wernher von Braun . Astronaut John Glenn showed them the Redstone rocket and the Mercury spacecraft , and he invited them to a barbecue at his home. At the world exhibition in Seattle , Titow and Kamanin were able to view the space exhibits in the USA pavilion. They were warmly welcomed everywhere. Indicative of the relationship between the American public and Titov was a banner that he discovered while touring the Ford plant in New Jersey : “Titov: Yes! - USSR: No! ”.
From the point of view of the Soviet officials, he had behaved better than expected and had not deviated from the official line during the eight speeches and 20 press conferences. Back in the Soviet Union, however, he again stood out for his lack of discipline. He also had a bad influence on his training comrades - some of the cosmonauts who had not yet completed a space flight also went off the rails and then followed his example.
It became critical for Titov when in March 1963 a folder with secret documents and access passes disappeared from his car. Korolev , the head of the Soviet space company, issued him new passports, but made it clear to him that if he were negligently lost again, he would be jailed.
Planning for Soyuz and Vozhod
From February 1964, Titov headed one of four training groups that were supposed to prepare for the flight with the new Soyuz spaceship . Him were Shatalov , Scholobow and Irina Solovyova , spare woman from Vostok 6 allocated. At the same time, he was also in discussion as the commander for the upcoming flight from Voschod 1 , but was struck off the list again due to his lack of discipline.
study
In contrast to the US astronaut group, which consisted of experienced test pilots with university degrees, the Soviet space travelers were relatively young jet pilots. The head of the cosmonaut training therefore saw it as necessary that the cosmonauts study at the military academy for engineers of the air force “Prof. NJ Schukowski “ operated.
Spiral
From July 1965, Titow headed a group of cosmonauts who were to be trained for the new reusable space glider Spiral . In addition to him, four to five other cosmonauts were part of the potential spiral crew. In 1967 he was trained as a test pilot at the " Valeri Pavlovich Tschkalow " flight school . He was re-motivated by this task and enjoyed flying MiG-21 , Su-7 and Su-9 aircraft at the Vladimirovka Air Force Base .
Kamanin's offer of March 1967 to join the Soviet lunar program, he rejected. He saw his future more as a test pilot.
However, the Spiral project turns out to be impracticable. In 1969 he was deprived of his driver's license and flight license for two years for disciplinary reasons, and he was refused representative trips abroad. In his nine years as a cosmonaut, he had ten disciplinary offenses. Titov saw no future for himself as an active pilot.
After the pilot career
On July 17, 1970, Titov left the cosmonaut corps. He was only 34 years old at the time. He enrolled at the Voroshilov Military Academy , which he left in 1972 with a degree in military science.
He then worked in the space department of the Ministry of Defense of the Soviet Union, first as deputy head of the ground station in Monino , from where the military space station Salyut 3 was controlled.
Between 1973 and 1979 he led the development and manufacture of several military space systems.
In 1991 he retired from active service in the army with the rank of Colonel General and thus reached the highest military rank among cosmonauts in the Soviet Union and Russia. He then became president of Kosmoflot , which, among other things, manufactured components for the COSPAS-SARSAT satellite system.
As early as 1961, due to his successful space flight without the usual candidate period, he became a member of the CPSU . After the founding of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPdRF) in 1993, he became a member and was elected to the Duma for the first time in the parliamentary elections in the same year . There he worked in the committees for conversion and science-intensive technologies as well as for industry, construction, transport and energy. In the elections in 1995 and in 1999 he defended his mandate.
Titov was married to Tamara Cherkas and had two daughters. Tatjana was born on September 23, 1963 as the first child of a space traveler. German Titow died on September 20, 2000 in his sauna. Carbon monoxide poisoning and a heart attack were named as the reason . He was buried with military honors in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow on September 25th .
Literature and press
Titov was one of the first cosmonauts to give extensive interviews to US journalists. From the writings of Wilfred Burchett and Anthony Purdy, the US author Martin Caidin created the biography I Am Eagle! . For a long time this was the only freely available source of information about Soviet space travel in the western world. After graduating from college, he was a member of the editorial board of Aviatsija i Kosmonawtika , the monthly journal of the Soviet Air Force. He has co-authored various Soviet and Western publications and has been interviewed often by Western journalists.
He is the author of the books A Million Miles in Orbit (1961), My Blue Planet (1977), Conversations with Cosmonauts of the USSR (1983) and On Starry and Earthly Orbits (1987) , among others .
Special features and records
- Fourth human in space, second human in orbit. The occasional statement that Titov was the second person in space is incorrect.
- Youngest person in space by July 19, 2021
- Youngest person to date in orbit
- First flight in space for more than 24 hours
- First flight with more than one orbit in space
- Father of the first child of a spaceman
honors and awards
German Titov received many awards from communist countries abroad and was, among other things, a two-time winner of the Order of Lenin and a winner of the Lenin Prize . He was also named Hero of the Soviet Union , Hero of the People's Republic of Bulgaria , Hero of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and Hero of the Mongolian People's Republic. The asteroid (13010) Germantitov , a lunar crater on the far side and an island ( Đảo Ti Tốp ▼ ) in Halong Bay in Vietnam are named after him.
He has been an honorary citizen of Leipzig since 1969 .
See also
Web links
- Literature by and about German Stepanowitsch Titow in the catalog of the German National Library
- German Stepanowitsch Titow in the Encyclopedia Astronautica (English)
- Interview with German Titov from 1999 (English)
- Interview from 1961 with Dr. Hermann Kurzweg from NASA on the flight of the Soviet cosmonaut German Titow in the online archive of the Austrian media library
Individual evidence
- ↑ Александр Петров. Герман Титов: каким он был?
- ↑ Cosmonaut biography: German Titow. spacefacts.de, July 12, 2009, accessed November 16, 2013 .
- ^ "Titov, second to orbit Earth, dies". collectSPACE, September 21, 2000, accessed November 16, 2013 .
- ↑ knerger.de: The grave of German Titow
- ↑ Space tourism: Jeff Bezos landed back on earth - Once space and back - Panorama. In: fr.de . July 21, 2021, accessed August 6, 2021 .
- ↑ Overview of the honorary citizens of Leipzig at http://www.leipzig.de (Titow is listed under number 82), accessed on July 30, 2012
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Titow, German Stepanowitsch |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | German Stepanovič Titov; Титов, Герман Степанович (Russian) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | soviet cosmonaut |
| BIRTH DATE | September 11, 1935 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Verkhneye Shilino , Altai region |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 20, 2000 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | Moscow |