The First Man in Space
Joseph Huebl
Wesley Boberg
ESCI 0113-21
14 September 2016
The First Man in Space
On the epic midmorning of April 12, 1961, while the crowds were waiting anxiously, a voice
came across the radio communicators, “Flight is proceeding normally; I am well.” It was Yuri
Gagarin, the first man to actually make it into space, and he was well on his way to becoming not
only a hero to his country of Russia, but a world hero and icon as well.
This all started when he was selected out of a group of twenty men to be Russia’s pilot for the
Vostok 1 space mission. His enormous courage and determination more than made up for his
short stature of only five feet two inches, as he was willing to take the ultimate risk by
attempting to enter outer space and fly solo around the planet Earth for the first time ever. As
history tells, his space flight was a success, and a huge one at that. After he returned home to
Earth, he was paraded around Red Square in Russia like the hero that he was, but his triumphant
