How was the fate of the spare rocket for Yuri Gagarin

Hello dear guests and subscribers of my channel. On the eve of a significant date for astronautics, I would like to tell you about a spare rocket for Yu. Gagarin.

Yes, don't be surprised. At that time, the first to send a man into space was so important that in addition to backup astronauts (German Titov and Grigory Nelyubov), another fully operational launch vehicle was prepared "East". That's what I want to tell you about her today.

Space Race and Duplicate Rocket

The space race in the 1960s was in full swing, and the USSR was simply obliged to get ahead of the Americans and be the first in the world to send a man into space. For this reason, not only were there duplicate astronauts, but even a full-fledged second rocket was prepared.

The thing is that it was impossible to postpone the launch of the rocket for a long time for any technical reasons for political reasons. Indeed, at the same time overseas, the Americans were in full swing preparing to launch their spacecraft along the so-called suborbital trajectory of Alan Shepard.

Therefore, for the significant date April 12, 1961, two Vostok launch vehicles were prepared.

On April 12, 1961, everything went on as usual, and everyone heard Gagarin's famous phrase for the whole world: “Let's go!”.

The need for a duplicate rocket has disappeared by itself. And she never flew into space. But on the other hand, the backup rocket began to be actively exhibited at many international air shows, including in Rome, the world famous Le Bourget in Paris, as well as Turin and Prague.

This rocket was demonstrated to hundreds of foreign citizens in order to clearly show the power of the Soviet state and the power of engineering thought of Soviet scientists.

In addition, on June 13, 1963, in Kaluga, personally Yu. Gagarin laid the foundation stone for the construction of the State Museum of the History of Cosmonautics named after K. E. Tsiolkovsky.

The museum received its first visitors in early October 1967, and at about the same time the idea to install a backup rocket directly in the museum appeared.

But due to numerous approvals and all kinds of delays, approval for the installation was received only in 1973. And only after that, the truly titanic work began to deliver the launch vehicle to the site of its last berth.

In order to install the rocket, it was even necessary to lay a special section of the railway to the place where the Vostok rocket was installed. The plinth was also prepared with the utmost care, and all units were designed and assembled with a significant margin of safety. No joke, because "Vostok" weighs 144 tons and reaches 38 meters in height.

After all the preparatory measures, the installation work itself began on June 13, 1973 (the date was specially timed to coincide with the anniversary of Yu. Gagarin). All adjustment and assembly work was completed on June 21, 1973, and it was on this day that the rocket majestically rose to a height of 38 meters.

From the very first day, excursions to such an unusual exhibit began, and among the first were such people as V. Dzhanibekov and A. Leonov (Soviet cosmonauts) and American astronaut D. Scott.

Initially, the rocket was installed in a vertical position for the entire warm period and only for the winter was transferred to a horizontal position. This made it possible to keep the exhibit in its original form for as long as possible.

And only in the second half of the 1990s, the rocket was transferred to a horizontal position for many years for overhaul. The rocket launched its nose again upward only in 2001, but 10 years later, after being checked and painted, the Vostok again took up its vertical position.

In 2013, renovation and anticipation of the construction of the second stage of the Museum of Space History again. And now, after anxious waiting, "Vostok" looks up again.

By the way, back in Soviet times, there were rumors that this was not a real rocket, but just a model. To which the engineers replied that it was enough to simply refuel the rocket and put in a couple of instruments, and they were ready to send all the skeptics into orbit on this "model".

This is how the fate of the understudy of the famous Vostok rocket, which put into orbit the first man in the history of mankind into space, Yuri Gagarin, into orbit.

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