Why Yuri Gagarin wasn’t the first in space – and who beat him to it

If you took off from Earth on a clear day—the kind you want for launch—you’d see the sky change colors before your eyes. Outside the window, it would glow a bright blue color, and as you ascended into the thinning air of the upper atmosphere, it would become deeper. At some point the blue would disappear completely and the black of space would surround your capsule.

None of this seems controversial today. Everyone knows that the blue daytime sky is an optical effect caused by the interaction of sunlight with the atmosphere. Astronauts went up to see for themselves and returned with descriptions of the darkness of space. But it wasn’t always like that.

So, who was the first to experience it? One might instinctively say Yuri Gagarin, as he is often known as the first man in space. But was he?

The first thing we need to consider is where the space begins. And it really depends on what you mean by space. Conventional lower limits are those used by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale—which defines it as 100 kilometers above Earth, a boundary known as the Kármán line—and by US government and military institutions, which draw the line at 50 miles (about 80 kilometers). Unsurprisingly, these round figures turn out to have messy origins and rationales. But the basic idea is that space begins where the atmosphere becomes too thin to support conventional flight, based on aerodynamic or aerostatic lift.

But these definitions are ultimately arbitrary, they do not concern the definition and delineation of space as such, but the possibilities of certain technologies and their use.

Alternatively, there is a dictionary definition. According to Oxford English Dictionaryspace is “the physical universe […] outside Earth’s atmosphere.” It seems simple enough, but our understanding of where our planet’s atmosphere ends has changed many times over the centuries. Research now shows that it goes much further than previously thought. Only about 630,000 kilometers from our planet, there are absolutely no atoms of the atmosphere left. No human has yet entered this space. NASA’s upcoming Artemis II mission is slated to take a crew about 7,500 kilometers to the moon — a historic feat that will beat Apollo 13’s long-standing record, but by that definition is still over 200,000 kilometers into space.

Still, it seems absurd to say that the Apollo astronauts never visited space—and I won’t. But given the definitions we have based on practical or scientific criteria, I would still argue that there is something missing. What about a definition based on historical, cultural or intellectual criteria? What is the most meaningful—if not necessarily the most useful or accurate—definition of space?

To see the sky disappear

One boundary stands out from this perspective: the point at which the atmosphere becomes too thin to refract sunlight, and Earth’s blue sky fades into the black void beyond. To appreciate its significance, we must understand that for centuries most Europeans believed that the universe was bright blue. Looking at the daytime sky, they assumed they were simply looking into space. Unaware of the optical effects produced by the atmosphere, they thought that night was merely the shadow of the earth cast by the sun as it moved behind it, temporarily obscuring that blue universe behind it. It was only in the 17th century that scientists began to imagine a black universe, but the blue one remained in the popular imagination until the very threshold of the Space Age, three centuries later.

Historically and culturally, the first astronaut was the first person to fly high enough to see the sky turn black—the first eyewitness to the truth that shattered this ancient bright universe.

Already in the 1930s, high-altitude balloonists touched at a distance. In 1935, the US Explorer II, piloted by Albert Stevens and Orvil Anderson, reached a record 22.1 kilometers. These “pre-astronauts” experienced much of what later Gagarin did. With almost all of Earth’s atmospheric mass below them, a pressurized nacelle protected them from the deadly environment behind them. On the horizon they could see almost the curvature of the planet. But above them – they radioed to the surface – the sky was “very dark indeed, but still a blue very dark blue”.

But then in 1956 Malcolm Ross and Lee Lewis piloted the Strato-Lab I balloon to 23.2 kilometers and stayed there for several minutes before a faulty valve caused their premature descent. “It was the first time,” noted a US Navy Bulletin“The sky overhead was seen as black. Just a year later, David Simons, piloting the Manhigh II balloon, also reported “totally dark” skies at a comparable 14 miles.

Rocket-powered aircraft have already reached such heights, but the very first person to reach them may not have actually seen a black sky. In 1951, William Bridgeman climbed 15 miles in a Douglas D-588-2 Skyrocket. But when the press asked him what the sky looked like, Bridgeman, who remained at this highest altitude for only a second, could not answer. “I’m not sure what color the sky is. I think it’s dark, but I’m too damn busy to look out and see.”

Just a month before Ross and Lewis took off, Iven Kincheloe had flown an unprecedented 38.5 kilometers in a Bell X-2, but his flight was also very short and his view similarly limited. The press again asked about seeing a black sky, which at this point was clearly understood as a benchmark for reaching space. Kincheloe explained that he launched directly against a “very burning white spot” of the sun, “and as a result the sky generally around the solar region appeared to be blue-black. […]. However, when we turned around and I had a chance to look at the sun, the sky had definitely turned black – towards a sort of definitive black inky color.’

Kincheloe was also the first to go further than 100,000 feet – another round number that was cited as the limit of space at the time. Indeed, Kincheloe’s biographer called him “the first of the spacemen”. But that didn’t last long. With the launch of the Sputnik 1 satellite in 1957 and especially Gagarin’s flight in 1961, the idea of ​​what counted as visiting space in a cultural sense shifted to reaching Earth orbit.

Hostile sky

But while the test pilots technically got there first, the balloonists had a better view. David Simons spent more than 24 hours in the stratosphere during the Manhigh II flight. From a height of 30.9 kilometers above the Earth, he observed in detail the extraterrestrial horizon “where the atmosphere merged with the colorless blackness of space”. He was “taken aback” by the appearance of the stars. With almost no atmosphere to mar their appearance, they were “unblinking, living, colorful objects with their own places in space and depth in the infinite universe”. As for Simons, he was in space. “Our sealed one-person gondola was actually a space cabin, hanging from the balloon instead of being seated in the nose of the rocket.

Another spectacular success occurred in 1960, with Joseph Kittinger’s Excelsior III: a widely publicized flight and parachute jump from 31.3 kilometers above the planet. Cameras on Kittinger’s nacelle were pointed down, aiming to capture the deadly act of America’s “new space hero.” But Kittinger looked up. “There is a hostile sky above me,” he reported. “Empty and very black and very hostile. He returned from his flight humbled by this hostility and said, “Man will never conquer space. He may live in space, but he will never conquer it.”

Of course, not all space flights take off during the day. But many do, and experiencing the line between the familiar blue of our sky and the black of space—as blurred as it may be—remains meaningful for astronauts, both military and civilian. In 2021, actor William Shatner took part in a Blue Origin flight that ascended to 107 kilometers. In an interview after the flight, Shatner said, “Seeing the color blue go right by, and now you’re staring into the dark — that’s the thing.” The flight crossed the Kármán line and was thus in space by our modern standards, but the moment Shatner subjectively felt in space—”the thing”—was when he saw the sky disappear.

The Kármán line is a number, an intellectual thing. The sky disappearing is a thing. Those who saw it first could not realize the full historical significance of their experience, with which the old concept of a bright cosmos really ended. Were they the first humans in space? In my book, their claim is at least as good as Gagarin’s.

topics:

• space flight/
• space exploration