Starman: The truth behind the legend of Yuri Gagarin

Writer Piers Bizony and award winning film producer Jamie Doran have written a slim, yet well-researched biography of the world's first spaceman, Yuri Gagarin, in Starman. The 250-page book traces Gagarin's jet-propelled life, from his poor- boy roots in the Russian village of Klushino to his historic flight into space on April 12, 1961. The biography's strong point is in its examination of the institutional idiocies and failures that marked the Russian space programme. A classic example would be Gagarin's death in an aircraft crash near Moscow on March 27, 1968. The Soviet authorities left his family believing he was assassinated when it was almost certain that the cause of the crash was a simple air traffic control error. In another incident, a pre-flight report that showed cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov's Soyuz spacecraft had 203 faults--including a parachute that wouldn't open--was pulped. Komarov died in the craft. The biography is a fascinating--yet chilling--look at bureaucracy gone wrong.