We ask God's blessing!

In this post I present my book "We ask God's blessing", subtitled "How God and Christian faith helped the Americans put a man on the Moon", with a foreword by Apollo 16 Astronaut, Brigadier General Charles M. Duke.

 (Book cover - proposal)

I am currently working to get the book published in the United States.

Until then, you can download the book in English as PDF for absolute free here: Click here to download the book.

A formal book proposal can be found as PDF here - please don't hesitate to drop me a line if you have any comments or interest in this project.

"We ask God's blessing" tells the story of the Apollo project, with a foreword by Apollo 16 Astronaut and Moonwalker Charlie Duke. Apart from being just another book on the Space Race and the Apollo-project, "We ask God's blessing" is first and foremost a Christian book.

Astronaut Charlie Duke, a well-known proponent of the good word, writes in his foreword:

"What you are about to read is the true story of "the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.". These were the appropriate and strong words that President Kennedy used in 1961, when he set the goal for the American people of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth, before the end of that decade.
[...] So, why did the President want us to go to the Moon? How did we do it? And what did God and Christian faith have to do with this anyway? This book gives a sober, read-worthy and surprising set of answers to these questions [...] I hope and pray, that you will find "We ask God's blessing" as intriguing and strengthening of faith as I did."

The author is in the greatest debt to Apollo 16 Astronaut Charlie Duke, for obliging to write the foreword to "We ask God's blessing"

The target audience for "We ask God's blessing" is the Christian reader.

"We ask God's blessing" gives evidence of the good-natured strength that Christian-conservative values offer to mankind, and it is a strong Christian re-appropriation of this "the greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked" as JFK so rightly put it.   

The Christian angle on the Apollo-project is the key unique element of "We ask God's blessing". The book has gathered an unseen collection of testimonies of the application of Christian faith, and of events that many people describe as interventions of God during the Apollo-project.

Some of these events have not been described in public before, like the Apollo 10 no-gimbal-lock-incident which the author, by good guidance, found in the NASA audio archives. So, the book also contains some new material on the Apollo project, and new interpretations of events, that will interest the segment of space-enthusiasts all over the world.

"We ask God's blessing" has been published in Denmark, by the Danish C. S. Lewis society. The book got a 4 of 6 stars review in the Danish Christian daily newspaper "Kristeligt Dagblad". It was evaluated by the auditors at the Danish libraries, selected for acquisition and now available at the Danish libraries.

We ask God's blessing - Part 3: "The greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked!"

This blog-post contains the chapters 6 and 7 of my book "We ask God's blessing". The book was published in Danish 2016, and I am looking for an agent to represent the English translation, with a foreword by Apollo 16 Astronaut Charlie Duke. You can read more about the book here.

You can read the previous chapters in these posts

• Chapters 1-2, with a foreword by Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke
• Chapters 3-5

Chapter 6: Alan Shepard - An American in space

Kennedy began devising apparently desperate plans to deflect the storm and set a new agenda that would put America on the offensive. What could be done?
 
The period between April and May 1961 was particularly eventful for the Space Race and for the Cold War generally. 

First: Gagarin's flight on 12 April. 

Five days later on 17 April: a pathetically unsuccessful attempt to invade Cuba with half-hearted American support, the so-called Bay of Pigs affair.  

Eight days later on 25 April: dress rehearsal of the first manned Mercury mission. 43 seconds after liftoff the Americans lost control of the rocket and the mission ended in the familiar giant fireball, this time at an altitude just short of 5 miles. Debris rained down on half of Florida. 

American humiliation was total and American self-confidence had reached its nadir. 

The pressure to move on was now so intense that despite the disastrous trial run it was decided to carry out the planned Mercury mission, Freedom 7, which would launch Alan B. Shepard, as the first American, into space.The dress rehearsal had gone down in flames, and obviously the Freedom 7 mission was extremely dangerous for the astronaut, Alan Shepard.  All over the free world people followed the countdown with bated breath.

Alan Shepard strapped very tightly into his Mercury capsule. His mission was very obviously extremely dangerous, as the rocket had exploded in a big red fireball at the stage rehearsal only a few weeks earlier.

"That was the beginning. When the bright flame came into view, even before the deep pure sound washed across the town, something happened. Something...wonderful. Men and women sank slowly to their knees. Praying. Others stood praying. Crying. There was no holding back. All that moved in Cocoa Beach were beating hearts and falling tears."[1]

"When the bright flame came into view ... something happened. Something...wonderful. Men and women sank slowly to their knees. Praying. Others stood praying. Crying. There was no holding back. All that moved in Cocoa Beach were beating hearts and falling tears."[1]

15 minutes. That's how long the Freedom 7 mission took, and it was an unmitigated success. 15 minutes after liftoff and after peaking at an altitude of 101 nautical miles and a speed of more than 5,000 miles per hour Alan Shepard splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean 263 nautical miles from Cape Canaveral, and, safe and sound in his space capsule, cheerfully waited for the helicopter to pick him up.

An American had been in space! The Space Race was on again! The free world and especially the populations of Europe were relieved to see that America was still in the running. 

And Americans really chalked up points in the Cold War's prestige race by openly broadcasting their space missions to the entire world whereas the Russians kept theirs secret and only announced them if they had been successful and even then not until a week later.

The sudden burst of optimism resulting from Alan Shepard's space flight was just what Kennedy needed to create confidence and support for his ambitious plan.

Chapter 7: John F. Kennedy's Moon speech

In May 1961 Kennedy had been president for four months. Like his predecessor President Eisenhower, he was not enthusiastic about space travel and would have preferred to devote American resources to more down-to-earth issues than traveling to the moon or similar space odysseys. 

Unlike Eisenhower, however, JFK came to the conclusion that America would have to compete in the prestige race that the Russians had orchestrated so skillfully. This was unavoidable if the interests of freedom and of the American people were to be protected.
 

JFK was very aware of the significance that the Space Race had in the political conflict between the West and the communist tyrannies of the East. "There is nothing more important than winning the Space Race" he concluded to his advisors [2].

American intelligence regarding public opinion in Western Europe indicated that a significant and growing minority saw communism as the system of the future and democratic capitalism as a lower stage of human development. The Russian achievements in space were responsible for the opinion shift. Confidence in America and the free democratic system was wavering, and America would have to fight and win in order to prevent the victory of totalitarian tyranny.
 
At a meeting with his advisors at the White House on 14 April 1961, JFK reluctantly stated , "There is nothing more important than winning the Space Race." [2]  This was John F. Kennedy's personal conclusion.
 
On 25 May 1961, precisely one month after American morale had reached its nadir and 20 days after Alan Shepard's flight, Kennedy gave a special address to the American Congress announcing his ambitious plan: 

"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish."

This was a brilliant stroke of political strategy. The plan was so bold and so exciting that the world press shifted its focus and began speaking of the planned American feats rather than the actual Russian ones. The speech caused a sensation around the world. The spotlight turned away from the Russians and Gagarin, who only six weeks earlier had seemed completely unbeatable. The winds of opportunity had shifted in favor of the Americans even before they had delivered the goods.

Both technologically and politically it was important that the plan was so complex and resource demanding that both sides would have to start from scratch in practice, and the Russians wouldn't have the advantage of a head start. It seemed the Americans had a real chance of winning.
 
Never before or since have human beings taken it upon themselves to carry out such a dazzlingly ambitious project. The most powerful nation on earth had set itself the goal of going to the Moon!
 
The maelstrom of chaotic events had created a situation in which "the politics of the moment had become linked with the dreams of centuries" in the words of the political analyst, John M. Logsdon [2].
 
The NASA leadership had been closely involved in the political and scientific groundwork for Kennedy's decision and had approved the project's feasibility. The engineers on the ground, on the other hand, were initially flabbergasted at the confidence they were being shown and the enormous demands placed on them. They had just barely, with great difficulty, carried out Alan Shepard's suborbital space flight, which, compared to a trip to the moon, was a mere piece of cake. 

"And, therefore, as we set sail, we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked." [5]

Kennedy was certainly not blind to the enormity of the task he had created for NASA and the American people. He was a deeply religious man [4], and having set a course for America over deep waters towards unknown shores, he did not forget to conclude his speech with a prayer: 

"And, therefore, as we set sail, we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked." [5]

References for this post:
[1] Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton, "Moon Shot"
[2] John M. Logsdon, "The Decision to Go to the Moon"
[3] Moon address to Congress, https://www.nasa.gov/vision/space/features/jfk_speech_text.html 
[4] Theodore C. Sorensen, "Kennedy"
[5] http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/ricetalk.htm

If interested, you can also read more on why JFK set for the Moon in this previous blogpost.
 

Chris Kraft (1924-2019)

The creator of Mission Control, Houston, Christopher Columbus Kraft Jr. has died at 95 years, 22/7-2019 during the celebrations of the 50-years anniversary for the Apollo 11 mission (16th-24th of July) that accomplished John F. Kennedy's great goal for the American nation.

Christopher Columbus Kraft (1924-2019). Portrait by NASA.

So many people involved have testified that Chris Kraft was THE great operational leader and authority at the Mission Control Center. With his 37 years, he was one of the oldest in the space program, when JFK set the target of the Moon landing in 1961, and he was a natural born perfect leader for the operational parts of the program around Mission Control and the manned space flight center in Houston.

Mission Control, Houston

He was a prime bearer of the true pioneering spirit - "The can-do-spirit" that animated the Moon-program from top to bottom. As he put it

"If we'd been older and wiser, we would have known that we couldn´t get it all done. But we weren't. So we did it." ("Flight", Chris Kraft).

According to, among many others, Gene Kranz (Failure is not an option) Chris Kraft had a very directly honest, to-the-point management-style, and no one was ever left in doubt if he had made a mistake according to Kraft. During the unmanned Gemini 2 mission, the lights went out in the old Mission Control room at the Cape. Luckily they were backed up by the team headed by John Hodge in the new Mission Control Center in Houston so the mission succeeded. Kraft was not happy though: ""Find out what happened" he barked "and fix it so it never happens again."" ... "In debriefing, Hodge jokingly told Kraft he should carry a flashlight with him for Gemini 3. Kraft didn't laugh.".

The demanding leadership of Christopher Columbus Kraft was a key component of the ultimate success of the Apollo Program. People simply needed it, to be pushed beyond their limits, which again was a necessary condition for achieving Kennedy's goal. 

"Find out what happened" he barked "and fix it so it never happens again.". And so, the lights never went out in Mission Control again. The demanding leadership of Christopher Columbus Kraft was a key component of the ultimate success of the Apollo Program.  (Kraft at the Mercury Control Center. By NASA.)

Kraft wrote an obviously very read-worthy auto-biography called "Flight" (He was the first Flight Director, call-sign "FLIGHT" - the guy with the ultimate responsibility for the mission - a responsibility and an authority that could NOT be overridden by anyone - not even the President of the USA - Kraft himself insisted, it had to be that way!).

After the Apollo 1 fire in 1967, Christ Kraft was heading no less than four divisions of the Apollo program: Flight Control, Landing and Recovery, Mission Planning and Analysis and Mission Support. "As a result of his workload, Chris would never again sit in the chair as Flight Director" (Gene Kranz, Failure is not an option). The old master passed the torch of "Flight" on to his able students, as he was direly needed as leader elsewhere in the Apollo Program.

Chris Kraft with President Reagan. In 1972, Kraft became director of the Manned Spacecraft Center (later Johnson Space Center).

Chris Kraft was going strong 'til the end - obviously still crystal clear in thought and strong in spirit, when he very appropriately, had the closing lines in the fantastic documentary "Mission Control. The Unsung Heroes Of Apollo" (2017) that I just watched the other night on Danish TV, as part of the 50-years celebration. Not an eye was dry in my living room, and neither were Chris Kraft's:

"I'm just proud of the people that were involved. They never let me down...They never let their country down. If you are looking for patriots, they are they - every one of them."

You can see the clip at YouTube here

Kraft on his colleagues at Mission Control: "I'm just proud of the people that were involved. They never let me down...They never let their country down. If you are looking for patriots, they are they - every one of them."

Chris Kraft used his Christian faith actively, as a source of strength and inspiration. At nights after his usual 12-15 hours workday he taught a bible study class at his local church. That did not always turn out so smooth: "...I lacked the fundamentalist verve and drove people away ... It was hard not to be modern when I spent my working days sending men into space.".

Thank you Christopher Columbus Kraft. You will live forever. May future generation be inspired by your strong spirit.

We ask God's blessing - Part 2: First man in space!

This blog-post contains the chapters 3,4 and 5 of my book "We ask God's blessing". The book was published in Danish 2016, and I am now looking for an agent to represent the English translation. Read more about the book here.

You can read the first chapters in this previous post.

 

Chapter 3: The battle for "First man in space"

It quickly became clear that this was an extremely complex task and would take several years to accomplish, if in fact it could be done at all. It may seem hard to believe today that it really could have been so difficult, but at the time anything that had to do with space and human beings in space was new and uncharted territory. Could human beings even survive in a state of weightlessness? Many leading physicians thought not! And one can hardly blame them. Human beings have evolved over the course of millions of years in a fairly heavy gravitational field – how could we suddenly withstand long periods of weightlessness? All sorts of disorders were predicted from nausea to dizziness to cardiovascular failure and sudden death.

Space frenzy were at it's height in the 1950's and visionary space professionals like Werner Von Braun were only too happy to feed the imagination of the people. However, in reality, it was still an open question whether man could even survive traveling in space.

Was it even possible to build a rocket that was powerful and reliable enough to send a manned vehicle into space? American rocket science technology had been primarily developed by the military under Air Force control. The entire focus so far had been on sending nuclear bombs quickly and efficiently against the Eastern Bloc, and no one had given any serious thought to the notion that a rocket might be used to transport human beings.

All this now changed radically. The entire program was transferred from the military to the new civilian organization, NASA. The military had to relinquish financial resources, political prestige, equipment, locations, and not least their top technical experts, including the corps of German rocket scientists from the Second World War. These were German engineers who, fearing heavy handed treatment of prisoners of war at the hands of the Russians, had fled from Eastern Germany at the end of the war and surrendered to the Americans. The German rocket corps was under the firm and unquestioned leadership of the notoriously brilliant Wernher von Braun.

At the start of 1958 the Americans had succeeded in replicating Sputnik by sending the satellite Explorer 1 into orbit with one of von Braun’s Juno rockets. The project was still military, but in future all work would be transferred to civilian control.

The first task Wernher von Braun and his team were given by NASA, their new employer, was to construct a rocket that could send a small metal container, about the size of a refrigerator equipped with a small window, into space, the space capsule. A human being, “the human cannonball”, would then be crammed into this claustrophobic container. He would be tightly strapped into a personally molded seat in a totally powerless position, essentially unable to move. Furthermore the rocket had to be constructed in such a way that this daredevil, who if all went well would have the honor of being the first human being in space, should return to Earth - alive and in one piece.

The Mercury Astronaut were to be crammed inside a small metal container, tightly strapped into a personally molded seat in a totally powerless position. The launch rockets supposed to carry them into space were blowing up on a very regular basis. The  Astronaut trait was clearly not for the faint of heart.

The scene was set for Project Mercury, the first American space program. The aim of the program was clear: put a man in space and get him back safely, preferably before the Russians got there first.

The beginning was rocky. Especially at first there were problems developing the rockets. They were unreliable, flimsy and difficult to operate with any degree of precision. One test launch after another ended in spectacular failure when gigantic tanks containing high explosive fuel transformed the majestic rockets into huge red fireballs in the sky, if in fact they got that high before exploding.

The numerous explosions, which, unlike the equivalent Soviet disasters took place under the watchful eye of the world press, only increased the humiliation and political pressure on the American president. Scathing, satirical headlines such as U.S. Sputnik Blows Up On The Ground! , Oh, What a  Flopnik, or U.S. Calls It Kaputnik, richly illustrated with images of huge fireballs, filled the front pages of newspapers all over the world, emphasizing America’s current status as the inept little brother in the Space Race.

Of the seventeen attempted American space missions in 1958 only four could be considered successful. Of the five attempted Russian space missions only one succeeded. But whereas the thirteen American fiascos were plastered over front pages of newspapers around the world, the Russians’ unsuccessful missions were kept secret until after the Cold War. The impression of the balance of power that this created was consequently somewhat misleading in favor of the Communists.  Nevertheless, the Russians had unquestionably been the first to get off the ground, and they did have a genuine head start in the Space Race.

Of the seventeen attempted American space missions in 1958 only four could be considered successful. Of the five attempted Russian space missions only one succeeded. But whereas the thirteen American fiascos were plastered over front pages of newspapers around the world, the Russians’ unsuccessful missions were kept secret until after the Cold War. The impression of the balance of power that this created was consequently somewhat misleading in favor of the Communists.

In 1959 NASA presented the first team of seven test pilots who were going to crew the spaceflights of the Mercury program. This was the first time the term “astronaut” was used, referring to these fearless space candidates.

The seven astronauts, the Mercury Seven, became instant heroes. The astronauts were the Free World’s answer to the Russian cosmonauts and  overnight they went from being totally unknown test pilots in the American armed forces to admired celebrities  everyone wanted to read about or be seen with, and that every red blooded boy wanted to emulate.

Chapter 4: The Mercury Seven - The right stuff

The Mercury astronauts were "the right stuff", wrote popular author, Tom Wolfe, in his book about the start of the Space Race and the first astronauts[1]. Popular mythology acclaimed them as heroes of the Free World, and the mere fact of their selection gave the population a sense of security and confidence. People began to feel the Space Race was open and there was still hope. 

The "Mercury seven" became celebrated American heroes overnight. The archetype All American hero John Glenn lead the group in inspiring hope to the people of the free world.

American hope had been give seven fine, fearless faces.

When John Glenn, the most popular of the seven astronauts, publicly “... spoke of God and country and the flag and the bravery of his fellow astronauts, and he actually meant what he said."[2], it gave hope to people in the Free World. With God’s help, the American spirit of freedom, and seven men of the right stuff, how could they lose?

But plenty of hard work lay ahead. The path was long and narrow, and major technological challenges needed to be resolved before the first hero could be strapped into the nose cone of a dangerous, unpredictable rocket and launched into space.

The NASA leadership was troubled at the idea of sending astronauts to their deaths, partly owing to genuine qualms of conscience and partly to political considerations. It was bad enough that rockets costing millions of dollars disappeared in clouds of red flame, but that could be justified as a necessary learning expense. But if they started killing off the people’s beloved heroes, it could jeopardize the entire space program. It was entirely likely that the American political leadership would conclude that it was technically impossible for the US to send men to space. This would spell disaster for NASA itself and would be a political fiasco for the US in the Cold War propaganda race.  A great deal was at stake and there were many considerations to take into account. How cautious should they be? How bold did they dare to be?

John Glenn, the All American hero inspired hope and faith. Gene Kranz wrote: "He spoke of God and country and the flag and the bravery of his fellow astronauts, and he actually meant what he said."[2]

The future astronauts brought their parents, wives and children to one of the test launches that went up in flames. This was hardly reassuring for their anxious families.

Much to the astronauts’ regret, the decision landed on the side of caution, and the first American in space was not Alan Shepard, the selected astronaut, but Ham, the chimp. In December 1960 an empty space capsule had been successfully launched and Alan Shepard was preparing for the next Mercury space capsule launch scheduled for January 1961. If Alan Shepard had been given the green light, the Americans might well have won the race to put the first human being in space and a great many things would undoubtedly have looked very different over the following years. Who knows? Maybe human beings wouldn’t even have walked on the Moon yet!

Be that as it may, it was Ham, the astrochimp, who had the honor of being the first American in space on 31 January 1961. The Russians had already launched the dog, Laika, into space in November 1957 and once again it was emphasized that the Americans were in second place.

Ham survived the journey in fine form and went on to lead a celebrated and by all accounts contented life in the Washington D.C. zoo until he died of natural causes in 1983. Laika died after a few hours in orbit due to a technical systems failure. On this occasion, as on so many others before and since, the Soviet government demonstrated that it had no qualms about telling an outright lie if this would help the Communist cause. It was widely reported at the time that the cause of death was controlled euthanasia by lethal injection after 6 days of successful space travel. The true cause of death was not made public until 2002.   

Things were about to get much worse. While NASA’s leadership, engineers and medical staff were poring over the test results, analyzing Ham, the astrochimp’s, state of health, and demanding no fewer than five additional unmanned test flights, the Americans were once again caught completely off guard.

Chapter 5: Yuri Gagarin - First man in space

On 12 April 1961 the Russian cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, became the first human being in space. Not only was Gagarin the first man in space, he was also the first man to complete an orbit around Earth, in his Vostok 1 space capsule. Orbiting Earth was a far greater and more difficult technical achievement than the simple space “visit” based on the cannonball principle that the Americans were planning. And the Russians did it first.

On the 12th of April, 1961 the "Reds" did it again and beat the Americans in the race to put a man in space. Yuri Gagarin was the name of the Soviet "Cosmonaut".

Sending an object into orbit around a body requires that the object can be brought up to the right speed so the curve of the object’s fall matches the curve of the body. Instead of quickly falling back to the surface like a projectile fired from a cannon, the object’s fall continues indefinitely, round and round, with no further energy consumption. The rocket engines necessary to send a man into orbit around Earth need to be so powerful and efficient that they can send a spacecraft weighing a couple of tons to a speed of 5 miles per second. The Russians could do it in 1961; the Americans had a lot of catching up to do.

"Newton's cannonball". Sir Isaac Newton predicted how a projectile fired from a hypothetical super-cannon could enter into orbit around Earth or another planetary body. Slower projectiles  (A,B) fall to the surface of Earth. faster projectiles (C) disappear into space (or into orbit around the Moon if the direction is right!). At certain speeds (D,E) the projectile continues in an elliptical or circular orbit around Earth.

The new Russian triumph was a political disaster for the Americans. The constantly smiling and completely charming Gagarin was the Soviet propaganda machine’s strongest card and they played it for all it was worth to affirm the narrative that Communism was on its way to a bright, new future. The narrative stood in sharp contrast to the reality and the drab, everyday life of the brutal Communist regimes of the Eastern Bloc, but was nevertheless backed up by tangible technological triumphs and the hero’s winning smile. Gagarin was sent all over the world, especially to youth conferences, where he delighted Western youth with his smile and friendly, optimistic talks.

Yuri Gagarin, Helsinki 1961. Gagarin was sent all over the world, especially to youth conferences, where he delighted Western youth with his smile and friendly, optimistic talks.

The grim story of Gagarin’s retrorockets is illustrative.

The Russian government had so little faith in the loyalty of their own citizens that they felt they had to lock them in behind walls and barbed wire fences. The ordinary citizen was not allowed to leave the Eastern Bloc, and people were basically confined to what amounted to a large prison.  Many people tried to escape and many were killed or jailed for attempting to gain their freedom. The Communist regime had a paranoid fear that their citizens would “defect”, which is what they called the attempt to reach the Free World. The atmosphere of suspicion and distrust particularly targeted those who were actually allowed to leave the country, e.g. diplomats, scientists, athletes – and cosmonauts.

In order to bring a spacecraft in orbit back to Earth, the spacecraft must decelerate, which is done by a set of so-called retrorockets. The retrorockets in Vostok 1 could be activated by the cosmonaut in an emergency situation. But for fear that Gagarin might defect, the activation mechanism was protected by a code that was kept secret from Gagarin. The code needed to be entered before the retrorockets could be activated manually.  This would significantly complicate an emergency situation or, worst case scenario,  make it impossible if the spacecraft was outside radio contact, but the authorities placed a greater priority on ensuring Gagarin’s continued imprisonment than on his safety. It should be noted, however, that several trusted engineers independently of each other, secretly and at great personal risk, whispered the code to Gagarin shortly before liftoff. Human emotions lived on in the shadows behind the iron curtain.

And then there’s the alleged Gagarin quotation, still circulating in atheistic mythology and on the internet. According to Communist propaganda Gagarin was supposed to have said, “I see no God up here”. Atheism was an integral part of Communist ideology and the Russian dictator Krushchev himself was at the head of an anti-religious campaign to quell what was left of religion in the populations of the Eastern Bloc. The story of Gagarin’s statement was apparently another lie put out by Communist propaganda.  Gagarin was openly Christian and a member of the Russian Orthodox Church. According to Gagarin’s personal friend, General Valentin Petrov, it would never have occurred to Gagarin to make such a statement. On the contrary, said Petrov, he always proclaimed his faith when challenged, no matter where he was.[3][4]

The alleged Gagarin quotation, of him not seeing God in space, is still circulating in atheistic mythology and on the internet. The story of Gagarin’s statement was most likely just another lie put out by Communist propaganda. Gagarin was Christian. He had his daughter Yelena baptized shortly before his space flight. [3]

Such professions of Christian faith were dangerous for Gagarin’s career as well as for his personal safety and that of his family. He possessed a courage that can scarcely be overestimated and which may help explain his elite status as a cosmonaut.

A few weeks before Gagarin’s voyage Gagarin’s daughter Yelena was baptized in church. This was unusual in the Russia of that time and, like Gagarin’s outspokenness, normally connected with personal risk. But Gagarin was the best and the most charismatic cosmonaut the Russians had and the Soviet leadership understood better than anyone that the end justifies the means. For this reason it was decided to keep him on as a figurehead rather than send him to a Siberian labor camp where millions of innocent people were killed or had their lives destroyed.

As stated above, Gagarin’s flight was a fresh political disaster for the U.S.  The newly elected president, John F. Kennedy, came under intense and persistent pressure from the American press and the public. Why was nothing being done? Why were we content to play the role of inept little brother? Bombarded with questions Kennedy, on the defensive, answered the journalists evasively. They all boiled down to this: How and when will we catch up with the Russians?

The flight of Gagarin put the newly elected President John F. Kennedy under heavy pressure to act. "What are we going to do to catch up with the Soviets?" (To be continued!)

---- Thank you for reading so far - you will find chapters 6 and 7 in this post ----

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[1] Tom Wolfe, 1979, The Right Stuff, ISBN:9780099479376
[2] Gene Kranz, Failure is not an Option, ISBN:0743200799
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Gagarin
[4] www.beliefnet.com