Gherman Titov

Gherman Titov

Gherman Stepanovich Titov (Russian: Герман Степанович Титов) (September 11, 1935 – September 20, 2000) was a Soviet cosmonaut who, on August 6, 1961, became the second human to orbit the Earth aboard Vostok 2, preceded by Yuri Gagarin on Vostok 1. Titov was the fourth man in space after Gagarin and Americans Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom (the latter two made suborbital voyages).

Titov's flight finally proved that humans could live and work in space. He was the first person to orbit the Earth multiple times (a total of 17), to spend more than a day in space, to sleep in orbit and to suffer from space sickness. He was the first to pilot a spaceship personally and he made the first manual photographs from orbit, thus setting a record for modern space photography. A month short of 26 years old at launch, to this day he remains the youngest person to fly in space.

In his subsequent life Titov continued to work for the Soviet space program, playing a major role in Spiral project where he trained to become the first pilot of an orbital spaceplane. However, after the death of Yuri Gagarin in a military aircraft accident in 1968, the Soviet government decided it couldn't afford to lose also the second cosmonaut, and Titov's career as test pilot ended.

Titov served in the Soviet Air Force and become General-Colonel, and in his final years in post-Soviet Russia he became a Communist politician. Despite having been chosen only second after Gagarin to fly into space, it was Titov who later proposed the Soviet Government regularly celebrate Cosmonautics Day on April 12, the day of Gagarin's flight.