The Handsome Stuff: How Yuri Gagarin was Selected to be the First Cosmonaut

If you've read Tom Wolfe's canonical space history "The Right Stuff," or seen the famous movie adaptation, you know something of the grueling selection process of America's Mercury astronauts – the seven men who were prodded, poked, and turned upside down before becoming NASA's first group of space jockeys. Their Soviet counterparts – the men they were racing to get to space – went through a similar ordeal (imagine a government-funded space version of Rocky IV). Each of the thousand candidates was held to a stringent set of standards as well as a host of unspoken ideal qualities as he sought to prove not only that he belonged in space, but that he deserved to be the first to fly. In the end, the nice guy finished first.

At least, the nicest-looking guy finished first.

The prospect of sending a Soviet man into orbit was first discussed as a fantastical endeavor between Chief Designer Sergei Korolev, his Deputy Konstantin Bushuyev, and engineer Mikhail Tikhonravov in 1956. The idea was given a green light by the Soviet Council of Chief Designers and Scientific Leaders two years later. The fledgling space program had booster rockets and the necessary technology to build, launch, and land an effective if rudimentary spacecraft. All that was left was to find the men who would fly it.

Korolev set the criteria that would determine candidates' eligibility. The future cosmonauts would be men selected from the ranks of military pilots. They were the likeliest group to have relevant experience. Training men already familiar with sensations of hypoxia, g-loads on multiple axes of the body, and ejection and landing by a parachute was an obvious choice – these were all challenges Soviet Space Program directors anticipated from spaceflight. Additionally, candidates would be under 30 years of age and shorter than 5 feet 7 inches. There was no academic requirement; their flying skills weighed heavier.

From a search limited to the European areas of Russia, over 3,000 men met the basic requirements. An interview narrowed the field. They were asked a variety of question ranging from personal (questions about their past), to professional (questions about their flight training even though the interviewers had the interviewee's flight log on the table), to veiled questions such as "how would you like to fly a different kind of craft?" (an unsettling questions for fighter pilots).

The interview process measured applicants against subjective criteria. Details such as which men had flown the most modern aircraft and who had flown in the most adverse conditions became relevant. Political allegiances and overall personality came to bear as well. From the 3,000 applicants, those that passed the interview were sent in groups of forty for extensive physical examinations.

Twenty men made the cut and in late 1959 became the first class of Soviet cosmonauts. Their training began in January 1960 under the direction of Yevgeny Karpov, who faced the central question of early manned spaceflight: how do you prepare men for the unknown?

The cosmonauts' training regimen got off to a rocky start. In lieu of sophisticated simulators Karpov had the cosmonauts stay active with general physical exercises, particularly gymnastics and track and field. The men spent many afternoons jumping off a high diving board into a pool; a creative way to familiarize the men with the sensation of falling from altitude. They would face the same sensations when ejecting from the spacecraft prior to landing. Lectures filled out the unconventional training.

Eventually the Soviet Space Program matured. Centrifuge trainers and parabolic flights took the place of the high dive. Around the same time, the program's directors began singling out the top candidates for the first flight. At the end of 1960, six men were hand picked by Sergei Korolev and separated from the pack to form a special accelerated training group. They were selected for their height. As the shortest men, they would be a better fit inside the small Vostok spacecraft.

In early 1961, the six leading cosmonauts were ranked on their overall performance, physical fitness levels, as well as their test scores on lecture material. The ranking whittled the six down to three, each of whom would have an equal chance to pilot the first Vostok mission.

Within the top three there was no clear leading. Each man had enjoyed popularity and fallen out of favour with those in change. They were finally ranked for their intangible qualities: personality, speaking and conversational skills, political and cultural ideals, as well as the ability to properly represent the Soviet people were necessary considerations when selecting the man who would commit the Soviet Union to the history books as the first true space-faring nation.

Whatever his weaker points may have been in the eyes of Karpov, Korolev, and the other higher ups in the Soviet Space Program, Yuri Gagarin was eventually selected to make the first flight. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who doubtless held some sway over the fledgling space program, is said to have shown preference to Gagarin for his boyish good looks and simple background.

Gagarin was in many ways the perfect poster child for the Soviet Space Program and the Soviet Union. He came from humble peasant beginnings, growing up on a communal farm in a family of carpenters. He joined the Soviet military and rose through the ranks to become the nation's most celebrated pilot. He was young (27 when he flew Vostok 1), had a young Soviet wife, and two young Soviet children.

But crucially, he was also good looking enough to put on posters, stamps, and magazine covers worldwide. That was important for a political regime whose space-borne ambitions were inseparable from its ideological ones.

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