Yuri Gagarin
Star City, Russia, ca. 1966
Yuri Gagarin TLS to School Children "about one of the difficult tests of physical endurance - a centrifuge"
TLS

A Russian typed letter signed by cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, addressed to school children. Extremely rare signature in TLS form. 1p, measuring 8" x 11.25", Star City, Russia, n.d. [ca. 1966]. Signed in Cyrillic letters by Gagarin. Addressed to a class of 4th graders from the Burynsky district, Sumy region. Gagarin answers their questions on what it is like to be a cosmonaut and relates what he found to be most difficult about the space program training.

Accompanying Gagarin's letter is the handwritten letter and envelope addressed to him by the students. Both letters have expected flattened mail folds and light toning. Boldly signed by Gagarin. Overall, very fine.

A rough translation of Gagarin's letter reads in part: "I fully understand your interest in how astronauts are prepared for flight. This is a complicated matter; you can?t write about everything in a letter. I will tell you about one of the difficult tests of physical endurance - a centrifuge. A centrifuge is a device that rotates like a carousel?At first this device rotates slowly and you don't experience anything special. But then the speed of rotation increases, and you feel how the whole body is filled with weight. The weight of the body has already increased two, three, five, seven times. It's hard to move a finger. Lips feel like lead, the tongue turns with difficulty, facial tissues are spreading: And the overload is growing?.Everything merges around you, rushes like a whirlwind, but at this time you need to work: answer the doctor?s questions, tell him how you feel, solve arithmetic problems. Such training in a centrifuge is carried out more than once in order to accustom the astronaut?s body to high overloads. Why is this necessary? The need for such training is that when taking off into space and when the astronaut returns to Earth, he will experience such overloads. For some of our comrades, the centrifuge became the threshold over which they could not step, they could not become astronauts?"

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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8" x 11.25"