Biography

Gherman Stepanovich Titov (Russian: Герман Степанович Титов; 11 September 1935 – 20 September 2000) was a Soviet cosmonaut who, on 6 August 1961, became the second human to orbit the Earth, aboard Vostok 2, preceded by Yuri Gagarin on Vostok 1. He was the fourth person in space, counting suborbital voyages of US astronauts Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom. A month short of 26 years old at launch, he was the youngest person to fly in space until 2021 when Oliver Daemen flew on Blue Origin NS-16 at the age of 18. Since Daemen flew a suborbital mission, Titov remains the youngest man to fly in Earth orbit.

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), the first to pilot a spaceship and to spend more than a day in space. He was also the first to sleep in orbit and to suffer from space sickness (becoming the first person to vomit in space).Titov was the first photographer from space: he made the first manual photographs from orbit, thus setting a record for modern first photos of Earth from space. He also was the first person to film the Earth using a professional quality Konvas-Avtomat movie camera, which he used for ten minutes.In his subsequent life Titov continued to work for the Soviet space program, and played a major role in the 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 could not afford to lose its second cosmonaut, and so Titov's career as test pilot ended.

Titov served in the Soviet Air Force, attaining the rank of colonel-general. In his final years in post-Soviet Russia he became a Communist politician. Despite having been chosen 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. Titov was born in the village of Verkhneye Zhilino in the Altai Krai and went to school at the Stalingrad Military Aviation School. After graduating as an air force pilot, he was selected for cosmonaut training in 1960.

He flew the Vostok 2 mission launched on 6 August 1961. It lasted for 25.3 hours and he performed 17 orbits of the Earth. His call sign was Eagle (Russian: Орёл). He landed close to the town of Krasny Kut in Saratov Oblast, Russia. A month short of 26 years old at launch, he remained the youngest person to fly in space until July 2021, when his record was surpassed by a Dutch teenager, Oliver Daemen. Titov was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, as were almost all the Soviet cosmonauts.

Titov was a fine sportsman, and keen on gymnastics:

Service in the Air Force made us strong, both physically and morally. All of us cosmonauts took up sports and PT seriously when we served in the Air Force. I know that Yuri Gagarin was fond of ice hockey. He liked to play goal keeper. Gherman Titov was a gymnastics enthusiast, Andriyan Nikolayev liked skiing, Pavel Popovich went in for weight lifting. I don't think I am wrong when I say that sports became a fixture in the life of the cosmonauts.

He was the first person to suffer from space sickness (motion sickness in space) and was also the first person to sleep in space. He slept for roughly one orbit and was surprised to wake with his arms floating in the air because of the absence of normal gravity. He returned to sleep after he had his arms under a security belt and slept 30 minutes more than predicted by the flight plan. He stated, "Once you have your arms and legs arranged properly, space sleep is fine.... I slept like a baby".

Though he had been suffering from space sickness during his orbit, Titov celebrated upon landing. His celebration is described as "a fit of euphoria" after landing, and on his return flight to Kubishev for debriefing, he alarmed the medical staff by opening and downing a beer, in complete violation of the rules.After landing, Titov was sent to hospital for further testing to ensure that he was not sick. After his mission, he reportedly engaged in behaviours that could be considered unacceptable for someone working within the space programme. He is reported to have been enthralled in his love of women, excessive drinking, and fast cars, which caused some to theorise that his behaviour had potentially been another side effect of the space sickness he experienced from zero gravity. Further testing revealed that not to be the case.During a widely-publicised 1962 visit to Seattle to tour the Century 21 World's Fair, Titov was asked by reporters how his space flight affected his philosophy of life. He replied: "Sometimes people are saying that God is out there. I was looking around attentively all day but I didn't find anybody there. I saw neither angels nor God". The utterance was used in Soviet anti-religion propaganda, but it was misattributed to Yuri Gagarin.Following his space flight, Titov assumed various senior positions in the Soviet space programme until his retirement in 1992. In 1995, he was elected to the State Duma as a member of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. He died of cardiac arrest in his sauna at the age of 65 in Moscow. He was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery.