Poyekhali!
Let’s go!

I am happy to report to you that the assignment of the Central Committee of the Communist party of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Government has been carried out. The world's first space flight has been accomplished in the Soviet space ship Vostok. All systems and equipment worked impeccably, I feel very well and am prepared to carry out any assignment of the party and the government.

I could have gone on flying through space forever.

In all times and epochs the greatest happiness for man has been to take part in new discoveries.

It’s not for glory that Soviet cosmonauts are in this assault on the cosmos; they are motivated by a limitless love for and devotion to their country, the Party and the people, and by a desire to help Soviet scientists to discover the secrets of the universe.

Mankind never gains anything without cost. There never has been a bloodless victory over nature.

Spaceflights can’t be stopped. This isn't the work of any one man or even a group of men. It is a historical process which mankind is carrying out in accordance with the natural laws of human development.

The path of a cosmonaut is not an easy, triumphant march to glory, as some people make it out to be. You have to put in a lot of work, a lot of sweat, and have to get to know the meaning not just of joy but also of grief, before being allowed in the spacecraft cabin.

To be the first to enter the cosmos, to engage, single-handed, in an unprecedented duel with nature—could one dream of anything more?

What beauty. I saw clouds and their light shadows on the distant dear earth…. The water looked like darkish, slightly gleaming spots…. When I watched the horizon, I saw the abrupt, contrasting transition from the earth’s light-colored surface to the absolutely black sky. I enjoyed the rich color spectrum of the earth. It is surrounded by a light blue aureole that gradually darkens, becomes turquoise, dark blue, violet, and finally coal black.

When I orbited the Earth in a spaceship, I saw for the first time how beautiful our planet is. Mankind, let us preserve and increase this beauty, and not destroy it!

The world’s first spaceship, Vostok (East), with a man on board was launched into orbit from the Soviet Union on April 12, 1961. The pilot space-navigator of the satellite-spaceship Vostok is a citizen of the U.S.S.R., Flight Major Yuri Gagarin.
The launching of the multistage space rocket was successful and, after attaining the first escape velocity and the separation of the last stage of the carrier rocket, the spaceship went in to free flight on around-the-earth orbit. According to preliminary data, the period of revolution of the satellite spaceship around the earth is 89.1 min. The minimum distance from the earth at perigee is 175 km (108.7 miles) and the maximum at apogee is 302 km (187.6 miles), and the angle of inclination of the orbit plane to the equator is 65º 4’. The spaceship with the navigator weighs 4725 kg (10,418.6 lb), excluding the weight of the final stage of the carrier rocket.
The first man in space was announced by the Soviet newsagency Tass on 12 April 1961, 9:59 a.m. Moscow time.

Scientists constantly get clobbered with the idea that we spent 27 billion dollars on the Apollo programs, and are asked “What more do you want?” We didn't spend it; it was done for political reasons. ... Apollo was a response to the Bay of Pigs fiasco and to the successful orbital flight of Yuri Gagarin. President Kennedy's objective was not to find out the origin of the moon by the end of the decade; rather it was to put a man on the moon and bring him back, and we did that.