Secrets revealed: the man who died for Yuri Gagarin and Space Travel

Yuri Gagarin's name has been written in to history as the first man in space and a hero for mankind. But there have been rumours for decades of a botched space flight and human sacrifice made to save Yuri Gagarin. Such sacrifices and mishaps have been kept secret for many decades, including of the first dog in Space 'Laika'.

The burnt corpse of Vladimir Komarov, after his Spaceship crashed to earth

In 1961, when Gagarin was blasted into Space, the Soviet Union had successfully managed to send the first living thing into Space, 'Laika' the dog, several years previously. However, the world did not know that Laika was never meant to come back and Soviet scientists had never planned a 'return' trip for Laika to her mother earth.

Even the true details of Laika's death has been covered up until recently, as they first revealed that she was poisoned with food and later said that she died of a 'heart failure' due to the complications of the space travel.

But recent documents on 'Laika's space odyssey reveals that her compartment was so heated up within minutes of taking off that it is likely that she was 'boiled alive'.

Laika was not the first animal sacrificed for the sake of space travel, and she certainly is not the first 'being' sacrificed for our advancements in science and technology.

The harsh reality of Space travel became apparent when Gagarin's good friend, Vladimir Komarov, became the first man to die in Space in the 'Soyuz 1' flight.

This extraordinarily intimate account of the 1967 death of a Russian cosmonaut appears in a new book, 'Starman', by Jamie Doran and Piers Bizony and also on various other documents that were taken off the 'secret vaults' over the years.

The accounts of this fatal trip recalls of Vladimir Komarov, the cosmonaut up in space, circling the globe, convinced he would never make it back to Earth alive. When he was on the phone with Alexsei Kosygin who was then a premier of the Soviet Union, Kosygin also started to cry, because he, too, thinks the cosmonaut will die.

‘You’ve killed me’ was his final words- The crash site of Komarov’s Space capsule ‘Soyuz 1’

The space vehicle is shoddily constructed, running dangerously low on fuel and its parachutes though no one knows this then, won't work and the cosmonaut, Vladimir Komarov, is about to, literally, crash full speed into Earth. As he heads to his death, the U.S. intelligence was listening in Turkey and hear him crying in rage, cursing the people who had put him inside a faulty spaceship.

This faulty trip to space took place in 1967, when Leonid Brezhnev, leader of the Soviet Union, decided to stage a spectacular mid-space rendezvous between two Soviet spaceships. The plan was to launch a capsule, the 'Soyuz 1', with Komarov inside.

The next day, a second vehicle would take off, with two additional cosmonauts; the two vehicles would meet, dock and Komarov would crawl from one vehicle to the other, exchanging places with a colleague, and come home in the second ship.

Brezhnev wanted it to be a Soviet triumph on the 50th anniversary of the Communist revolution.

But when some senior technicians had inspected the 'Soyuz 1' and had found 203 structural problems, Yuri Gagarin suggested that the trip should be postponed. Gagarin wrote a 10-page memo and gave it to his best friend in the KGB, Venyamin Russayev, but nobody dared send it up the chain of command.

Yuri Gagarin (left) and Vladimir Komarov- they were very good friends

Everyone who saw that memo, including Russayev, was demoted, fired or sent to diplomatic Siberia.Komarov came to realize postponement was not an option as their leaders were dead set on this mission.

He met with his friend Russayev, the demoted KGB agent, and said, "If I don't make this flight, they'll send the backup pilot instead." That was Yuri Gagarin.

Vladimir Komarov couldn't do that to his friend, "and he'll die instead of me. We've got to take care of him." Vladimir Komarov said and then burst into tears. Therefore, when the time came, the 'Soyuz' left Earth with Vladimir Komarov on board.

Once the Soyuz began to orbit the Earth, the failures began. The next day's launch had to be cancelled. All the while, U.S. intelligence was listening in to the talk going on at Soviet Space Station.

Previous reports said that U.S. listeners knew something was wrong but couldn't make out the words. Later, a NSA analyst, identified in the book as Perry Fellwock, described overhearing Komarov tell ground control officials he knew he was about to die. Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin called on a video phone to tell him he was a hero. Komarov's wife was also on the call to talk about what to say to their children.

‘The brave girl’- ‘Laika’ the dog who paved the way for mankind for Space Travel

Soviet Premier, Kosygin was also crying. When the capsule began its descent and the parachutes failed to open, the book describes how American intelligence picked up Komarov's cries of rage as he plunged to his death." You've killed me": were the last tragic words of doomed cosmonaut who sacrificed himself in shoddy spacecraft to save Yuri Gagarin. Both sides in the 1960s race to space knew these missions were extremely dangerous.

In January of that same year, Americans Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee died in a fire inside an Apollo capsule. Laika and the many animals that died previously for us was just the beginning.

Vladimir Komarov's death placed an enormous burden of guilt on Yuri Gagarin's shoulders. Yuri Gagarin died in a plane accident in 1968, a year before the Americans reached the moon and at the time of his death, he was only 34 years old. In 1961 December 7th Yuri Gagarin visited Sri Lanka.

- Chamari Senanayake