[4]: 262, 272 The final decision of who would fly the mission relied heavily on the opinion of the head of cosmonaut training, Nikolai Kamanin.

[4]: 272 [16] As an indication of the level of secrecy involved, one of the other cosmonaut candidates, Alexei Leonov, later recalled that he did not know who was chosen for the mission until after the spaceflight had begun.

The spacecraft carried 13 days of provisions to allow for survival and natural orbital decay in the event the retrorockets failed.

As focus was made on food that would not form crumbs, Gagarin was provided with liver meat puree and chocolate sauce, packed in metal toothpaste-style tubes.

As it had been less than a year since U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down, Lebedev reasoned that without some country identification, there was a small chance the cosmonaut might be mistaken for a spy on landing.

This was because medical staff and spacecraft engineers were unsure how a human might react to weightlessness, and therefore it was decided to lock the pilot's manual controls.

[22][23] At Baikonur Cosmodrome on the morning of 11 April 1961, the Vostok-K rocket, together with the attached Vostok 3KA space capsule, were transported several kilometers to the launch pad, in a horizontal position.

This time was chosen so that when the capsule started to fly over Africa, which was when the retrorockets would need to fire for reentry, the solar illumination would be ideal for the orientation system's sensors.

[4]: 273 Before the mission, Gagarin made a statement to the press, addressed to the Soviet Union and to the whole world: Dear friends, both known and unknown to me, fellow countrymen, men and women of all lands and continents!In a few minutes a mighty spaceship will take me into the far-away expanses of the Universe.

And if I am nevertheless venturing on this flight, it is because I am a Communist, because I draw strength from unexampled exploits performed by my compatriots, Soviet men and women.

[28][29]In his autobiography, Gagarin recalled that, looking at the spacecraft before start, he was "seized with an unprecedented rise of all mental strength <...> some extraordinary words were born that I had never used before in everyday speech.

"[30] This was not true; according to historian Asif Siddiqi, Gagarin "was essentially forced to utter a stream of banalities prepared by anonymous speechwriters" taped much earlier in Moscow.

Launch would not occur for another two hours, and during the time Gagarin chatted with the mission's main CapCom, as well as Chief Designer Sergei Korolev, Nikolai Kamanin, and a few others,[4]: 274  periodically joking and singing songs.

A kolkhoz woman Annihayat Nurskanova and her granddaughter, Rita, observed the strange scene of a figure in a bright orange suit with a large white helmet landing near them by parachute.

Although news of Soviet rocket launches would normally be aired only after the fact, Sergei Korolev wrote a note to the Party Central Committee to convince them that the announcement should be made as early as possible: "We consider it advisable to publish the first TASS report immediately after the satellite-spacecraft enters orbit, for the following reasons: (a) if a rescue becomes necessary, it will facilitate rapid organization of a rescue; (b) it precludes any foreign government declaring that the cosmonaut is a military scout.

"[46] The flight was celebrated as a great triumph of Soviet science and technology, demonstrating the superiority of the socialist system over capitalism.

Moscow and other cities in the USSR held mass demonstrations, the scale of which was comparable to World War II Victory Parades.

[50] Later it was included in the refrain of a Soviet song Do You Know What Kind of Guy He Was [ru] written by Alexandra Pakhmutova and Nikolai Dobronravov (He said "Let's go!"

[52] Writing for The New York Times shortly after the flight, however, journalist Arthur Krock described mixed feelings in the United States due to fears of the spaceflight's potential military implications for the Cold War,[53] and the Detroit Free Press wrote that "the people of Washington, London, Paris and all points between might have been dancing in the streets" if it were not for "doubts and suspicions" about Soviet intentions.

President John F. Kennedy was quoted as saying that it would be "some time" before the US could match the Soviet launch vehicle technology, and that "the news will be worse before it's better."

Astronaut Alan Shepard, who was originally scheduled to become the first person in space but had his mission delayed six times due to preparatory work, was infuriated by the news and slammed his first down on a table.

Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun urged "that both the United States and the Soviet Union should use their new knowledge and techniques for the good of mankind," and Egypt's Akhbar El Yom likewise expressed hopes that the cold war would "turn into a peaceful race in infinite space" and turn away from armed conflicts such as the Laotian Civil War.

[58] Sukarno, the President of the Republic of Indonesia, said that "that delightful event opens up new prospects for human thought and activity, which will be put at the service of the progress and well-being of people, international peace as a whole."

Zhou Enlai, head of the State Council of the People's Republic of China, and Kim Il Sung, Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers of the DPRK, described the successes of Soviet science as "a brilliant symbol of the triumph of socialism and communism."

"[59] The President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guo Moruo, wrote a poem 《歌颂东方号》 ("Hymn to the Vostok Spacecraft"), which was published in Pravda.

[4]: 283  Gagarin's spaceflight records were nonetheless certified and reaffirmed by the FAI, which revised its rules, and acknowledged that the crucial steps of the safe launch, orbit, and return of the pilot had been accomplished.

The fact that this accomplishment was successfully carried out by the Soviet Union, a country completely devastated by war just sixteen years prior, makes the achievement even more impressive.

A good portion of its land had been devastated by war, and it had lost about 25 million citizens ... but it was the totalitarian state that overwhelmingly took the lead [in the space race].

In front of this is a 3-meter (9 foot) tall white stone statue of Yuri Gagarin, wearing a spacesuit, with one arm raised in greeting and the other holding a space helmet.