Happy Birthday Juri Alexejewitsch Gagarin!

Поехали!

Let's go!

Genossen, ich brenne.

I am a friend, comrades, a friend!

Ich bin in den Weltraum geflogen, aber Gott habe ich dort nicht gesehen.

I see Earth. It is so beautiful!

I saw for the first time the earth's shape. I could easily see the shores of continents, islands, great rivers, folds of the terrain, large bodies of water. The horizon is dark blue, smoothly turning to black. . . the feelings which filled me I can express with one word—joy.

I looked and looked but I didn't see God.

I could have gone on flying through space forever.

The spaceship put in orbit, and the carrier-rocket separated, weightlessness set in. At first the sensation was to some extent unusual, but I soon adapted myself.

When they saw me in my space suit and the parachute dragging alongside as I walked, they started to back away in fear. I told them, don’t be afraid, I am a Soviet like you, who has descended from space and I must find a telephone to call Moscow.

The Earth is blue. How wonderful. It is amazing.

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, becoming 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.

Rays were blazing through the atmosphere of the earth, the horizon became bright orange, gradually passing into all the colors of the rainbow: from light blue to dark blue, to violet and then to black. What an indescribable gamut of colors! Just like the paintings of the artist Nicholas Roerich.