The future cosmonaut German Stepanovich Titov was born in September 1935 in a small village in the Altai Territory, in the family of a local school teacher. In 1953, the young man graduated from high school, and two years later - from the Military Aviation School for preliminary training of pilots in one of the towns of the Kazakh SSR. After graduating from a specialized school, he manages to enter the Stalingrad Aviation Military School. The guy graduated from this university in 1957. Here he receives the coveted qualification of a military pilot. Upon graduation, future
Soviet cosmonaut Titov is sent for assignment to military service in the aviation unit of the Leningrad Military District. In Leningrad, he serves in an aviation fighter regiment. Actually, it is here that the brilliant flight biography of cosmonaut German Stepanovich Titov begins. Here he made more than eight hundred flights on aircraft of various designs, among which were the novelties of that time - aircraft with jet engines. This experience and a good track record to a large extent contributed to the fact that in 1960 the young pilot was included in the first set of Soviet cosmonauts. On January 25, 1961, he was officially appointed to this position, which existed in the Soviet Union. AstronautTitov was originally considered a stand-in for Yuri Gagarin, who was lucky enough to become the first chosen one of this space race. As you know, the first man was in space on April 12, 1961. After the first successful attempt, the Soviet space program did not delay the second launch, and German Titov, the number two cosmonaut in world history, was sent into space on August 6, 1961. If Gagarin is honored as the first person to be outside the Earth's atmosphere, then Herman
Stepanovich made the first long-term space flight in human history. He stayed in orbit for more than 25 hours and made about 17 orbits on the Vostok-2 apparatus. Every radio station in the world reported on the second man in space!
Mature years of German Stepanovich
After this famous flight, the biography of the second cosmonaut of the USSR was associated with aviation and space flights for many years. Already in September 1961, cosmonaut Titov was sent to study at the Zhukovsky Air Force Academy to acquire the speci alty of a space engineer and improve his skills. In the same September 1961, he was appointed as an instructor-cosmonaut for subsequent sets of applicants for orbit. In 1968, he graduated from the academy and became a senior instructor and, at the same time, commander of the second cosmonaut detachment. Four years later, German Titov becomes deputy head of the research and development department.
In this position, he is involved in the design of residential and social areas of spaceports, as well as the spacecraft themselves. Among other things, Titov takes part in the development of a reusable spacecraft. In 1976, German Stepanovich took a position in the state structure of the Ministry of Defense, which he left only with the collapse of the country in 1991. Like many famous figures of the Soviet country, German Titov went into politics in the mid-nineties, being elected to the State Duma in 1995 as an independent candidate. For some time he works in the Committee for Transport, Construction and Industry. Since 1999, the former cosmonaut has become president of the Federation of Cosmonautics. Even the last years of his life, the tireless man spent in active service to his country. Titov German Stepanovich died in September 2000 from a heart attack.
