Future astronaut Titov German Stepanovich was born in September 1935 in a small village in the Altai Territory, in the family of a teacher at a local school. In 1953, the young man graduated from high school, and two years later, 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 graduates from this university in 1957. Here he receives the coveted qualification of a military pilot. Upon graduation, the future
Soviet cosmonaut Titov is sent for military service to the aviation part of the Leningrad Military District. In Leningrad, he serves in an aviation fighter regiment. Actually, this is where the brilliant flight biography of cosmonaut Titov German Stepanovich begins. Here he made more than eight hundred flights on airplanes of various designs, among which were the novelties of that time - airplanes with
jet engines. This experience and a good track record in no small measure 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 post that existed in the Soviet Union. Cosmonaut Titov was initially considered the understudy of Yuri Gagarin, who was lucky enough to become the first choice 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, astronaut number two in world history, was sent into space on August 6, 1961. If Gagarin owns the honor of the first person who found himself outside the atmosphere of the Earth, then German
Stepanovich made the first long human space flight in human history. He stayed in orbit for more than 25 hours and made about 17 turns on the Vostok-2 spacecraft. All the radio stations in the world reported a second man who ended up in space!
The mature years of German Stepanovich
After this famous flight, the biography of the second cosmonaut of the USSR for many years was associated with aviation and space flights. Already in September 1961, astronaut Titov was sent to study at the Zhukovsky Air Force Academy to acquire the specialty of a space engineer and improve his qualifications. In the same September 1961, he was appointed an instructor-cosmonaut for subsequent sets of applicants for orbit. In 1968, he graduated from the Academy and became already a senior instructor and, at the same time, commander of the second cosmonaut corps. Four years later, German Titov becomes deputy head of the department for research and development.
In this position, he designs residential and social areas of spaceports, as well as spacecraft themselves. Among other things, Titov takes part in the development of a reusable
spacecraft. In 1976, German Stepanovich took up 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 in the mid-nineties goes to politics, having been elected to the State Duma in 1995 as an independent candidate. For some time he works in the Committee on Transport, Construction and Industry. Since 1999, the former astronaut becomes president of the Cosmonautics Federation. Even the last years of his life, a tireless man spent in active service of his country. German Stepanovich Titov died in September 2000 from a heart attack.