The Ultimate Sacrifice
The space capsule wasn’t flight-ready, and Komarov knew it, but he also knew that if he declined to fly, his backup and best friend Yuri Gagarin would have to make the fatal trip instead. Komarov decided to sacrifice himself, and refused to let Gagarin board the vessel during takeoff. As the capsule inevitably malfunctioned and fell from orbit, with Komarov headed to his doom, US listening posts in Turkey heard him crying in rage and “cursing the people who had put him inside a botched spaceship.”