Yuri Gagarin lands in the USA

WI Yuri Gagarin on his first flight reenters early due to a problem with the second stage of the rocket (too low an orbit), and lands in Montana, where he is apprehended by American police?
 
The US quickly hands him back over, as imprisoning him or anything of the type will give it a bad image across most of the world, let alone to the citizens of the USSR. They've nothing to gain from keeping him anyway.
 

Markus

Banned
WI Yuri Gagarin on his first flight reenters early due to a problem with the second stage of the rocket (too low an orbit), and lands in Montana, where he is apprehended by American police?

The cops will never get to him ... before the press does! :D

This would have been sooooooo embarrassing that it´s funny. Unless you work for the soviet space program. There things would get not funny.
 

Macragge1

Banned
I would guess he's immediately taken to the nicest, plushest hotel Montana has to offer and there's a bunch of press conferences and shaking hands and everyone smiles - he's then flown first class back to Russia - any nastiness and the whole Space Race goes sour, which will rather ruin it.
 

WarBastard

Banned
The man was a hero - even the Americans recognised that, they would have treated him as such. If Neil Armstrong somehow found himself in the USSR, same would happen.
 
The Russians wouldn't have been able to hide the fact that Vostok pilots had to eject from the craft on the way down. This would lead to some stupid arguments about whether his flight should be considered a "real" record. Not that the general public would have cared. Gagarin was handsome and charming; the American public would have loved him.
 
The orbital mechanics are all wrong
Vostok_1_orbit.png
 
Doesn't that orbit pass over the Aleutian Islands? If he comes down there, the US military finds him, makes a media event and hands him to the Soviet Navy.
 
The US could have made a similar tongue in cheek reply to the Soviets as the Kiwis did to the US re: Skylab's re-entry, promising to return any bits in exchange for the US buying more lamb! A similar move by the US for, say, Coca Cola exports, may have been a good "lift" at the height of the Cold War.

Seriously the man himself would have been lauded as a hero and treated as such, as to whether the USSR would have got the capsule back is open to interpretation - do the laws of the sea re: "Salvage" apply on land? Granted this case would have been a bit of a precedent...
 
Yuri Gagarin is arrested by the police then moved to the hospital for "treatment". There he is offered a house, a car and a monthly salary by the US government.

In exchange he declares to the press, that he was a secret agent of the CIA all along, whose task was to infiltrate the Soviet space programme.


Thus the first man in space was an a Soviet, but an American agent as well.


The USSR is pissed off...


LOL. Highly unlikely scenario, bearing in ming, that Gagarin had family in the USSR.
 
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WarBastard

Banned
Yuri Gagarin is arrested by the police then moved to the hospital for "treatment". There he is offered a house, a car and a monthly salary by the US government.

In exchange he declares to the press, that he was a secret agent of the CIA all along, whose task was to infiltrate the Soviet space programme.


Thus the first man in space was an a Soviet, but an American agent as well.


The USSR is pissed off...


LOL. Highly unlikely scenario, bearing in ming, that Gagarin had family in the USSR.

And the fact that he was a patriotic Soviet citizen. Don't assume everyone can be bought off with shiny baubles.
 
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