Yuri Gagarin

Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin (1934-????) was a Soviet cosmonaut in the early 1960s. Like many human astronauts in the early days of space flight, he was a casual acquaintance with other astronauts of the various space-faring nations. One of these acquaintances was Glenn Johnson, and Johnson and Gagarin were idly chatting in the language of the Race when nuclear missiles launched from a submarine in the Indian Ocean destroyed a dozen Lizard starships of the Colonization Fleet. Prior to the launch, Gagarin had been defending himself against Johnson's claims that Soviet space shuttles did not require much in the way of pilot input and that Gagarin was therefore superfluous on the flight.