Year: 1983

Postcard made in the Soviet Union, 1983 with a picture of the Monument To Yuri Gagarin. Monument to Yuri Gagarin is a 42.5-meter high pedestal and statue of Yuri Gagarin, the first person to travel in space. It is located at Leninsky Prospekt in Moscow. The pedestal is designed to be reminiscent of a rocket exhaust. The statue is made of titanium, a metal often used in spacecraft, and weighs 12 tons.The monument to Yuri Gagarin was built for the 1980 Olympic Games. It stands in Gagarin Square on Leninsky Avenue.The monument was made in less than a year at the Balashikha Foundry and Mechanical Plant. The titanium sculpture of Yuri Gagarin was assembled from 238 cast segments, which were connected with bolts and welding. The greatest problems arose with the manufacture of the largest segment – the cosmonaut’s face. Its weight was 300 kilograms (660 lb), which was too heavy for melting in a vacuum oven. The Monument to Yuri Gagarin is the world’s first large-scale monument made of titanium.