On May 5 , 1961 which astronaut became the first American in space aboard " Freedom 7 " , launched by a Redstone booster on a 15 - minute ballistic ( suborbital ) flight ?
Andrei Tupolev , Vladimir Chelomei and Mikhail Yangel are also conspicuously absent , for example , even in the sequence depicting the disastrous explosion of Yangel 's prototype R-16 ICBM .