Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was the first human to fly into the black reaches of outer space, an experience he described as godless and beautiful. He died in a plane crash less than seven years later, in 1968, but the memory of his mission lives on in history books - and here at Izmailovo, a market in northern Moscow that's home to the world's most sprawling collection of illicit Russian space artifacts. I'm talking to a vendor named Vladimir, who, to protect himself from the bitter cold, has put on a pair of orange space gloves, which he swears belonged to Gagarin, and a bubble-shaped space helmet. A $2,000 price tag hangs off his right pinkie, and a $1,000 marker dangles from the helmet. Eager to make a sale, Vladimir lifts the face shield, revealing a set of bulging eyes and a two-day beard. "So," he says, speaking English with a heavy Russian accent to a tourist snapping a photo, "you wanna be a spaceman?"
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