This April 12th 2011 marks the 50th Anniversary of the historic space flight of Yuri Gagarin on Vostok 1 This was the time when man took his first steps to outer space "I see Earth! It is so beautiful!" - Yuri Gagarin "Orbiting Earth in the spaceship, I saw how beautiful our planet is. People, let us preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it!" - Yuri Gagarin
Curse you stupid environmentalists and silly Cold War treaties for keeping nuclear material out of orbit! We could have colonized Mars by now if we had put a few reactors up there! Yuri would have wanted it that way!
Cracked had an article a few days ago about the Soviet space program. It's entertaining. If it's at least more-or-less accurate, the Soviet space program was not exactly up to OSHA standards.
Hey, if we curse out the OP, do we have the power to stop the thread from leaving TNZ? Because that would be kind of awesome.
Wow, that's making me feel kind of historic -- or perhaps just old -- myself. I remember Gagarin's flight; I was eleven years old.
I was just a tad older at 14 and remember this as well as the launch of Sputnik in 1957. A lot has happened in these 50 years, hasn't it?!?!
-17? Sheesh, you're old. I was -26 and had some truly crazy times. Anyway, go humanity! I wonder where we'll be at in another 50 years. Probably still just puttering around in orbit. I want to see humanity on mars before I die, dammit!
Just a fair warning to everyone, if we do get to Mars in my lifetime I plan to move there and organize a preemptive Red Faction movement.
Well, if you smoke some really good shit . . . I was seven-and-a-half years old then. I don’t recall hearing anything about Gagarin’s flight at the time, but I do remember being aware of the U.S.–Soviet space rivalry — and the launch of the first Telstar communications satellite in 1962. [yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuA-fqKCiAE[/yt]
I wouldn't consider the absolute terror of dying alone in space or being incinerated to be 'entertaining.' There's an awful lot we still don't know about the Soviet space program. We didn't even know they had the H-bomb until we detected fallout from the test. Their launches from Kazakhstan weren't known. And they were concealable. Unlike Cape Canaveral, Baikonur isn't right to next to civilization. Ultimately I hope to see whatever secret list (I have no doubt one exists) of fatalities exists published. Let the dead rest in honor. The USSR earned its place in history alongside other greats. History will never forget the names Gagarin, Korolev, and Tereshkova.
I think it's pretty awesome that Gagarin was willing to sacrifice his life for his friend like that (and vice versa). Definitely a man worthy of being the first human being in space. It sucks that he didn't live to see man reach the moon (he died on March 27, 1968) It's also pretty ironic that he went into space exactly 100 years to the day after the start of the American Civil War.