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Celebrating Yuri Gagarin's 1961 Flight Into Space
DeviceGuru writes "The 50th anniversary of the first-ever manned space flight, by Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, is being celebrated on April 12 with a two-day early activation of the ARISSat-1 ham radio satellite aboard the International Space Station. If you can get your hands on a scanner or ham handy-talkie you can join in the celebration by listening to prerecorded messages from the satellite as it orbits the globe tonight and tomorrow."
Yes, he jumped from a balloon at 31,200 m up, this is nowhere near the Kármán line at 100,000 m which is commonly defined as the edge of space.
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Some people don't have their head so far up their ass that they can't celebrate a great achievement of mankind unless they did it. The Soviets one-upped you. You one-upped them with Apollo. The world moved forward. Not everything has to be about you.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
'Our civilization'? I was under the impression that everyone on this planet belongs to 'our civilization' and thus all our great accomplishments are worthy of celebration. Space race? Enemies? What time are you living in exactly? Would you prefer for scientific and engineering achievements not to happen, unless they belong to your country, serving your 'nation'? I better stop, this is getting too close to Godwin territory.
Happy 50th space anniversary... (although I think that it's a little hypocritical to celebrate 50 revolutions of the earth around the sun, when the whole point of it is to be less earth-bound).
-- In Soviet Russia...Rockets launch you!
Some translation of conversation just before flight between Korolev an Gagarin:
Korolev: Yuri, then I want you just to recall that after a moment's willingness to take place six minutes and will start before the flight so that you do not worry. Reception.
Gagarin: I understand, I am perfectly calm!
Queens: There's a packing tube - lunch, dinner and breakfast.
Gagarin: Clear
Korolev: Sausage, Bean there, and jam for tea. 63 pieces, you will be thick.
Gagarin: heh heh
Korolev: After arrival, eat everything at once - instructs Korolev.
->>Gagarin retains a sense of humor:
Gagarin: Main thing there is sausages to vodka drink with.
Everyone laughs
Korolev: Damn, and he writes all, the bastard! - Jokingly resents Korolev, knowing that the tape of Gagarin captures every word.
Everyone laughs
Original you can find in http://www.x-libri.ru/elib/innet170/00000001.htm ;))
sorry for bad translation
Doesn't it seem strange to celebrate what was, after all, a major loss for our civilization? The fact that we lost both opening chapters of the space race (Sputnik 1 and Vostok 1) is a national shame, which should be burned into our memory to be sure, but celebrated? Hardly.
Celebrating the victories of our enemies is like spitting on the graves of the hundreds of thousands who died in the cold war.
I suppose you're still pissed off that the Chinese invented gunpowder three thousand years ago?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Yuri did an amazing thing
Not to be pedantic, but Yuri didn't actually do anything. Vostok 1 was fully automatic from lift-off to bail out.
Yeah, and Neil Armstrong was just a glorified pilot. I've been on holidays several times on planes, what's so special about the Moon?
Talk about sour grapes.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
His balloon was not a hot air balloon. It was filled with a lifting gas, either helium or hydrogen. Operating a hot air balloon at that altitude would require bringing along oxygen for the burner, which would increase overall weight and decrease altitude. Also, Gagarin orbited the planet in space. Kitinger explored the upper atmosphere in a high-altitude balloon. Both achievements were equally dangerous and impressive, but they are not the same.
On August 16, 1960, Colonel Kittinger jumped out of a hot air balloon at over 100,000 ft
Yes, he jumped from a balloon at 31,200 m up, this is nowhere near the KÃrmÃn line at 100,000 m which is commonly defined as the edge of space.
You must excuse him, he works for NASA...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I beg to differ. I am using space flight services far more often than airplane services. I am using weather forecasts, satellite TV and GPS on a daily basis, while I don't fly that often or get airmail or are buying stuff transported by airplanes.
Just a thought: does anyone outside of your civilization regard the entire planet as "our civilization"? Western ideas aren't as universal as you might have been mislead into thinking.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Imagine if engineers and scientists on each side had been allowed to say to the other, "Dude, let's work together on this one."
They wouldn't have received any funding. Let's recap. Goddard basically created modern rocketry. No one would fund him. He created the then definitive works on the subject. WWII started and his work was basically ignored by the allies despite his efforts. Germany took his efforts and created the stepping stones for modern missiles, rockets, and manned flight. It was funded by war. Post WWII, Germans taken in by both the US and Russia created the manned flight programs, which in turn were funded by war or the fear of war. Remember, manned flight was an excuse to justify massive spending to create ICMBs.
So basically, "working together" almost never receives funding unless there is yet another underlying cause allowing the first to be used as a public excuse.
Hell, the US-German program was so successful and the US program was so unsuccessful, the US-German program was literally mothballed and prevented from launching so as to allow the pure-US effort a chance as well as to allow the Russian's time to actually launch Sputnik to as to create an internal overflight precedence. Once Sputnik was launched, which created much ire and fear of the US public, much to the surprise of the US Cabinet, and after repeated US failures, the German program was removed from mothballs. The US-German program was taken directly from mothballs to the launch pad, and successfully launched. The US-German program was mothballed roughly a year before Sputnik was launched into space.