Human Spaceflight, 50 years.

Today we commemorate the 50 year anniversary of the first human flight to outer space. As most of you must know, it was the soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin who had the great honor.

Out of 20 candidates, Yuri was chosen in 1960 to be in the Vostok 1 mission. His trainers held him in high esteem, pointing out his excellent skills and understanding of math. Even his colleagues, when asked to vote anonymously on "who is the most qualified to go in the mission", chose him by an almost unanimous vote. His short stature also gave him an advantage, since the Vostok capsule was rather small. Himself and fellow cosmonaut Gherman Titov were the final two candidates because of this height advantage. Hey, being short is not always a bad thing! Titov went to man the second Vostok mission, effectively making him the second human in space. Not bad at all.

A fair morning 50 years ago saw it's peace disturbed by the great energy explosion of the R-7 Semyorka's launch, an intercontinental ballistic missile turned space rocket which had previous success launching into space the first artificial satellite - Sputnik 1 - propelling the Vostok 1 containing Gagarin to outer space within minutes. 

The whole flight was meant to be controlled by the craft's automatic systems or by the mission control, since nobody knew how outer space would affect a human. Not even Gagarin, for all he knew, he could die up there, but he still carried on his mission showing great courage which in turn earns him great respect from me. 

 

After screeching along Siberia and then turning south over the pacific, his orbit took him over South America and then northwards to the west coast of Africa, where the mission prepared for his reentry. It was not without fault: the service module did not separate properly from the reentry module, disturbing the aircraft's design and sending Gagarin in a wild ride where he experienced 8 to 10 Gs. After it finally burned away, the cosmonaut ejected from his capsule and landed by parachute. After about 2 hours, man's first poke into space was over. 

I think it was a great moment for mankind, despite it being fueled mostly by political reasons, this space race resulted in some of the Man's greatest achievements to date in my opinion. 

For other curious minded out there, there's a documentary called First Orbit that came out today. It is a real time recreation of his flight, mixing footage from the International Space Station and the original radio chatter. So if you want to feel like a Cosmonaut for an hour or so, I recommend you check it out at their website, completely free.