Tuesday, April 12, 2011

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. 

23 comments:

  1. pure awesome.. think 50 years ago humans first time was in the space o.O and we still use gas cars.. thats sick

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  2. And then he died in a plane crash..

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  3. Definatly a milestone in history in the name of science..

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  4. Huge step forward in technology here. I'm proud to be alive for all of thise.

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  5. I wonder how many cosmonauts they sent before they got Yuri up..

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  6. An amazing achievement. It must have been an incredible feeling for when he reach orbit.

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  7. Kinda weird to see how far we've come.

    I remember someone once saying "if you took Jesus and put him 50 years forward, nothing would be different. If you took a man from 50 years ago and dropped him here, he'd probably die."

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  8. It's crazy how far we've come along.

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  9. I don't know what to think of flying into space. Makes no sense to me.

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  10. Great milestone in human life.

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  11. i just want to go into space. i need 250000 to go with richard branson. Maybe i should wait for a price drop.

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  12. 50 years! That's a long time.

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  13. Great courage indeed! I would have never survived. I can get a bit claustrophobic myself.

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  14. another interesting post! keep up this good blogging!

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  15. I watched the think on youtube yesterday, he liked the zero grav!

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  16. It's a shame that space research is on a declin

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  17. y i agree with insider this should be a prioritie

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  18. Nicely written post and a deserving tribute to Yuri Gagarin. Keep it up

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