It is 60 years since the first cosmonaut reached orbit and 40 years since the Shuttle first left the launchpad Join us in raising a toast in celebration of both the 60th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's orbit of the Earth and 40 years since the first Space Shuttle left the pad. Gagarin's flight, on 12 April 1961, marked the first of a human into orbit. The mission, aboard the Vostok 3KA spacecraft, lasted less than two hours from lift-off …
I look back and see how we are so risk averse it actually inhibits more than it protects.
Great things were achieved by those prepared to take the risk, can you imagine SLS/Orion doing its lunar flight after just one test flight of the booster to earth orbit? Not now we will wait years/decades at the current snails pace.
But I do wonder if this has become a case of perfect being the enemy of good enough.
BvB
The delay on the first shuttle launch meant that the studio booking at Televison Centre for the BBC's coverage had run out. The only spare (BBC) studio available was in Bristol so all but one of the production team had headed down the M4, but Bristol had no videotape machines free. As a freshly minted VT engineer in the dungeons of TV Centre I was known to be a bit of a space enthusiast, and myself and a housemate got the job of feeding the inserts from machines in London to the studio in Bristol (and even editing some of the packages ourselves) for the duration of the mission, along with the remaining member of the production team who had been in her job about as long as we had in ours. We even got a day or two of overtime out of it as it was going to be tricky enough without the Bristol end having to deal with multiple sets of London engineers.
I remember the first launch and the promise of routine LEO space flight. The first Bond film I properly remember (being 12 when it came out) was Moonraker.
Then, the reality of such a complex box of tricks bit. And the disasters of course.
Still, at least JPL continues to be inspirational and it is good to see other countries getting in on the landers/rover game.
...giant cosmonaut space balls of iron!
And everyone who followed, those that didn't make it and all the involuntary beasties who preceeded them.
I would love to see an experiment in space to measure the metabolisation of alcohol in the human body. It would make a fine IgNobel prize. I volunteer! ;)
Archive on 4 "Gagarin and the lost Moon"
Mentions his charisma being both an important selection criteria for the initial mission and a hinderance in getting selection for subsequent missions, as while he was keen to carry on nobody wanted to risk being the guy who said yes to the project that killed him.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
