April 12, 1961
First man in space: A 50-year-old feat remembered PhysOrg - April 11, 2011
Gagarin anniversary: Are manned missions a waste of space? PhysOrg - April 10, 2011
50 years ago ... Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut, became the first human to journey into outer space when his Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth. On Tuesday, the world will be awash with talk of courage and vision as it looks back on 50 years of manned space flight, a trail blazed by Yuri Gagarin's 108-minute trip around the planet. Gagarin became an international celebrity, and was awarded many medals and honors, including Hero of the Soviet Union. Vostok 1 marked his only spaceflight, but he served as backup to the Soyuz 1 mission, which ended in a fatal crash. Gagarin later became deputy training director of the Cosmonaut Training Centre outside Moscow, which was later named after him. Gagarin died when a training jet he was piloting crashed in 1968.
It is so beautiful!
2001 A Space Oddyssey Thus Spake Zarathrustra
