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Space

April 12, 2007

April 12, 1961. The first Cosmonaut's day.

Gagarin.jpg

Vostok 1 carried Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin on the first manned space flight, an orbital, lasting 1 hour and 48 minutes, just 25 days before Alan Shepard made the first American space flight in Freedom 7, a 15 minute suborbital journey, which redefined the "Shepard's Prayer" (during the countdown, he said "Please, dear God, don't let me fuck up.")

Whilst Chuck Yeager dubbed the American Mercury astronauts 'Spam in a can', it was far more applicable to Yuri who had no control at all over the ship, it being run remotely by ground crews, whilst Shepard had control of all three axis of movement.

Yuri was killed when his plane crashed in 1968. The is still controvery over the cause.


Image source: The Russian Institute of Radionavigation and Time

Scrawled illegibly by Meathe at April 12, 2007 09:55 AM

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