60 years since Gagarin’s historic flight, 40 years since STS1
STS1. Image: NASA
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 until Gagarin reached the ground, via parachute, but has continued to resonate through the decades since.
Gagarin and Titov on their way to the launch pad on 12 April, 1961. Image: NASA
The mission came after a number of test flights (not crewed by humans) of varying degrees of success and failure, as documented in Stephen Walker’s excellent Beyond and kicked off from Baikonur Cosmodrome at 0607 UTC with Gagarin’s famous “Poyekhali!” [Off we go!] call to controllers as the engines of the rocket lit up.
The launch went relatively smoothly, with the four strap-on boosters shed at 0609 UTC and the payload shroud released at 0610 UTC.
The final stage of the rocket shut down at 06:17 UTC and, after spacecraft separation, Gagarin reported to controllers: “The craft is operating normally. I can see Earth in the view port of the Vzor. Everything is proceeding as planned.”
Despite spotty communications, the automatic systems onboard the spacecraft (no Mercury-style manual interventions here) brought the spherical capsule to the required orientation at 0725 UTC, and the spacecraft’s engine was fired a few seconds later.
Things began to go wrong shortly after. The service module had been supposed to separate from the re-entry module (housing Gagarin) but remained attached by a bundle of wires.
Failure to separate modules would plague the Soviet space programme in later years. Eight years later, in 1969, Soyuz 5 cosmonaut Boris Volynov would endure a hair-raising ride back to Earth after the service module failed to separate as planned. The connections eventually separated and the cosmonaut landed safely (if rather hard).
For Gagarin, the cables finally broke at approximately 07:35 UTC as the stack spun. The descent module settled into the correct re-entry attitude and Gagarin signalled “Everything is OK” to controllers, although the European Space Agency’s (ESA) history of the mission noted: “He later reports that he did not want to ‘make a noise’ because he had (correctly) reasoned that the gyrations did not pose a danger to the mission (and were apparently caused by the spherical shape of the re-entry module).”
Gagarin ejected from the descending capsule at around the 7,000-metre mark, landing close to the Vostok capsule and was famously greeted by confused locals. After all, the mission had initially been conducted in near total secrecy.
The first man to orbit the Earth would not return to space again. His hopes of a flight aboard the Soyuz were dashed following the death of his fellow cosmonaut, Vladimir Komarov, during the first flight of the vehicle in 1967. A year later Gagarin would also die when his MiG-15 training jet crashed in 1968. He was 34.
America launches its Space Truck
A mere 20 years after Gagarin’s flight, in the aftermath of the race to the Moon and while the Soviet Union continued to launch Salyut space stations, NASA launched what it hoped would be the first in a fleet of reusable space vehicles: the Space Shuttle.
Beset by delays, the first space-worthy Space Shuttle launched at 12:00 UTC on 12 April 1981 with moonwalker John Young commanding, accompanied by rookie astronaut Bob Crippen. Crippen’s career had begun with the US Air Force’s Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) in the 1960s, transferring to NASA after the cancellation of the MOL project.
He would go on to take part in the Skylab Medical Experiment Altitude Test (SMEAT) and perform capcom duties for the Apollo Soyuz project before his flight aboard Columbia.
Young, a veteran of Apollo and Gemini, was well accustomed to the rigours of spaceflight. The shuttle was, however, an entirely new vehicle. Unlike Gagarin’s Vostok, there would be no uncrewed test flights before the duo were launched.
The Shuttle had had a lengthy gestation as challenges with its engines and thermal protection system threatened to derail the programme. A launch on 10 April had to be called off at the T-18-minute mark due to a computer problem but the issues were resolved to permit the launching of Young and Crippen on 12 April.
Unlike Gagarin, the NASA astronauts had plenty of space within the roomier confines of Columbia and, despite concerns arising from some missing thermal tiles (later assuaged by snaps of the orbiter from intelligence assets showing the all-important underside would survive re-entry), the shuttle would glide safely back to a landing at Edward’s Air Force base two days later. An exultant Crippen radioed “What a way to come to California!” as Columbia descended.
Both Crippen and Young would fly the Shuttle again, although neither would return to space following the 1986 Challenger accident.
Both Gagarin’s flight and the first launch of the Space Shuttle merit applause and, while the intervening years have seen the assembly of the International Space Station and dozens of uncrewed missions to the planets, asteroids and beyond, few events served to capture the imagination of the public in quite the same way.
Further reading
We would recommend Stephen Walker’s Beyond for an insight into Gagarin the human being as well as the events surrounding his mission. The Space Shuttle program is very well documented, although a flick through the pages of Rowland White’s Into The Black gives an insight into that very first mission. Young’s own memoir Forever Young is also worth reading to better understand the man himself.
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T. C. Clark
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Of course there is a plausible video on Youtube (not deleted yet) that says an experienced Russian test pilot was the first man but his space craft had problems and landed inside China and he was injured. The Chinese hospitalized him and returned him to Russia after a year. He was later in charge of the investigation into the plane crash that killed Yuri. In an interview, he would not discuss the story about him being the first man…curious because all he had to do was deny it. The whole man in space saga goes back to the 1950s when the US decided a man in orbit was needed to operate film cameras over the USSR. The initial US satellite was a cover for the secret manned project – it was supposedly for science. The Russian head of the USSR rocket program realized a propaganda coup was possible because the US did not recognize that a Russian satellite could happen first. A test of the Russian moon rocket blew up and killed the head of the program who insisted on sitting in a chair nearby along with a no. of others as the rocket was ignited…..dozens were killed and the test facility was out of operation for a year…pretty much ending the moon program. Brezhnev once insisted that a manned launch take place even though numerous technical problems almost meant disaster – Yuri’s friend died in the crash of the capsule and Yuri was drinking a lot and becoming a problem for the Kremlin.
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Mark Tapley
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I thought everyone figured out years ago that the Apollo missions were fake. You probably believe in the holohoax and the 6 million shekel grubbers too. Don’t you think it a little strange that after over 50 years they have never gone back? Fifty years after Columbus hit America thousands of ships had made the voyage. Don’t you think it strange that all those “:moon photos” of that greatest technological feat in history have been lost? What would you think if say you went to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa or a Rembrandt and the curators said we have misplaced them, their lost?
There are many books and videos exposing this massive Fraud perpetrated on the U.S. tax payers. Bill Kaysing, Bart Sibrel, Ralph Rene and others have exposed this hoax. Just the close up photos of the “landing module” look like something cobbled together by kids in the back yard.
The same is true of the fake shuttle missions. There were pictures of all the members of the “shuttle disaster” ap. 25 years later except one who had probably died, posted on the net. Miles Mathis (or whoever) does a good writeup on this fake with several photos. Everything Jewmerica does is a lie and a fraud. He also does an excellent article with pictures of the old Charles Mansion-Tate fake, a forerunner to todays fake Floyd and Breonna Taylor psyops. And of course the Mathis site covers the current fake virus. Almost forgot, he also discusses the fake passengers on the non existent 911 flights.
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T. C. Clark
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Uh, Mark, what is it that you think you are trying to accomplish? I think you have a problem but you are in total denial.
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Mark Tapley
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I think that you Clark are the one in denial. The evidence of the usual government fraud is overwhelming. I have only laid out a small part but a while back NASA released a photo that appeared on the MSM yahoo front page that admitted the hoax. The photo was one of the fake “astronauts standing on the moon.” In the corner of his visor was a reflection caught in the camera of some guy sanding over on the side. The Zionists always tell you at some point what they are doing, I have given common sense reasoning in the previous post that illustrates how asinine the whole moon landings are. The shuttles were also a scam to suck in tax money and never flew out more the 300 miles from earth if we can even believe that. The authors I have mentioned and many others offer irrefutable proof of the scam. I suppose you still believe in WMD’s and the fake virus huh Clark?
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Herb Rose
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Hi Mark,
I looked at the man in the visor and admit it appeared similar to a fuzzy image of a man but the question I have is since those visors are the shape like a convex mirror why doesn’t the image appear like the ones you see through a fish eye lens?
Herb
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Mark Tapley
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Greetings Herb:
I had forgotten about the NASA photo until Clark’s comment. I know very little about photography but remember a pretty distinct image. There have been lots of clues dropped such as in Kubrick’s movie “The Shining” as were witnessed with 911 also. The Zionists have used propaganda and the MSM since before WW1 and even hired Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays to sell the war to the goyim. They know that most people only look at things from a superficial stand point and generally just believe what the MSM and gov. (elite) tell them. These false narratives are developed and psychologically installed generally over a long period of time with all types of overt and subtle propaganda such as now is being done for a coming contrived conflict with Russia and China.
On the moon landing issue I believe there is a preponderance of overwhelming evidence that they did not travel 140,000 miles through the Van Allen belt and land on the moon. That is why the fake photo’s had to be “lost” and why they have never “gone back to the moon.” They could not put people on the moon in 1969 and they cannot do it now even with all the huge advances in technology.
It would now be too risky to try to simulate such nonsense as landing the moon and that is one of the advantages of the fake virus. All they have to do is claim there is a pathogen even though it cannot be purified, isolated nor identified, provide a fake test, and announce fake numbers. Since the hospitals are being payed off and the medical workers are afraid of their jobs and 90% of funding is provided by the criminals at big Pharma with it’s CDC, it’s easy to do. Our shabbas goy politicians have long been in the loop. The newly elected Arkansas congressman who spilled the beans on the covid like PCR inventor Mullis suddenly died.
Mark Tapley
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Correction, 240,000 miles through the Van Allen belt to the moon, not 140,000 as I had erroneously stated.
T. C. Clark
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Uh, Mark, do you believe the earth is flat, by chance?
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Andy
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Good grief, what absolute drivel.
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T. C. Clark
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You agree with Mark? Mark just mentioned a Hollywood product…The Shining by Kubrick. ….the movie is about a haunted hotel but if it was really haunted, why would he risk making a movie there? His action belies his story. Of course, Hollywood goes far beyond fiction in making cartoons that are supposed to be believed as not only possible….but regular happenings.
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