Fifty years ago today, Yuri Gagarin rode the Vostok 1 into history as the first man in space.*
*I think it’s funny that the Wikipedia article on the Vostok 1 says, “first known human spaceflight in history”. I guess someone is still holding out for that Nazi moon base.
Robert Heinlein, in Expanding Universe (IIRC), gives a tantalizing idea that there *might* have been a manned spaceflight prior to Gregarin’s. Basically, Heinlein was on a tour of the USSR a few months before Gregarin’s flight when one afternoon (he says) an excited announcement was made at lunch, the USSR had put the first man into space! The excitement died down later in the afternoon when Tass announced “no, sorry, that was just a rocket, we were mistaken, no manned flight today”. Heinlein had a point- when would the Soviet news agency EVER have been misinformed in that way? He hypothesized that there HAD been a manned spaceflight by the USSR that day, and perhaps it went bad. The USSR made it go away and tried again later, rather than admit they had a dead cosmonaut orbiting the earth (could he still be up there?). We’ll never know but it strikes me as plausible.
I dunno about the Nazi Moon base, but I do suspect a few Rednecks might have gotten anal probes in orbit by the Gray Skinned Aliens, perverts that they are.
There were several manned flights… just not successful ones. Some even think this guy was actually the first to get back successfully, but crash landed in China, and was held there for a year. Wasn’t available for propaganda purposes, so they used Gagarin.
And the race was on! Sadly, Gagarin was killed only seven years later in a training accident (of which both countries had way too many).
Robert Heinlein, in Expanding Universe (IIRC), gives a tantalizing idea that there *might* have been a manned spaceflight prior to Gregarin’s. Basically, Heinlein was on a tour of the USSR a few months before Gregarin’s flight when one afternoon (he says) an excited announcement was made at lunch, the USSR had put the first man into space! The excitement died down later in the afternoon when Tass announced “no, sorry, that was just a rocket, we were mistaken, no manned flight today”. Heinlein had a point- when would the Soviet news agency EVER have been misinformed in that way? He hypothesized that there HAD been a manned spaceflight by the USSR that day, and perhaps it went bad. The USSR made it go away and tried again later, rather than admit they had a dead cosmonaut orbiting the earth (could he still be up there?). We’ll never know but it strikes me as plausible.
Well, they never found that Chinese guy will all the rockets on his chair.
I dunno about the Nazi Moon base, but I do suspect a few Rednecks might have gotten anal probes in orbit by the Gray Skinned Aliens, perverts that they are.
Yuri was the first WILLING space flight!
…Oh, there was plenty of unofficial space flight prior to Gagarin! 😉
LOL!! YES!
There were several manned flights… just not successful ones. Some even think this guy was actually the first to get back successfully, but crash landed in China, and was held there for a year. Wasn’t available for propaganda purposes, so they used Gagarin.