World Marking 50th Anniversary Since First Human Space Flight

[webfact]

World marking 50th anniversary since first human space flight

MOSCOW, April 12 (Itar-Tass) - Tuesday April 12, the world marks the 50th anniversary since the first manned flight into space made by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. It is also a new global holiday.

A few days before the jubilee, the UN General Assembly declared April 12 the International Spaceflight Day, which it said will be marked annually at the international level to commemorate the start of mankind's space era and to reiterate the contribution of science and technology to achieving the objectives of steady development, raising the affluence of nations, and ensuring their willingness to maintain peace in outer space.

Mankind has made a great step forward in exploring the outer space since the day of Yuri Gagarin's historic flight.

People have mastered long orbital missions and have learned how to launch various vehicles and probes to nearby and distant enough planets and comets.

Now we are not only dreaming of manned flights to the Mars, we've started preparing for them in practical terms.

Over the past fifty years, a club of space powers that have launched manned or unmanned vehicles into orbit has been formed, and yet the biggest number of breakthroughs in this sphere is still linked to a country that was named the USSR in Yuri Gagarin's time and is named the Russian Federation now.

The first cosmonaut /Yuri Gagarin/, the first group flight aboard the Vostok spaceship, the first woman in space /Valentina Tereshkova/, the first docking of ships in space and transition of cosmonauts from one ship to another, the first woman cosmonaut who did a several-hours-long extravehicular activity /Svetlana Savitskaya/, the first woman cosmonaut who had a prolonged tour of duty in space /Yelena Kondakova/, and the longest mission in orbit that lasted 437 days /Valery Polyakov/ make up a far incomplete list of achievements.

Add to it the records like the biggest overall number of days in space /Sergei Krikalyov who scored more than 803 days during six space missions/ or the longest total hours in empty space /Anatoly Solovyov who spent 82 hours there during sixteen space walks/ and many other events.

The 'manned Lunar race' was the only sphere in the global space competition that the USSR lost after the death of the legendary Soviet Chief Space Designer, Sergei Korolyov, who died in 1966. Soviet cosmonauts never stepped on the surface of the Moon as a result.

Yet the Soviet-era unmanned missions of space probes to the Moon, the Mars and the Venus still keep Russia in the ranks of leaders of research of the Solar system planets.

Yuri Gagarin's flight symbolized a huge leap and a breakthrough in the scientific, technological and even moral aspect that this country made then, believes Dr Zhores Alfyorov, the winner of a Nobel Prize in Physics.

"It was a great feast, a holiday for everyone," he calls the day on which Gagarin made his flight.

"We were given the tasks that we were supposed to resolve at that time, and for resolving them we requested the financing," Dr Alfyorov said.

"As for today, the situation is radically opposite, as the biggest problem is to get the monies rather than to resolve a task," he said.

Still he is confident Russia will never fall into the category of "those lagging behind forever" since the people capable of developing various spheres of activity are found around in big numbers here.

In spite of the failures and insufficient financing of the 1990's and the first decade of this century, Russia remains a leading power in space exploration, Dr Alfyorov said.

He recalled that Russia has retained the key role in the International Space Station project.

Also, all the Russian cosmonauts and astronauts from different countries will be taken into orbit only by the Russian Soyuz spaceships after the U.S. winds up the thirty-years-long program of shuttle flights.

Last year, the countries participating in the ISS project agreed to extend the station's service life through to 2020.

Bearing in mind the future exploration of the Universe, Russia is starting construction of the Vostochny Space Center in 2011. It will be located in the Amur region in Russia's Far East The emergence of the new space launching facility in that part of the country will enable Russia to launch the vehicles of different types, including the ones for interplanetary expeditions, from its own territory.

At present, all the manned missions are launched only from the Baikonur Space Center located in central Kazakhstan.

According to the current plans, the first space start at Vostochny is to take place in 2015 and the first manned space mission will supposedly lift off from there in 2018.

Anatoly Solovyov, who has spent the biggest number of days in orbit, says Gagarin's flight radically changed the destiny of many people and became a dream and a song for them. "That's a song that should be performed in full voice," he said.

For fifty years already, this proud song of conquerors of the Universe is sung not only in Russia and the U.S. but also in many countries of the world. (Itar-tass)

-- TNA 2011-04-12

[bangkokeddy]

"Of course the sands of Present Time are running out from under our feet. And why not? The Great Conundrum: 'What are we here for?' is all that ever held us here in the first place. Fear. The answer to the Riddle of the Ages has actually been out in the street since the First Step in Space. Who runs may read but few people run fast enough. What are we here for? Does the great metaphysical nut revolve around that? Well, I'll crack it for you, right now. What are we here for? We are here to go!"

The Process

[EnSvenskTiger]

I cant say I remember that day but what I do remember today is the hart beeps on radio and TV from Laika the first dog in space. We kids went out in the night trying to see the sputnik on the milky-way but to no avail.

It took me hard when they told us that she would never return to earth, she died out there alone serving mankind.

Was great thou when the first OK pictures from the Hubble telescope came. Almost religious in a way.

And now the euphoria of the explorationand colonization of space is over. Spy satellites, internet and TV is what we ended up with 50 years later. Sad in a way.

USA seems to have given up on the civil projects and only takes a backseat in the Russian rockets if free.China, Russia and ,I believe, India still launching rockets but apart from the navigation and the communication satellites one can ask; whybother.

tiger

Edited April 12, 2011 by EnSvenskTiger

[Carib]

Spacejunk comes to mind; pollution avant la lettre, and a militairy playground.