Celebrating Yuri Gagarin's 1961 Flight Into Space 124
DeviceGuru writes "The 50th anniversary of the first-ever manned space flight, by Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, is being celebrated on April 12 with a two-day early activation of the ARISSat-1 ham radio satellite aboard the International Space Station. If you can get your hands on a scanner or ham handy-talkie you can join in the celebration by listening to prerecorded messages from the satellite as it orbits the globe tonight and tomorrow."
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Cheers!
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If i actually had wodka in the house, i'd drink one tonight on Yuri, sadly though, he will have to settle for a glass of ice-thea (it will have a slice of lemon though)
50 years of manned spaceflight! Here's to another 50, even if we achieve only half of the last 50 years, it will be worth watching
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Have you actually read the article you are citing?
Nope, because this is SLASHDOT (in 300 style!)
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It was this guy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Ilyushin [wikipedia.org]
Have you actually read the article you are citing?
There are times when I think slashdot should have a football (ok, soccer) yellow/red card system for particularly stupid and/or misleading posts. But then that wouldn't exactly encourage the advertisers as on any one day about half the readership would be banned.
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Re:But he wasn't the first guy in space. (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, he jumped from a balloon at 31,200 m up, this is nowhere near the Kármán line at 100,000 m which is commonly defined as the edge of space.
Re:But he wasn't the first guy in space. (Score:4, Funny)
On August 16, 1960, Colonel Kittinger jumped out of a hot air balloon at over 100,000 ft
Yes, he jumped from a balloon at 31,200 m up, this is nowhere near the KÃrmÃn line at 100,000 m which is commonly defined as the edge of space.
You must excuse him, he works for NASA...
Re:But he wasn't the first guy in space. (Score:4, Interesting)
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The problem is that he died in 2010 ... a man in space that survived would the a hero of the Soviet Union ...
Yuri got there first
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Wan Hu was the first man in space: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wan_Hu [wikipedia.org] :)
Actually, it was Icarus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icarus [wikipedia.org]
great (Score:1)
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You seem to claim that either manned spaceflight is not worth celebrating or that manned spaceflight is not performed by satellites.
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Hard to see the point in being an asshole. The poster sounds like s/he isn't a native Anglophone.
YMBNH
Free comic book (Score:2)
To many more manned spaceflights. (Score:2)
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In the first years of the 20th century everyone and their grandmother were making powered aircraft. This was proper science.
Re:To many more manned spaceflights. (Score:5, Insightful)
I beg to differ. I am using space flight services far more often than airplane services. I am using weather forecasts, satellite TV and GPS on a daily basis, while I don't fly that often or get airmail or are buying stuff transported by airplanes.
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Hm, none of these are MANNED, you jackass, .
Because those satellites just 'appear' in space, right?
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From an engineering standpoint, once the internal combustion engine came along, powered flight wasn't that great of a technical challenge. Powered space flight was a much more challenging technical achievement (as evidenced by how many engineers it took working from the V-2 to Sputnik).
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I hope he's enjoying the afterlife... (Score:1)
UTC times (Score:3)
The page http://www.arissat1.org/v3/ [arissat1.org] includes the transmission time in UTC and information on some of the other telemtry channels. They begin Monday 11 April 2011 at 14:30 UTC and continue until 10:30 UTC on 13 April 2011. I just tried the 145.950 MHz FM downlink as it passed over Australia without luck, but was using a fairly crappy wideband scanner antenna indoors. I might give it a try tomorrow with a 150MHz antenna which is closest narrowband antenna I've got.
Still counting in earth-years? (Score:4, Funny)
Happy 50th space anniversary... (although I think that it's a little hypocritical to celebrate 50 revolutions of the earth around the sun, when the whole point of it is to be less earth-bound).
-- In Soviet Russia...Rockets launch you!
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when the whole point of it is to be less earth-bound)
Who said that was the point? Frankly, satellites have provided me with WAY more benefit than any moon landing ever did. AFAIC, *that* was the point.
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You're an animal. A human to be specific. You've evolved and internalized via biological functions all manner of earth-bound cycles. You are not an interstellar space spore. The idea that we can just get rid of the year as a metric because of a guy orbiting the earth is a bit silly and certainly is not "the point."
Maybe in some transhuman future where everyone lives off-planet and we control our genes and biology. But right now? Naww. Monkeyman needs a calendar.
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His fight doesn't count by FIA rules. For a flight to be official the pilot must land with his craft.
Yes shameless nitpicking that no including myself should give any weight too but someone was going to say it so I might as well get it out of the way.
The only downside is that Gargarin is not with us today. He is exploring beyond the rim.
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First orbit recreation (Score:1)
conversation record... (Score:3, Informative)
Some translation of conversation just before flight between Korolev an Gagarin:
Korolev: Yuri, then I want you just to recall that after a moment's willingness to take place six minutes and will start before the flight so that you do not worry. Reception.
Gagarin: I understand, I am perfectly calm!
Queens: There's a packing tube - lunch, dinner and breakfast.
Gagarin: Clear
Korolev: Sausage, Bean there, and jam for tea. 63 pieces, you will be thick.
Gagarin: heh heh
Korolev: After arrival, eat everything at once - instructs Korolev.
->>Gagarin retains a sense of humor:
Gagarin: Main thing there is sausages to vodka drink with.
Everyone laughs
Korolev: Damn, and he writes all, the bastard! - Jokingly resents Korolev, knowing that the tape of Gagarin captures every word.
Everyone laughs
Original you can find in http://www.x-libri.ru/elib/innet170/00000001.htm ;))
sorry for bad translation
Food For the Moon Landing Skeptics (Score:2, Insightful)
... listening to prerecorded messages from the satellite as it orbits ...
It was all a fake! Well, at least we have Buzz Aldrin, ready to turn any impertinent folk's face into a Picasso, if the journalist claims that the Moon Landing was a fake. If I had traveled to the Moon and back, I would also be so onery, in case someone asked me if it was a fake. Oh, you could check it yourselves . . . one of the Moon missions left a mirror on the surface of the Moon. All you need to do, is to shine a laser on it.
Oh, and one more thing. The US Space Program was really tits up . . . even
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Oh, you could check it yourselves . . . one of the Moon missions left a mirror on the surface of the Moon. All you need to do, is to shine a laser on it.
Hardly evidence, given that even the biggest conspiracy theorists probably believe that there were successful unmanned moon landings. Not that I don't think men landed on the moon, but it's difficult to conclusively prove if you have zero trust in official sources and somehow discount all the photographs and video.
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The US space program wasn't in bad shape at all by then. Sputnik had kicked it into gear back in 1957. You have to look at the military side to understand. By 1961 the US was actually far ahead im ICBMs, SLBM and Bombers. The R-7 was a massive impractical ICBM that took a week to prep for a launch but it was the only thing the USSR had that had a chance of threatening the US with. In 1957 the US was working on making practical ICBMs and smaller warheads. It had no military need for anything like the R-7. By
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And they had practical ones quite soon afterwards. Probably deciding to jump on the next obvious stage, not having huge bomber force ("bomber gap" also being a myth...)
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Their record afterwards [slashdot.org] suggests they have a few tricks of their own in this field, for some reason (check also the engine of Atlas V, and whole first stage (tankage & engine) of Taurus 2)
A Song Tribute (Score:2)
Yuri's Night (Score:2)
Or, if you don't want to sit at home listening to the radio, you can see if there is a Yuri's Night [yurisnight.net] party near you. Most were over the weekend, but there are still a few the night of.
Also, it's the anniversary of the first US space shuttle launch.
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Also Today... (Score:2)
And a shout-out to Sergei Korolev too (Score:2)
I would also like to recognize Sergei Korolev [slashdot.org], a name that's sadly unknown in the United States, Without him, there might never have been a space race, or satellites, or a man on the moon, etc. He's the guy who achieved the miracle of talking Kruschev into a space program. He also taught himself rocketry, worked his way through school as a common laborer, served time in Stalin's gulags, and headed the team that recreated the V-2 rocket in the Soviet Union after the War.
ooops, bad link (Score:2)
Sergei Korolev [wikipedia.org]
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Sergei was offered the Nobel prize for Sputnik and Gagarin's flight. Nobel committee only knew of him as "Chief Designer" but USSR says these accomplishments are of "all people." They don't give the Nobel prize posthumously. What is amazing is he managed to stay alive from the gulags! An excellent book, "Korolev: How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive to Beat America to the Moon" by James Harford, http://www.amazon.com/Korolev-Masterminded-Soviet-Drive-America/dp/0471327212/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top [amazon.com]
Boo
And 50 years later... (Score:3)
It's pretty much only the Russians still launching men/women into space. The US Space program is essentially, over.
NASA's plans are up in the air, muddled and without focus, liable to change on political whim, and even when they go forward, it will be hopelessly underfunded and probably a disaster.
Meanwhile, the Russians are using pretty much the exact same technology they were 50 years ago, and continuing to launch. NASA has to buy seats on the next few years of flights if we want to get anybody into or out of the ISS.
Maybe SpaceX will change things for the better, but what I find so sad is that the USA went to the moon, and now our country is just a shadow of it's former self, bloated, dull, and stupid. We're the Roman Empire waiting to fall. Nero is fiddling.
Here's to Yuri and Valentina though. I remember pointing out on Slashdot years ago, when Star Trek Enterprise premeired, how the title sequence avoided the Russians, even though it was trying to show the advancement of human space flight.
I suggest someone change that title sequence, because all the advancement in that area is coming from someplace else, Russia, China, India -- but likely NOT the USA.
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The US Space program is essentially, over.
Manned program. Which is a bit sad, but the science goes on. And more so the military & intelligence side. Just without the PR program.
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first to orbit, but first up? (Score:2)
Not to take away from Gagarin and the rest of the Soviet space program's accomplishment of putting a man in space, orbiting the earth, and returning safely, but it's important to remember he may not have been the first man in space.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cosmonauts [wikipedia.org]
Considering the memory hole that the Soviet Union was, it's impossible to say if any of those are real or not (some are obviously hoaxes); but it's equally impossible to disprove at least some of them.
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I believe the Lost Cosmonaut folklore to have some truth to it as someone I know and trust who grow up in the Soviet Union has related to me how he vividly recalls an episode where a classmate lost his Cosmonaut dad to a failed space shot, and that this event was covered up and kept quiet.
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The reason why it's very unlikely is because the Soviet space program was already extremely fast-paced. It's hard to believe that there would be time for numerous additional flights before Vostok-1.
Yuri's Night is giving away a free eBook (Score:1)
Programmed in to my Yaesu FT-530 (Score:2)
73, KB7UJR
Celebrating Russian space accomplishment at NASA (Score:2)
If there is one thing that is amazing is there are (were) celebrations of a Russian (or precisely Soviet) space accomplishment at a NASA facility. This was last year at NASA Ames Research Center, this year budget issues prevented this year's Yuri's Night but they had Yuri's Education Day (http://ynba.org/2011/).
Last year's event had all kinds of people you typically don't see at a NASA facility. Plus the music was really loud with all the flashing lights, etc. in same building that housed research aircra
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Rest in peace young Yuri, there's a heaven for a G
Be a lie if I told you that your profession was safe,
My comrade, you deserve respect!
(adapted from Life Goes On, by 2Pac)
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I'm glad I'm not the only one thinking this. :P [wikipedia.org]
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Yeah, everyone is an "atheist" when they know that saying otherwise will get them thrown in a gulag.
Not true (Score:3)
Not true. Orthodox Church existed just fine during the USSR. It even had official state support, even during Stalin's reign.
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AFAIK he was a communist. They don't believe in heaven.
You deserve a prize for the most logical fallacies packed into ten words.
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And in regards to various mythologies you probably also allude to - don't believe so readily in... myths. Vast majority of people behind the Iron Curtain... heck, vast majority of Party members were closet Christians, at "worst". "Strangely" in most communist places you can't really see any phenomenon of "unbaptized generation" (at worst - baptism in the countryside)
Also, there's a curious overlap between "old Christian sect
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Well, he didn't shit his space suit(probably, I don't know if the Soviets released any records on that one). So that's gotta be worth SOMETHING.
Re:Strange thing to celebrate... (Score:4, Interesting)
Yuri did an amazing thing
Not to be pedantic, but Yuri didn't actually do anything. Vostok 1 was fully automatic from lift-off to bail out.
Yeah, and Neil Armstrong was just a glorified pilot. I've been on holidays several times on planes, what's so special about the Moon?
Talk about sour grapes.
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Yeah, and Neil Armstrong was just a glorified pilot. I've been on holidays several times on planes, what's so special about the Moon?
Looks like an explanation is in order. Among certain groups, there is a tradition of grumbling about the attention given to the "meat in the seat", when the *real* accomplishment is designing, building, launching, and guiding the spacecraft housing said passenger.
In other words, you rise to the top of the engineering game, launch a rocket to the frickin' moon, and some jock still comes along and grabs the spotlight.
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He got in. That's amazing enough.
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Yuri did an amazing thing
Not to be pedantic, but Yuri didn't actually do anything. Vostok 1 was fully automatic from lift-off to bail out.
He risked his life to prove it would work. That scores a fair bit higher than a computer-desk-critic.
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Yuri knew full well that he could end up like this [npr.org], and still went ahead.
Re:Strange thing to celebrate... (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people don't have their head so far up their ass that they can't celebrate a great achievement of mankind unless they did it. The Soviets one-upped you. You one-upped them with Apollo. The world moved forward. Not everything has to be about you.
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Re:Strange thing to celebrate... (Score:4, Insightful)
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What time are you living in exactly?
Well, for the purposes of this discussion, 1961 seems like a reasonable context. At the time, no one in the US was celebrating.
Would you prefer for scientific and engineering achievements not to happen, unless they belong to your country, serving your 'nation'?
The Manhattan Project was an incredible scientific and engineering achievement by any measure, but whether it's something to to celebrated depends a lot on which side of the war you happened to be on.
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Well, for the purposes of this discussion, 1961 seems like a reasonable context. At the time, no one in the US was celebrating.
If so, that doesn't speak too well for US, but I find it hard to believe. The Apollo landing was definitely celebrated in USSR (by common folk who were interested in such matters, anyway).
As well, I don't know about 1961, but this [wikimedia.org] dates to 1971.
Re:Strange thing to celebrate... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Science is quite separate from cultural values and ideologies.
Another Western idea. Seriously, you don't even think to question the foundations of your thinking...such as if members of other cultures think the same way as you and share your Western values.
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Soviet Union, most assuredly, was a child of and a part of Western (European) civilization, rooted in the same history stemming from Greeks and Romans and Judeo-Christian religious tradition. It was an implementation of some of the more extreme ideas, sure, but those ideas were of European philosophers, and people implementing them had education largely in European tradition (you know - Latin, Greek, natural philosophy...).
French and Germans have fought numerous times as well. That doesn't mean that they do
Re:Strange thing to celebrate... (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't it seem strange to celebrate what was, after all, a major loss for our civilization? The fact that we lost both opening chapters of the space race (Sputnik 1 and Vostok 1) is a national shame, which should be burned into our memory to be sure, but celebrated? Hardly.
Celebrating the victories of our enemies is like spitting on the graves of the hundreds of thousands who died in the cold war.
I suppose you're still pissed off that the Chinese invented gunpowder three thousand years ago?
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Doesn't it seem strange to celebrate what was, after all, a major loss for our civilization? The fact that we lost both opening chapters of the space race (Sputnik 1 and Vostok 1) is a national shame, which should be burned into our memory to be sure, but celebrated? Hardly.
Celebrating the victories of our enemies is like spitting on the graves of the hundreds of thousands who died in the cold war.
I suppose you're still pissed off that the Chinese invented gunpowder three thousand years ago?
The funniest thing is the guy's handle is "molotov303", so he named his online persona after a protege of Stalin. Nice going, comrade!
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The fact that we lost both opening chapters of the space race
The fact that you had a space race is a national shame on both sides.
Imagine if engineers and scientists on each side had been allowed to say to the other, "Dude, let's work together on this one."
And before you respond with the obvious, how many of these engineers and scientists were doing it for the love and glory of mother Russia / America, rather than because they wanted to explore space?
Celebrating the victories of our enemies is like spitting on the graves of the hundreds of thousands who died in the cold war.
Deliberately misinterpreting the notions of both "enemy" and "cold war" is like spitting on the graves of the hundreds
Re:Strange thing to celebrate... (Score:4, Interesting)
Imagine if engineers and scientists on each side had been allowed to say to the other, "Dude, let's work together on this one."
They wouldn't have received any funding. Let's recap. Goddard basically created modern rocketry. No one would fund him. He created the then definitive works on the subject. WWII started and his work was basically ignored by the allies despite his efforts. Germany took his efforts and created the stepping stones for modern missiles, rockets, and manned flight. It was funded by war. Post WWII, Germans taken in by both the US and Russia created the manned flight programs, which in turn were funded by war or the fear of war. Remember, manned flight was an excuse to justify massive spending to create ICMBs.
So basically, "working together" almost never receives funding unless there is yet another underlying cause allowing the first to be used as a public excuse.
Hell, the US-German program was so successful and the US program was so unsuccessful, the US-German program was literally mothballed and prevented from launching so as to allow the pure-US effort a chance as well as to allow the Russian's time to actually launch Sputnik to as to create an internal overflight precedence. Once Sputnik was launched, which created much ire and fear of the US public, much to the surprise of the US Cabinet, and after repeated US failures, the German program was removed from mothballs. The US-German program was taken directly from mothballs to the launch pad, and successfully launched. The US-German program was mothballed roughly a year before Sputnik was launched into space.
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Scientific and free-thinking communities generally don't adhere to the same bullshit "THERE IS OUR ENEMY!" rhetoric as politicians and the ignorant masses they lead.
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Celebrating the victories of our enemies is like spitting on the graves of the hundreds of thousands who died in the cold war.
Says the guy who picked Stalin's forgien minister for a nickname.
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