Vostok 1: 60th anniversary of historic first human spaceflight:
Sixty years ago on Monday, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome atop a variation of a rocket originally designed to launch nuclear weapons to become the first person to orbit the Earth. Though his flight lasted only one hour and 48 minutes, it was an historic event that ranks right up there with when the first fish decided to take a step on dry land.
In the early morning of April 12, 1961, a Vostok-K 8K72K rocket sat on the launch pad waiting for its pilot. In a bus some distance away, 27-year-old senior lieutenant Yuri Gagarin sat nervously in his bulky orange spacesuit with the freshly painted acronym CCCP glistening in still-wet red letters. Behind him sat backup cosmonaut Gherman Titov in a similar suit, and second backup Grigori Nelyubov.
[...] On the way to the launch pad, Gagarin asked for the bus to stop, so he could relieve himself on one of the tires, starting what became a tradition that cosmonauts follow to this day.
Gagarin had a lot to be nervous about. He'd only been chosen for the mission over Titov four days earlier and, though he'd trained hard for the mission, he hadn't seen the actual spacecraft until he arrived at Baikonur. Even more worrying, it was less than a year since the American U2 pilot Gary Powers had been shot down over Soviet territory. Would the Americans return the favor to Vostok 1?
[...] The most dramatic part of the flight occurred at 07:55 GMT. There wasn't time to equip Vostok with a soft landing system, and even with the capsule's parachute Gagarin wouldn't have survived the touchdown, so at an altitude of 4.3 miles (7 km) the hatch was blasted away by explosives and rockets in Gagarin's ejector seat shot him clear. Out of his seat, his own parachute opened and he descended to Earth in Kazakhstan, where he was greeted by a bewildered farmer and his daughter.
"When they saw me in my space suit and the parachute dragging alongside as I walked, they started to back away in fear," Gagarin later said. "I told them, don't be afraid, I am a Soviet citizen like you, who has descended from space, and I must find a telephone to call Moscow."
Wikipedia entry for Vostok-1
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @01:26AM
Surviving Kazakhstan was the real heroic bit. Sitting atop a huge bomb, being blasted into space, then falling back to earth was nothing in comparison.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @01:38AM (2 children)
Don't know jack about slavic, but vostok means "east" (like "ost" in latin?) in russian, I think.
Why the naming?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @04:53AM (1 child)
I expect it was chosen for multiple reasons. Like you mentioned Vostoc means east. And the timing of this was a conflict between the 'East' and the 'West'. Baikonur, which was and remains the primary launch location for Russian launches (Soviet at the time of course) is also in the far east of what would have been the USSR at the time, Kazakhstan in modern times. Vostok was also the name of the ship manned by a Russian explorer that discovered Antarctica, and also did the first Russian circumnavigation of the globe.
(Score: 2) by legont on Monday April 12 2021, @03:37PM
It was named after the coming sunrise of the new space epoch. The next model was named Voshod, which is literally sunrise itself. They probably did consider your connotations as well.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Spamalope on Monday April 12 2021, @01:44AM (6 children)
Wasn't he the first to survive, and those killed before him hidden?
Will we ever know their names so they can be honored as well?
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @01:47AM
No. Commies gonna commie, and putin is definitely a commie.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @02:07AM
Nope. Did not happen. Back to history class for you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @08:37AM (2 children)
Ah!, history....so objective, so inviolate, so wrong....
Here's a little something for you to ponder over a beverage of your choice.
Who was, as they say, 'mad for space travel', from an early age?
Who was responsible for the world's first long range ballistic missile, the first man-made object to enter space, and was working on the world's first ICBM?
Who was a member of an organisation who regarded various classes of people as being 'subhuman', an organisation known for carrying out experiments on said 'subhumans', the relevant ones here being those relating to the effects of the extremes of pressure, temperature and acceleration on the human...sorry, 'subhuman' body ?.
Who had all his 'sins' (known and unknown...or, at least, ones not talked about in polite society) cleansed by a paperclip?
Who? [genius.com]
The next time the US/Russia launches, raise a glass to the unknown Untermenschen...2,150 lb is a lot of untermensch.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @02:24PM (1 child)
Joe Biden
http://www.spacepolitics.com/2008/10/29/joe-biden-space-advocate/ [spacepolitics.com]
Joe Biden
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/north-korea-missile-launch-new-type-joe-biden-challenge-kim-jong-un/ [cbsnews.com]
Joe Biden
https://nypost.com/2019/06/21/joe-bidens-years-old-letters-to-racist-senator-revealed/ [nypost.com]
Hunter Biden
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/john-ratcliffe-says-law-enforcement-knows-it-really-is-hunter-biden-s-laptop-not-russian-disinformation/ar-BB1fxlnG [msn.com]
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @02:59PM
Hey trumptard, why don't you bring your 13 year-old daughter to your orange God's place and leave her alone with him in a room for one hour ? What could possibly go wrong ?
OTOH, people like you might very well want to stay there and watch.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @12:32PM
Nope. [astronautix.com]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @01:54AM (4 children)
Space isn't profitable to kleptocrat tech barons. There aren't any suckers to advertise to in space and there never will be. Elon Muskie is a lying sack of shit who is making fucktons of money off delusional space nutters who he can sell crap and red sky to. Mark these words: Musk will die on Earth, not Mars.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday April 12 2021, @03:44AM (2 children)
I sense doubt. My take is Musk is playing the long game. And the long game here is manufacture. He's built up multiple manufacturing powerhouses and trying out epic schemes like Boring, Neuralink, and Hyperloop. To give a space example, SpaceX is making tons of satellites and Starlink infrastructure like personal phase array antennas. My take is that's all going to be 3D printed. Someone will just turn on a machine right by the launch pad, make 80 copies, and just throw them on the rocket, like it were a UPS truck.
And all those phase arrays? He'll license the build and sell instead the 3D printers to make those antennas. It'll massively drop the cost. Instead of say $3000 per, it'll be like $100 per (from the customer's point of view, and vastly cheaper than that from SpaceX's point of view) and you'll be able to get it made at the local hardware store. I think the Singularity will hit pretty hard at this point. Musk will have his 3D printed surf board riding this wave. He could be our first multitrillionaire.
And of course, after that, Mars travel will be a cinch. I figure we'll know the future has hit hard when SpaceX moves their HQ there. It'll be remarkably easy when they do. Musk will have industrial power at his disposal like nothing we've seen on this side of the Singularity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @09:05AM (1 child)
A cinch, that is, if you can launch through all his (and every other competitors) fucking '..tons of satellites ..' and associated orbital debris..
Let's not talk about the logistics required to actually put the shit on Mars that you'll require in the first instance to build your infrastructure, then maintain it...oh, and let's ignore the fact that it's a bloody inimical environment for humans to inhabit...forgetting, for a minute, the lack of a breathable atmosphere, there's the little matter of the 8 rads a year and no protection from solar events...oh yes, there is a solution to that...welcome to your new life as indentured Musk troglodyte slave burrowing away on Mars..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @02:55PM
If it becomes cheap enough to travel to space, eventually daredevils will get to mars.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @02:01PM
Musk Derangement Syndrome.
Get out of your mother's fucking basement, loser, and get a life.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Monday April 12 2021, @02:24AM
Soyuz MS-18 launch marks 60 years of human spaceflight [nasaspaceflight.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Flamebait) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday April 12 2021, @03:51AM (1 child)
it's product naming.
- USA guy #1: Hey, let's call this giant rocket Saturn!
- USA guy #2: Oh right! Powerful God.Hell yeah!
- USSR guy #1: Hey comrade, Amerika call raket Saturn. We call CCCP raket Uranus, da?
- USSR guy #2: Meeh...niet let's not. Let's call big raket Vostok-K 8K72K instead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @12:53PM
the comparison is actually redstone MRLV MR-7 [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by legont on Monday April 12 2021, @03:42PM
That' when 30 Russian pilots ended the flying fortresses epoch.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiG_Alley [wikipedia.org]
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.