Yuri Gagarin and his Unfeasibly Large Testicles

[Bendy]

Fifty years ago, a 27 year old Russian became the first man to orbit the earth.
This is Yuri, in an excellent hat:
https://www.mentallandscape.com/V_Gagarin2.jpg
During the flight, he was not allowed to operate the controls because the effects of weightlessness had only been tested on dogs so far. The mission was instead controlled by ground crews, and an override key was provided in case of emergency.

This is the control panel of his Vostok spacecraft. I’ve seen more complicated toasters:
https://www.nasa.gov/images/content/533697main_Vostokpanel_800-600.JPG

The Soviet Union claimed a flawless mission, but much later we found out just how close the mission had come to disaster.
Cables linking the spacecraft's capsule to the service module failed to separate before Gagarin's return to Earth. Temperatures in the capsule became dangerously high and Gagarin was spun around wildly, almost losing consciousness.
"I was in a cloud of fire rushing toward Earth," the cosmonaut later recalled. It was 10 minutes before the cables finally burned through and the descent module, containing its human passenger, tore free. Gagarin baled out before his capsule hit the ground, parachuting to a safe landing near the Volga River.

He never flew in space again, his international fame and propaganda value being too high to be risked on another flight. Sadly he was killed on a training flight 7 years later, flying a MiG-15.

On his 108 minute flight, he saw things that nobody had seen before. https://www.firstorbit.org/ has tried to reconstruct his flight, using the original voice recording synched to footage filmed from the International Space Station. The free film goes live tomorrow, to celebrate ‘Yuri’s Night’. I think it’ll be well worth checking out.

https://teacherlink.ed.usu.edu/tlnasa/reference/ImagineDVD/Files/starchild/Images/StarChild/space_level2/vostok1_big.gif

In an odd twist of coincidence, the first Space Shuttle flight took place exactly 20 years after Gagarin’s flight. On April 12th 1981, two men with testicles almost as huge sat on top of an unproven rocket. Every other spacecraft ever flown by the US or the USSR had the benefit of unmanned test flights, but not the Shuttle. It was the first use of solid rockets for a man-rated craft, an idea that had always been rejected due to their unpredictablilty. The heat resistant tiles were a completely new idea and there was much speculation as to what would happen if any were lost, something not helped by the vast number that fell off when Columbia (the first Shuttle) was being transported cross-country on the back of a 747.

https://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/sts-1/desktop/desktop_5_8x6.jpg

The solids worked, they lost a few tiles but got away with it (and a huge list of other things). Shuttle flights became almost routine – I’m guessing most folk on here are like me, growing up with the Shuttle just being ‘big space truck’ – so it’s easy to forget just what an enormously big deal it was, and still is.

30 years on, the Shuttle fleet is being retired. The USA will be relying on the Russians to get their astronauts to and from space. Wonder what Yuri Gagarin would make of that?

[Ariel Badger]

Gagarin was my childhood hero, thanks for the photo of the control panel. I Think Tovarich Gagarin is still my hero, his death was stupid and senseless.
Za Mia, Do Mirov, Spasiba Tovarich Yuri.
____________________
Bikers make great organ donors, get 115 on your licence today.

[ms51ves3]

Film on YouTube

[Dr. DaveJPS]

[Steve H]

Google Doodle...

https://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a231/steveqpr/1-16.jpg


____________________
Mellow Yellow
The BCF Top TEN - 2010, 2009, 2008, The Original.

[Bendy]

Gizmodo has a nice piece - https://uk.gizmodo.com/5791028/the-amazing-story-of-yuri-gagarin-the-first-human-to-reach-space

[Daimo]

Space??? Someone mention space?

Bore you for hours? Black holes, micro galaxies, nebulas and nutreon stars yadder blah. Shuttle launches, love it all.

America we're p1ssed, but, it paved the way for the race to space full time, then paved the way for Russia and America to move forward together. Big step.

Love it all.

[Paivi]

[truslack]

[Howling TerrorOutOfOffice]

[ms51ves3]

[Bendy]