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- saikhan, on 10/12/2007, -6/+28Double good comrade. In Soviet Russia, I will kill you for telling this joke.
- AustinMeoang, on 10/12/2007, -5/+27Ok, I'm not one to complain about old news...but 1961? [/joking]
- BESTenemy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+22Also October 30, 1961 (half a year later) Russia tested the world's most powerful nuclear weapon - the Tzar Bomb. Not many people know that the two events were closely related and the Vostok-1 capsule was originally designed as a carrier for the nuclear device. Russia did the smartest thing they could come up with to demonstrate military strength without threatening its rival superpower directly. The 2-part act demonstrated that Russia had the capacity to deliver a payload anywhere across the planet, and that it had the biggest bomb. Politicians quickly put 2 and 2 together. The wise strategy worked, and unlike in Hiroshima and Nagasaki case, no casualties were made in the process of this military might demonstration. Space exploration is nothing but a byproduct of an arms race.
- BabyWookie, on 10/12/2007, -8/+25Yuri was a very brave man. The flight did not actually go as smoothly as the Soviets announced at that time. There were some rather nerve-wrecking moments.
- ICSU, on 10/12/2007, -4/+19hi, grandpa
- mutatron, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15People think the first man in space was Louis Armstrong?
- BabyWookie, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14They won the race to space and that's a fact. They had a number of other "firsts" as well:
1957: First intercontinental ballistic missile, the R-7 Semyorka
1957: First satellite, Sputnik 1
1957: First animal to enter Earth orbit, the dog Laika on Sputnik 2
1959: First firing of a rocket in Earth orbit, first man-made object to escape Earth's orbit, Luna 1
1959: First data communications, or telemetry, to and from outer space, Luna 1.
1959: First man-made object to pass near the Moon, first man-made object in Solar orbit, Luna 1
1959: First probe to impact the moon, Luna 2
1959: First images of the moon's far side, Luna 3
1960: First probe launched to Mars, Marsnik 1
1961: First probe launched to Venus, Venera 1
1961: First person in space (International definition) and in Earth orbit, Yuri Gagarin on Vostok 1, Vostok programme
1961: First person to spend over a day in space Gherman Titov, Vostok 2
1962: First dual manned spaceflight and approach, Vostok 3 and Vostok 4. While considered by some to be the first space rendezvous, Vostok 3 and 4 were 5km apart as they passed each other in the closest point in their respective orbits, and the orbits were in different orbital planes. US Gemini 6A/Gemini 7 did the first parallel flight, three years later, however without docking. Actual docking was first done in 1967 by Soviet Cosmos 186/Cosmos 188 and manned docking with exchange of crew was first done by Soviet Soyuz 4/Soyuz 5 (see below).
1963: First woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, Vostok 6
1964: First multi-man crew (3), Voskhod 1
1965: First EVA, by Aleksei Leonov, Voskhod 2
1965: First probe to hit another planet (Venus), Venera 3
1966: First probe to make a soft landing on and transmit from the surface of the moon, Luna 9
1966: First probe in lunar orbit, Luna 10
1967: First unmanned rendezvous and docking, Cosmos 186/Cosmos 188. (Until 2006, this has remained the only major space achievement that the US has not duplicated.)
1969: First docking between two manned craft in Earth orbit and exchange of crews, Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5
1970: First samples automatically returned to Earth from another body, Luna 16
1970: First robotic space rover, Lunokhod 1
1970: First data received from the surface of another planet (Venus), Venera 7
1971: First space station, Salyut 1
1971: First probe to orbit another planet (Mars), first probe to reach surface of Mars, Mars 2
1975: First probe to orbit Venus, first photos from surface of Venus, Venera 9
1984: First woman to walk in space, Svetlana Savitskaya (Salyut 7 space station)
1986: First crew to visit two separate space stations (Mir and Salyut 7)
1986: First permanently manned space station, Mir, which orbited the Earth from 1986 until 2001
1987: First crew to spend over one year in space, Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov on board of TM-4 - Mir
1988: Soviets launched Buran.
- In addition, except for the period following Korolyov's death in 1965 through the end of the Skylab program in 1974, virtually all manned duration records have been set by the Russians, due largely to their Salyut/Mir series of space stations. - bracersofint, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13it's on the front page because tomorrow is the anniversary...
there are going to be parties all across the world
http://www.yurisnight.net/2007/ - ElbridgeGerry, on 10/12/2007, -5/+15No Soviet Russia jokes.
Please lord. - martynda, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10Could we please stop with the in Russia jokes, political agenda, and profit comments for once and give the man some respect?
Gagarin was strapped to a bomb and launched as high in the air as they possibly could with very little idea what would actually happen. He made an emergency ejection from the capsule and parachuted down, so things did not go according to plan. Ironically, he died in a routine training flight at just 34.
Also, someone posted some videos of Kittinger and to quote a youtube comment:
"Awesome to see people interested in men like Joe Kittinger and what they achieved for the world. This legend also served three tours of duty in Vietnam, was shot down and served 11 months as a P.O.W. I'm so sick of music/TV/movie 'hero' celebrities being shoved down my throat."
People like Gagarin and Kittinger should be celebrated and remembered and not overshadowed by political agenda of the time and idiotic comments by 12 year olds. - raid517, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Digg has been taken over by 12 year olds and retards.
- EntropyFan, on 10/12/2007, -5/+11@Achalemoipas
We also used to make jokes about needing papers to move around Russia.
Or about the 'party line' (the KGB tapping phones of innocent citizens)
About loss of human rights to a paranoid government
about being held without trial
Living the United States today, it doesn't seem so funny now.... - redxii, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5April 5, 2063, the Vulcans established first contact with Humanity, thereby ushering in a new era of prosperity for mankind.
- mordegieon, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8that is what I have heard, which is pretty ironic. Yuri died in a airplane crash while he was on duty.
but great facts you've got there, a lot of people think it was Armstrong. - thekak, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5First Man in Space: http://youtube.com/watch?v=J6A07G1bDHI - http://youtube.com/watch?v=81gn2oLeC_U
- XZanatos, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@ grve
I consider the space age to have started on the very first manmade object to have reached a stable orbit around the earth. So the credit still goes to the USSR for starting the space age with Sputnik 1 on October the 4th 1957. So I say we are in S-AGE year 50 - dolemite5005, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Russia FTW!
- trenkoff, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Поехали!
- grve, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8it was truly remarkable moment in our history.
and thus begun the new era - we live in year 47 SAGE (space age). - MajorApus, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6You don't actually believe that website do you?
The majority of the lunar pictures were taking by remote controlled cameras on the LM and the Rover.
Wow, I just debunked an entire article with 1 fact, cool. - BillDoor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@mirunit. Who said that the gold was to put 'man' on the Moon. Seem like it was the only real first for the US at that time. So we'll just move the goal post and say we win. I think we have benefited far more from satellites than by going to the Moon.
- lotus22, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Space exploration is nothing but a byproduct of an arms race.
You may be right in some aspects but now we might have to live there someday to continue the human race. - nc0onc0o, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4This happened on my 18th birthday. Now I always lift a glass to Yuri on April 12. For years I tried to get a autographed photo of him but the damned cold war made that impossible.
- trovoltex, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@Agrajag
That was funny! - b0relli, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5no, you are the first ***** to not read the previous comments...
- Ammo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Sorry, according to the Flat Earth Society (flatearthsociety.org) no one(or satelite, etc) has ever been to space.
- eam52guy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Not really space as it didn't go anywhere near high enough. It reached the aero-pause (space-like to the guy on the street) but not space proper.
- acdcfanbill, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3plus Yuri ejected from the craft before it landed.
- craka, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1blocked for writing in Russian
- cayqel, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I love the US. We'll put millions of dollars into high tech, highly detailed plans to shoot a rocket to the moon. But we're also crazy enough to put a man into space in a balloon and tell him to jump out.
- kolobcreek, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Didn't they also put the first dead man in space too?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1superb
- nzknzknzk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Некто ета не можит цетат :)
- ICSU, on 10/12/2007, -5/+5Did they legalize pot in 1969?
- dufromage, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1LONG LIVE SPACE RACE, LONG LIVE MOLVANIA
- loudthing, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3@noahhoward
I logged in just to digg you down for wasting my time
/if you haven't noticed the irony in what I said by now, then whatever - darkhorse85, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0so what is it?
who was the first man in space? kittinger or yuri? - mirunit, on 10/12/2007, -5/+5"putting a man in space first is a greater achievement that putting a man on the moon."
Are you kidding me? "Space" is defined as around 60 miles up. All you need is a short, parabolic trajectory with enough initial acceleration and you have achieved space flight. Space flight is really nothing in comparison to an extraterrestrial landing. How could you say that throwing somebody into the upper atmosphere "space" is more of an achievement than putting 3 people and their equipment on the moon - hundreds of thousands of miles away? - mirunit, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1The tsar bomba was never meant to be used as a weapon. Any nation that can achieve thermonuclear reaction - and has the material can build a tsar bomba, the reason they don't is that the weapon is next to totally useless due to its size and widespread destruction.
- omgroffles, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0Happy birthday to me and space conquest
- qfqf, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1In Russia there is a conspiracy theory that Gagarin didn't die in a plane crash, but that the stresses of being a test pilot broke him mentally. So they covered it up and he lived out his days in a sanitarium.
He is buried in Red Square next to other heroes and leaders of the Soviet Union. - bluenash, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3they may have got out of the blocks first, but they didn't "win" anything.
- kaelyiesta, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1Joe Kittinger might have disagreed about that.
- member57, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2And they have been playing catch up ever since....
- g30ph, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1What have you done for me lately Russia?
/Eddie Murphy Raw - Agrajag, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2Does that mean that our response was basically "Oh yeah? Well, we can blow up the ***** MOON!"
- finista, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1Nope.
- clickwir, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1Psst.... this is old news!
- finista, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2"Space flight being very much a crapshoot at the time, Soviet authorities figured Gagarin was just as likely to die upon re-entering the atmosphere as he was to return safely."
Talk about bitterness... *rolling eyes* - nerd1701, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1Technically, according to FAI rules, he didn't complete the first manned spaceflight. He bailed out of the capsule at an altitude of 7 km and parachuted to Earth since they could not withstand the hard landing of the capsule.
http://www.astronautix.com/flights/vostok1.htm -
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