Today would have been Yuriy Gagarin's 70th birthday.

Today would have been Yuriy Gagarin's 70th birthday.

He didn't build his rocket, or fund it, or fuel it -- but he got into it,
knowing enough about what there was to be afraid of.

And after he came back, those fears were never so worrisome for everybody
else.

He was the first man in orbit -- and the first man to realize it wasn't
something to be frightened of.

Here's my 1991 essay on my own assessment of his role in history.

http://www.astronautix.com/articles/celrsary.htm

Jim O
www.jamesoberg.com

On Mon, 08 Mar 2004 21:42:38 GMT, "JimO"
wrote:

Today would have been Yuriy Gagarin's 70th birthday.

He didn't build his rocket, or fund it, or fuel it -- but he got into it,
knowing enough about what there was to be afraid of.

And after he came back, those fears were never so worrisome for everybody
else.

He was the first man in orbit -- and the first man to realize it wasn't
something to be frightened of.

Here's my 1991 essay on my own assessment of his role in history.

http://www.astronautix.com/articles/celrsary.htm

Neat. And isn't it ironic, that both the US and USSR behaved the same
way by keeping Glenn and Gagarin on the ground from then on......

--

Find out about Australia's most dangerous Doomsday Cult:
http://users.bigpond.net.au/wanglese/pebble.htm

"You can't fool me, it's turtles all the way down."

On Mon, 08 Mar 2004 23:15:55 GMT, Wally Anglesea™
wrote:

On Mon, 08 Mar 2004 21:42:38 GMT, "JimO"
wrote:

Today would have been Yuriy Gagarin's 70th birthday.

He didn't build his rocket, or fund it, or fuel it -- but he got into it,
knowing enough about what there was to be afraid of.

And after he came back, those fears were never so worrisome for everybody
else.

He was the first man in orbit -- and the first man to realize it wasn't
something to be frightened of.

Here's my 1991 essay on my own assessment of his role in history.

http://www.astronautix.com/articles/celrsary.htm

Neat. And isn't it ironic, that both the US and USSR behaved the same
way by keeping Glenn and Gagarin on the ground from then on......

Nah, Glenn flew just a few years ago.

On Tue, 09 Mar 2004 00:04:43 GMT, Mister Fixit wrote:

On Mon, 08 Mar 2004 23:15:55 GMT, Wally Anglesea™
wrote:

On Mon, 08 Mar 2004 21:42:38 GMT, "JimO"
wrote:

Today would have been Yuriy Gagarin's 70th birthday.

He didn't build his rocket, or fund it, or fuel it -- but he got into it,
knowing enough about what there was to be afraid of.

And after he came back, those fears were never so worrisome for everybody
else.

He was the first man in orbit -- and the first man to realize it wasn't
something to be frightened of.

Here's my 1991 essay on my own assessment of his role in history.

http://www.astronautix.com/articles/celrsary.htm

Neat. And isn't it ironic, that both the US and USSR behaved the same
way by keeping Glenn and Gagarin on the ground from then on......

Nah, Glenn flew just a few years ago.

Acknowledged, but it was a conscious decision to keep him grounded. He
got to fly because he lived long enough to lobby for it.

--

Find out about Australia's most dangerous Doomsday Cult:
http://users.bigpond.net.au/wanglese/pebble.htm

"You can't fool me, it's turtles all the way down."

In article ,
Wally Anglesea™ wrote:
Neat. And isn't it ironic, that both the US and USSR behaved the same
way by keeping Glenn and Gagarin on the ground from then on......

Not really. Glenn's grounding almost certainly would have been lifted
soon enough if he'd stayed around; Shepard eventually walked on the Moon,
after all. Glenn played up his grounding during his campaign for a
passenger seat on the shuttle, but really, the main reason he never got
another flight assignment was simply that he became ineligible when he
left the astronaut corps.

Save your sympathy for Gagarin, who really was pretty thoroughly grounded.
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |

On Mon, 08 Mar 2004 23:15:55 GMT, Wally Anglesea™
wrote:

Neat. And isn't it ironic, that both the US and USSR behaved the same
way by keeping Glenn and Gagarin on the ground from then on......

....Not exactly. Gagarin was pretty much permanently grounded by the
Politburo because they were far more afraid of the prestige loss if he
were killed in an actual flight. As it was they wound up with more egg
in their face when he augured a training flight that, by all accounts,
didn't have -that- much to do with any sort of mission training.

....Glenn, on the other hand, was temporarily grounded thanks to JFK
pulling the same political games. However, had he a) stuck with the
corps and b) not slipped in the shower and knocked his noggin out of
kilter for a few months/years/whatever, odds are high that the
desire/need to keep at least one of the Original 7 in flight would
have resulted in his being given a flight on probably one of the early
Apollo flight test missions. Personally, I doubt he would have gotten
a moon landing mission simply because he didn't have *that* high a
science background. IIRC, even Shepard had better grasp of what to
look for rock-wise, and by most accounts his was the worst performance
of all the landings, relatively speaking.

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

Voice of Russia audio tribute - 220k wav file gar70aud.wav

http://www.geocities.com/kent_betts2000/p28.html

(BTW -I believe the announcer mis-states Gagarin's age at the time of the
flying accident...or it's date....doesn't add up anyway.)

"Wally Anglesea™" wrote:

Neat. And isn't it ironic, that both the US and USSR behaved the same
way by keeping Glenn and Gagarin on the ground from then on......

Why was Gagarin grounded?

On Tue, 9 Mar 2004 06:20:37 -0600, "Kent Betts"
wrote:

Voice of Russia audio tribute - 220k wav file gar70aud.wav

http://www.geocities.com/kent_betts2000/p28.html

(BTW -I believe the announcer mis-states Gagarin's age at the time of the
flying accident...or it's date....doesn't add up anyway.)

They got the date right- March 27th, 1968, but he would have been 34,
not 38 as stated in the report.

Thanks for the .wav!

Dale

Just curious- Gagarin and Leonov (I didn't look up later cosmonaut birthdates)
were a decade or so younger then their Mercury counterparts. With my sample
of two, that probably doesn't mean anything, but could a 25-27 year old have
made the Mercury 7, or did the US and USSR have some differences in their
selection criteria?

Thanks,
Dale