http://news.cnet.com/8301-
Fifty years goes by quickly and I failed to take note of the event even though I had seen a number of articles remembering the occasion.
- LRK -
It took a note from New Zealand to bring me out of my day to day trance of routine life events.
I should think that a number of you may well have participated if a more reflective way with a Yuri Day event.
- LRK -
---------------------------------------------
http://www.boingboing.net/
Greetings from the Moscow airport. I've been in Russia for the past few days, accompanying space journalist Miles O'Brien and crew, who are here working on a space-related documentary project. Last night, April 12, 2011, we attended a gala state celebration inside the Kremlin walls honoring the 50th anniversary of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin: the first human to escape the bounds of earth into space. President Dmitry Medvedev opened the evening with a speech about the importance of Russia's space program. Under his leadership, Russia has increased its space budget and is planning to build a new cosmodrome in Russia, cheaper and closer for Russia than the current facility in Baikonur, Kazakhstan. During the Soviet era, Kazakhstan was part of the Soviet Union; now, Russia must lease the Baikonur facility at 115 million dollars a year. "Russia must preserve its preeminence in space," Medvedev said. "We were the first to fly in space and have had a great number of achievements and must not lose our advantage."
snip
------------------------------
Maybe you participated in one of these many Yuri Night parties.
- LRK -
------------------------------
http://yurisnight.net/
snip
------------------------------
Geoff passed me these next two links.
Enjoy. - LRK -
Watch the video as well. - LRK -
------------------------------
http://rt.com/news/gagarin-
Celebrating a star: 50 years since Gagarin’s spaceflight
Published: 12 April, 2011, 08:27
A monumental feat is being celebrated across the globe. Fifty years ago, on April 12, 1961, Yury Gagarin blasted off, orbited Earth and made history, becoming the first man in space.
Before that day mankind could hardly imagine we would one day be able to stare down at our planet from above.
Baikonur cosmodrome witnessed the first-ever successful manned space flight. It was there that 50 years ago cosmonaut Yury Gagarin boarded his Vostok-1 capsule and was launched into space.
“I had the honor of taking the Vostok, a great spacecraft, to space first. I was very happy to have that honor. It was only the beginning”, said Gagarin a short while after the memorable flight.
But there was another man for whom April 12th was also the day his name shot to fame – another Yury Gagarin.
“My parents didn't know where I was serving. They only knew I had graduated from a pilots' academy and that the facility I was working at was top secret. When they heard that Yury Gagarin had been sent into space, they assumed it was me! Journalists came to our house to interview my parents but they knew nothing. I think they could have had a heart attack”, recollects Yury.
The two Yurys met in 1963. The lucky namesake ended up face to face with the cosmonaut and introduced himself. “Gagarin asked me what month I was born. I said, "March," and it seemed to me like he was going to collapse. I even stretched out my hands to hold him up. It turned out he was born in March as well!”
snip
------------------------------
Interesting video about Yury Gagarin's orbit in space in 1961 and his death in an airplane flight in 1968.
There is a nice ad in the middle of the clip. Don't stop, enjoy the ad and see the rest of the clip that follows.
- LRK -
------------------------------
http://rt.com/programs/
Yury Gagarin: two flights
The first man in outer space was the Soviet Union’s very own Yury Gagarin! On April 12, 1961 he managed a successful flight, which lasted for 108 minutes. Gagarin and his famous charming smile became the symbol of the Soviet Union. But unfortunately on March 27, 1968 the star of Gagarin disappeared from the sky… Find out more details on RT.
snip
[See video story. - LRK -]
------------------------------
Wikipedia article for Yuri Gagarin.
- LRK -
------------------------------
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin (Russian: Ю́рий Алексе́евич Гага́рин,[1] Russian pronunciation: [ˈjurʲɪj ɐlʲɪˈksʲeɪvʲɪtɕ ɡɐˈɡarʲɪn]; 9 March 1934 – 27 March 1968) was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut. He was the first human being to journey into outer space, when his Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth on April 12, 1961.
Gagarin became an international celebrity, and was awarded many medals and honours, including Hero of the Soviet Union, the nation's highest honour. Vostok 1 marked his only spaceflight, but he served as backup crew to the Soyuz 1 mission (which ended in a fatal crash). Gagarin later became deputy training director of the Cosmonaut Training Centre outside Moscow, which was later named after him. Gagarin died in 1968 when a MiG 15 training jet he was piloting crashed.
snip
On 27 March 1968, while on a routine training flight from Chkalovsky Air Base, he and flight instructor Vladimir Seryogin died in a MiG-15UTI crash near the town of Kirzhach. The bodies of Gagarin and Seryogin were cremated and the ashes were buried in the walls of the Kremlin on Red Square. Gagarin was survived by his wife Valentina, and daughters Galya and Lena.
snip
------------------------------
So now what? Fifty years in space, and where do we go now?
- LRK -
------------------------------
http://www.theatlantic.com/
Are We Disappointed With Space Exploration?
By Ross Andersen
Apr 12 2011, 2:56 PM ET
Fifty years ago today Yuri Gagarin spent just under two hours in space; a short jaunt by most standards, but one likely to earn him a lasting entry in the historical record. Hailed as a hero by half the world while the other half watched in shock, Gagarin's flight was a triumph on par with the Manhattan Project. As a feat of techno-nationalism, however, it didn't stick. In just thirty days the trick had been repeated, and before the decade was up, Gagarin was dead of a freak jet crash, and an American flag stood on the moon. Today there is reason to fear that the project of sending men into space may follow the same trajectory of its first hero.
After three decades of firing men and women into orbit, NASA is due to launch its final shuttle mission on June 28 of this year. The phasing out of the Space Shuttle is part of a larger move away from manned spaceflight. The reasons for this are manifold. First, space travel is dangerous; the story of Yuri Gagarin is not the only Icarus fable of the space age. In 1970 America watched as near disaster befell Apollo 13 on the dark side of the moon. In the years since she has seen two of her shuttles explode in the sky, one carrying a young schoolteacher. Manned trips to Mars and beyond promise to be perilous, expensive, or both. In light of these hazards astrophysicists tell us that robotic probes are our best bet for exploring the cosmos. Besides, it is urged, we have giant telescopes to see beyond where our electronic emissaries may venture. Lurking underneath these considerations is a still more troubling question: Have we been disappointed by space exploration?
snip
[Suggest you read the whole article and think about where we are and where we want to be. - LRK -]
There are other signs that the cosmos have diminished as a source of inspiration in our culture. In popular films space is a menace to humanity; a rich source of alien invasions and asteroid projectiles. The ghosts of Asimov and Sagan, both great evangelists of starstruck wonder, are on the wane. Several able explainers of physics have arisen in their wake, but none have distinguished themselves as romantics of space. Artists, the locus of creative energy in our communities, now cluster tightly in cities where blaring lights drown out the stars. Worse still, while our enchantment with futuristic technologies like the spaceship has flourished, new inventions have arisen to compete for it. Today the gadget is king, and the gadget works the exact opposite magic of the rocket; it zooms the world toward you. Our era's techno-obsessions are directed inward. Prophets promise us a singularity; a rapturous eternal future for the mind, ushered in by earthbound technologies. Life expansion, cognitive enhancement, artificial intelligence, the uploading of the mind; these are the sexy new frontiers of the 21st century. When compared with the swaggering transhumanist, the stiff in the spacesuit is bound to look a little passé. If you ask the average tycoon whether he'd rather live for five hundred years or commit five generations to visiting Alpha Centauri, the response is likely to be laughter.
And too bad, for if these fifty years are to be but a brief whimsy in the story of our species, then history should judge us cruelly; man in the first fresh days of modernity, chased by a great war into the firmament before scurrying back to the muck. To send one of our own out amongst the stars, to pour the great expanse of space through the fleshy colander of our animal consciousness: these are essential tasks in the human pursuit of meaning. Like many astronauts after him, Yuri Gagarin described the experience of looking back at the Earth in terms verging on the mystical. The view from space uniformly dilates the souls of engineers; they emerge from their ships transformed into poets. Indeed, Gagarin riffed in detailed reverie about the contrast between our violet blue oceans and coal black space, all before ending on a telling note of melancholy:
"I could have gone on flying through space forever."
That may well be his elegy. Will it be ours?
http://www.theatlantic.com/
------------------------------
Hmmmm, back to my trance with all my techno gadgets since I don't see me getting to look back from the coal black space.
In my dreams will have to do.
- LRK -
Thanks for looking up with me.
- LRK -
Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.
Newsletter: https://news.altair.com/
==============================
Greetings from the Moscow airport. I've been in Russia for the past few days, accompanying space journalist Miles O'Brien and crew, who are here working on a space-related documentary project. Last night, April 12, 2011, we attended a gala state celebration inside the Kremlin walls honoring the 50th anniversary of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin: the first human to escape the bounds of earth into space. President Dmitry Medvedev opened the evening with a speech about the importance of Russia's space program. Under his leadership, Russia has increased its space budget and is planning to build a new cosmodrome in Russia, cheaper and closer for Russia than the current facility in Baikonur, Kazakhstan. During the Soviet era, Kazakhstan was part of the Soviet Union; now, Russia must lease the Baikonur facility at 115 million dollars a year. "Russia must preserve its preeminence in space," Medvedev said. "We were the first to fly in space and have had a great number of achievements and must not lose our advantage."
snip
------------------------------
Maybe you participated in one of these many Yuri Night parties.
- LRK -
------------------------------
http://yurisnight.net/
"Circling the Earth in my orbital spaceship I marveled at the beauty of our planet. People of the world, let us safeguard and enhance this beauty — not destroy it!"
Yuri Gagarin, 1st person in space Learn more about Yuri Gagarin»
Yuri Gagarin, 1st person in space Learn more about Yuri Gagarin»
The Big Day: Yuri’s Night Celebrates 50 Years of Human Spaceflight
12 04 2011
This post is your one-stop shop for everything you need to know about today’s Yuri’s Night’s goings-on. Read on for all the details:
Today is the biggest day in the history of celebrating space exploration.
On April 12, 2011, the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s first human spaceflight and the 30th anniversary of the launch of the [...]
Read On
Today is the biggest day in the history of celebrating space exploration.
On April 12, 2011, the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s first human spaceflight and the 30th anniversary of the launch of the [...]
Read On
snip
------------------------------
Geoff passed me these next two links.
Enjoy. - LRK -
Watch the video as well. - LRK -
------------------------------
http://rt.com/news/gagarin-
Celebrating a star: 50 years since Gagarin’s spaceflight
Published: 12 April, 2011, 08:27
A monumental feat is being celebrated across the globe. Fifty years ago, on April 12, 1961, Yury Gagarin blasted off, orbited Earth and made history, becoming the first man in space.
Before that day mankind could hardly imagine we would one day be able to stare down at our planet from above.
Baikonur cosmodrome witnessed the first-ever successful manned space flight. It was there that 50 years ago cosmonaut Yury Gagarin boarded his Vostok-1 capsule and was launched into space.
“I had the honor of taking the Vostok, a great spacecraft, to space first. I was very happy to have that honor. It was only the beginning”, said Gagarin a short while after the memorable flight.
But there was another man for whom April 12th was also the day his name shot to fame – another Yury Gagarin.
“My parents didn't know where I was serving. They only knew I had graduated from a pilots' academy and that the facility I was working at was top secret. When they heard that Yury Gagarin had been sent into space, they assumed it was me! Journalists came to our house to interview my parents but they knew nothing. I think they could have had a heart attack”, recollects Yury.
The two Yurys met in 1963. The lucky namesake ended up face to face with the cosmonaut and introduced himself. “Gagarin asked me what month I was born. I said, "March," and it seemed to me like he was going to collapse. I even stretched out my hands to hold him up. It turned out he was born in March as well!”
snip
------------------------------
Interesting video about Yury Gagarin's orbit in space in 1961 and his death in an airplane flight in 1968.
There is a nice ad in the middle of the clip. Don't stop, enjoy the ad and see the rest of the clip that follows.
- LRK -
------------------------------
http://rt.com/programs/
Yury Gagarin: two flights
The first man in outer space was the Soviet Union’s very own Yury Gagarin! On April 12, 1961 he managed a successful flight, which lasted for 108 minutes. Gagarin and his famous charming smile became the symbol of the Soviet Union. But unfortunately on March 27, 1968 the star of Gagarin disappeared from the sky… Find out more details on RT.
snip
[See video story. - LRK -]
------------------------------
Wikipedia article for Yuri Gagarin.
- LRK -
------------------------------
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin (Russian: Ю́рий Алексе́евич Гага́рин,[1] Russian pronunciation: [ˈjurʲɪj ɐlʲɪˈksʲeɪvʲɪtɕ ɡɐˈɡarʲɪn]; 9 March 1934 – 27 March 1968) was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut. He was the first human being to journey into outer space, when his Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth on April 12, 1961.
Gagarin became an international celebrity, and was awarded many medals and honours, including Hero of the Soviet Union, the nation's highest honour. Vostok 1 marked his only spaceflight, but he served as backup crew to the Soyuz 1 mission (which ended in a fatal crash). Gagarin later became deputy training director of the Cosmonaut Training Centre outside Moscow, which was later named after him. Gagarin died in 1968 when a MiG 15 training jet he was piloting crashed.
snip
On 27 March 1968, while on a routine training flight from Chkalovsky Air Base, he and flight instructor Vladimir Seryogin died in a MiG-15UTI crash near the town of Kirzhach. The bodies of Gagarin and Seryogin were cremated and the ashes were buried in the walls of the Kremlin on Red Square. Gagarin was survived by his wife Valentina, and daughters Galya and Lena.
snip
------------------------------
So now what? Fifty years in space, and where do we go now?
- LRK -
------------------------------
http://www.theatlantic.com/
Are We Disappointed With Space Exploration?
By Ross Andersen
Apr 12 2011, 2:56 PM ET
Fifty years ago today Yuri Gagarin spent just under two hours in space; a short jaunt by most standards, but one likely to earn him a lasting entry in the historical record. Hailed as a hero by half the world while the other half watched in shock, Gagarin's flight was a triumph on par with the Manhattan Project. As a feat of techno-nationalism, however, it didn't stick. In just thirty days the trick had been repeated, and before the decade was up, Gagarin was dead of a freak jet crash, and an American flag stood on the moon. Today there is reason to fear that the project of sending men into space may follow the same trajectory of its first hero.
After three decades of firing men and women into orbit, NASA is due to launch its final shuttle mission on June 28 of this year. The phasing out of the Space Shuttle is part of a larger move away from manned spaceflight. The reasons for this are manifold. First, space travel is dangerous; the story of Yuri Gagarin is not the only Icarus fable of the space age. In 1970 America watched as near disaster befell Apollo 13 on the dark side of the moon. In the years since she has seen two of her shuttles explode in the sky, one carrying a young schoolteacher. Manned trips to Mars and beyond promise to be perilous, expensive, or both. In light of these hazards astrophysicists tell us that robotic probes are our best bet for exploring the cosmos. Besides, it is urged, we have giant telescopes to see beyond where our electronic emissaries may venture. Lurking underneath these considerations is a still more troubling question: Have we been disappointed by space exploration?
snip
[Suggest you read the whole article and think about where we are and where we want to be. - LRK -]
There are other signs that the cosmos have diminished as a source of inspiration in our culture. In popular films space is a menace to humanity; a rich source of alien invasions and asteroid projectiles. The ghosts of Asimov and Sagan, both great evangelists of starstruck wonder, are on the wane. Several able explainers of physics have arisen in their wake, but none have distinguished themselves as romantics of space. Artists, the locus of creative energy in our communities, now cluster tightly in cities where blaring lights drown out the stars. Worse still, while our enchantment with futuristic technologies like the spaceship has flourished, new inventions have arisen to compete for it. Today the gadget is king, and the gadget works the exact opposite magic of the rocket; it zooms the world toward you. Our era's techno-obsessions are directed inward. Prophets promise us a singularity; a rapturous eternal future for the mind, ushered in by earthbound technologies. Life expansion, cognitive enhancement, artificial intelligence, the uploading of the mind; these are the sexy new frontiers of the 21st century. When compared with the swaggering transhumanist, the stiff in the spacesuit is bound to look a little passé. If you ask the average tycoon whether he'd rather live for five hundred years or commit five generations to visiting Alpha Centauri, the response is likely to be laughter.
And too bad, for if these fifty years are to be but a brief whimsy in the story of our species, then history should judge us cruelly; man in the first fresh days of modernity, chased by a great war into the firmament before scurrying back to the muck. To send one of our own out amongst the stars, to pour the great expanse of space through the fleshy colander of our animal consciousness: these are essential tasks in the human pursuit of meaning. Like many astronauts after him, Yuri Gagarin described the experience of looking back at the Earth in terms verging on the mystical. The view from space uniformly dilates the souls of engineers; they emerge from their ships transformed into poets. Indeed, Gagarin riffed in detailed reverie about the contrast between our violet blue oceans and coal black space, all before ending on a telling note of melancholy:
"I could have gone on flying through space forever."
That may well be his elegy. Will it be ours?
http://www.theatlantic.com/
------------------------------
Hmmmm, back to my trance with all my techno gadgets since I don't see me getting to look back from the coal black space.
In my dreams will have to do.
- LRK -
Thanks for looking up with me.
- LRK -
Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.
Newsletter: https://news.altair.com/
==============================
http://itunes.apple.com/us/
NASA Lunar Electric Rover Simulator
By NASA
Description
Welcome to the NASA Lunar Electric Rover (LER) Simulator. You don’t need a driver’s license, but you still need to buckle up as the LER Simulator gives you a glimpse of what it might be like to support the activities of a functioning Lunar Outpost. Get busy. You never know if your skills here will become a major part of the NASA Astronaut
http://www.nasa.gov/
snip
Whether it's the latest launch or the coolest gadgets, NASA EDGE hosts provide an offbeat, funny and informative look behind the NASA curtain. If you've ever wanted to learn about NASA but thought you needed to be a rocket scientist, wait no longer. Watch NASA EDGE and embrace your inner astronaut.
snip
==============================
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/
March 18, 2011
A space-simulation chamber at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., is temporary home this month for the Curiosity rover, which will land on Mars next year.
Tests inside the 25-foot-diameter chamber (7.6-meters) are putting the rover through various sequences in environmental conditions resembling Martian surface conditions. After the chamber's large door was sealed last week, air was pumped out to near-vacuum pressure, liquid nitrogen in the walls dropped the temperature to minus 130 degrees Celsius (minus 202 degrees Fahrenheit), and a bank of powerful lamps simulated the intensity of sunshine on Mars.
Images of Curiosity in the chamber just before the door was sealed are at: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.
snip
==============================
WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK
==============================
NASA Lunar Electric Rover Simulator
By NASA
Description
Welcome to the NASA Lunar Electric Rover (LER) Simulator. You don’t need a driver’s license, but you still need to buckle up as the LER Simulator gives you a glimpse of what it might be like to support the activities of a functioning Lunar Outpost. Get busy. You never know if your skills here will become a major part of the NASA Astronaut
snip
Whether it's the latest launch or the coolest gadgets, NASA EDGE hosts provide an offbeat, funny and informative look behind the NASA curtain. If you've ever wanted to learn about NASA but thought you needed to be a rocket scientist, wait no longer. Watch NASA EDGE and embrace your inner astronaut.
snip
==============================
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/
March 18, 2011
A space-simulation chamber at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., is temporary home this month for the Curiosity rover, which will land on Mars next year.
Tests inside the 25-foot-diameter chamber (7.6-meters) are putting the rover through various sequences in environmental conditions resembling Martian surface conditions. After the chamber's large door was sealed last week, air was pumped out to near-vacuum pressure, liquid nitrogen in the walls dropped the temperature to minus 130 degrees Celsius (minus 202 degrees Fahrenheit), and a bank of powerful lamps simulated the intensity of sunshine on Mars.
Images of Curiosity in the chamber just before the door was sealed are at: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.
snip
==============================
WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK
==============================
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