Every year as the anniversary of the first human spaceflight approaches, I receive calls inquiring about the validity of Yuri Gagarin’s claim as the first human in space. The legitimate questions focus on the fact that Gagarin did not land inside his spacecraft.
Gagarin is one of those super human people that makes me feel grossly inadequate. Look at him. Qualified technically, insane enough to get strapped into a ballistic missile and then eject out of it during re-entry, and handsome too. Cosmonauts and Astronauts are so many sigmas from normal that it’s hard to believe they’re the same species as the rest of us.
Reminds me of a line of Yeager’s from the movie The Right Stuff:
You think a monkey knows he’s sitting on a rocket that might explode? These astronauts know that. I’ll tell you something. It takes a special man to volunteer for a suicide mission. Especially when it’s on TV. Old Gus, he did all right.
Gagarin is one of those super human people that makes me feel grossly inadequate. Look at him. Qualified technically, insane enough to get strapped into a ballistic missile and then eject out of it during re-entry, and handsome too. Cosmonauts and Astronauts are so many sigmas from normal that it’s hard to believe they’re the same species as the rest of us.
Reminds me of a line of Yeager’s from the movie The Right Stuff: