Thetownend.com

Yuri Gagarin became the first man to journey into outer space.

I think I might get a bottle of vodka in to celebrate.

Google told you that.

Remember it well....

Less well remembered is Svetlana Savitskaya....who in 84 became the first woman cosmonaut to do an extra-vehicular space walk on Salyut 7.
 Useful quiz question...

Nah I've been looking forward to it for weeks. Why would I google it if I didn't know it was today anyway?

Go to google and you'll see what he means.

That's pretty cool.

Yeah

But it's not until this thread I knew what it was for.

they were talking about this on the radio.  one thing the russians didn't originally admit to was that he bailed out and parachuted in on the return journey.

the reason was that there was some international agreement that the achievement wouldn't be recognised unless man returned to earth in his craft.  thankfully we've moved on from that.

you'd have to have balls of steel to work as a pilot in the early aviation and space exploration days wouldn't you!

Got the vodka in. Going to sit and swear in pretend Russian.

Actually a dog beat a man to space,died after a few hours i think,probably bored stiff.

Laika, in the late 50's.

There's so many things that we take for granted, we knew the world was round, but Gagarin was the first person to see that curviture properly from above. Imagine that, orbiting around, seeing the earth's place in the solar system with the changes from night to day. Seeing the Americas, Eurasia, Australia, Africa and the poles. Knowing you were the first person to do it. Knowing that there was a good chance that you might make it back down alive - I guess in the high and all the adrenaline of being there, you might not even care.

Just being the person who was chosen to go up. And having the balls to do it. Gagarin was a hero.

Indeed he was,died young in an unexplained jet crash,the basicness of that spaceship makes it incredible that he landed back on earth,let alone back in Russia.

If you're going to land from space in one country, russias a fair bet tbf

Back then, they had the whole Soviet Union to aim at.

We had rocket launching capability, the test site was on the Isle of Wight, but the launch site in Australia.

Sent up a few satellites, but gave it up as too expensive in 1971.

As every non-retarded economist knows, cutting spending in a recession just makes it worse. A big European push of spending on a space program would not only create jobs, but increase scientific research jobs and push through technological advances.

Unfortunately people don't work on common sense.

But we do have a space agency

http://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/8943205.UK_space_agency_is_ready_for_lift_off/

Most of us live in the real world Ben :D

Fact is man cannot even utilize what gifts they have on earth let alone Space,the Space race was all about macho nation power,it wasn't ever a serious proposition,and probably never will be.

I prefer this version:

http://newsthump.com/2011/03/30/swindon-based-uk-space-agency-launches-mission-to-cirencester/

:)

Oh I know. But if we all lived in my socialist paradise then we'd have resources to spare on stuff like the space program. The USSR got it horribly wrong, but it's no coincidence that they won the space race.

But either way. Isn't the first person to break the boundaries of our home planet, completely fucking amazing?

Surely it's the greatest achievement of mankind. It's the ultimate show of us improving ourselves beyond our need for survival - we've flown into space for fucks sake!

No we wouldn't, it'd get eaten up by your White Lightning budget

you just reminded me that I need to find that post where you got pedantic about Portugal being our "neighbour"

that was petty and pedantic as fuck, if I can find it again then I'm going to ban you.

but anyway. we're past midnight anyway. On a day which should be a two day world wide holiday.

He was the first person to go into space for fucks sake. Forget the moon landings. Today should have been a national holiday worldwide.

Here you go
And just to tip you over the edge
Then it would be a global holiday.

(I've got a busy week, could do with being banned :))

I'm pretty sure you know that "I know" that Portugal isn't our direct "neighbour", and that I was probably talking in terms of a world wide neighbourhood.

But yeah, maybe you could do with a week off. good night sweet prince

I did. I'm sorry Ben. I'm ashamed of myself.

I think fB would see the inhabitants of any planet orbiting Alpha Centauri as our neighbour.

Alpha Centauri is part of a binary star system. It's difficult to believe it would have planets orbiting that could sustain life. No goldilocks zone.

OK....what about Proxima Centauri then?

This thread passed me by but here's an interesting piece on what some people think may have happened had Russia beaten the US to the moon.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13041326

Unsure. Because of the close proximity to the binary system at Alpha Centauri it could be considered a tertiary system. Also it is a red dwarf star so isn't burning very hot and is quite small. You'd be best off looking at other yellow dwarf stars since we know with absolute certainty that can sustain life :)

This year is the 50 anniversary of the Drake Equation.....this is the famous back of fag packet contention, that if you take the number of stars in a galaxy, x by the number of observable galaxies....allow for a long shot number of planets, then another long shot capable of sustaining life, you've got a lot of potential aliens.

Frank Drake went on to start SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence).....which is still going today in various forms.

Drake's project was to scan various sectors of the cosmos for radio waves, which might have come from intelligent life. He, or his successors have yet to find any.

Others have gone for optical route of looking for incoming lasers, or the outgoing route of sending our own messages out to alert aliens.

It is possible to get involved in the search.....could give fB something to do....

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/

Hehe don't fo it! I remember the SETI wars of 2003. When a module was complete you got a credit for 1 module. This credit was uploaded onto the interwen into a league table. Groups of people could enter as a team. People got obsessed by it all. In the end there was almost as much effort put into climbing the league as your average TEF pressure group nipper of the year contest.

We never did find ET though.  Which is the morale, it like looking for a needle in a hay stack.

Did they ever explain the WOW! signal?

No it remains a mystery....

ET don't call us during the time of austerity please.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/seti_suspends_its_search_for_alien_life.php

 :(

Oh man. That's depressing.