TT Scale. The Ideal Scale.

Today is the 50th anniversary of the first man in space Yuri Gagarin. Salut to our Russian buddies!

Salut, tovarish!

And for those with deep pockets, you can celebrate with this (totally badass):

I was thinking about Gagarin last night and at work today.

The salute goes to him, but the benefit and the bravo... to all of humanity.

I had to conclude that Gagarin's space flight is something I have to categorise in the Top Ten achievements/discoveries/inventions of all of human history.

In (roughly) chronological order:

Fire
The wheel
Writing
Zero (as a mathematical concept)
Printing press (Gutenberg)
Steam power
Electricity
The Wright bros' first flight (though you could make a case for Otto Lilienthal or the Montgolfier brothers instead of the Wrights)
Gagarin's space flight
Atomic theory.

That's just my take, to be sure, but in my opinion, those are the ten most significant "things" to have happened over human history - the things that enabled everything else to happen. Since it's Gagarin's day today, I'll explain my reasoning only for including him on this list: very simply, his flight proved that humanity is not bound to this planet - that the sky is NOT the limit, we can go as far as we want.

In a world that's so constantly filled with negatives and sadness, I think the symbolism of Gagarin's first flight is something extremely positive and hopeful - something that must definitely not be allowed to fall into the simple "history" category, but actively remembered and celebrated...

(and now I'll stop... my apologies for the diversion)

It's actually a bit ironic that (obviously not on the exact day) the space shuttle is being retired. Too bad.

Well, today is/was also the 30th anniversary of the first launch of the Space Shuttle... but that saddens me that it's being retired without a successor...

Marquette wrote:Well, today is/was also the 30th anniversary of the first launch of the Space Shuttle

Really??? I had no idea.

Yeah, first launch of the Columbia was on the 20th anniversary of Gagarin's flight... oddly enough.

I have no idea if that was by design or by accident, though.

Marquette wrote:Well, today is/was also the 30th anniversary of the first launch of the Space Shuttle... but that saddens me that it's being retired without a successor...

I am sure that, if Americans ask nicely, Russians will sell them a few of their Soyuz spacecraft

Marquette wrote:Well, today is/was also the 30th anniversary of the first launch of the Space Shuttle... but that saddens me that it's being retired without a successor...

Makes me think how lucky I was to see the launch of Enterprise from Florida some years ago. Really was an awsome and unbeleivable experience for me. I watched that thing from a mass of daylight during darkness to a small tiny white speck and even now my got a chill thinking about it. Luckily even got to see a rake of Diesels in Taft yard on my way there.