Gagarin

Just some interesting pictures: Yuri Gagarin with his training aircraft, title page of his book (though 'his' has to be taken with a good dose of salt as it was edited by two Pravda reporters and one Air Force general) and one of Yuri on the telephone after his April, 1961 flight, wearing an interesting garment that I am assuming is his pressure garment, but is somewhat mysterious for a number of reasons. The book is very interesting, and heavily propagandistic--just as were the early books about the American astronauts--and since Gagarin died in 1968, it's unfortunately very hard to get his real impressions of being the first human being to enter the off-Earth realm we call 'space'. These are scans from the book 'Road to the Stars' by Yuri Gagarin, no printing date, published in Moscow, which I've obtained from Inter-Library Loan.

I have to mention the upcoming Yuri's Night celebration of 50 years since a human being first entered space; last summer I was thrilled to meet Dr. Ryan Kobrick (currently of MIT's Man-Vehicle Laboratory), founder and director of the Yuri's Night International Space Party, when he and some other MIT and NASA folk came to my little home workshop to see the pressure suit I'm building. Ryan told me about the party, and I will be going to the one in Seattle, WA. There will be parties worldwide to celebrate the idea of humans living beyond the temporary and small scale of Earth, and you can find the closest party here.