To ask you to look at these beautiful faces and remember them?

[Burgersandfries]

60 years ago the man with a beautiful smile, Yury Gagarin (left) became the first human ever to go to space. All thanks to the genius of a man next to him, Sergey Korolev (right), who is truly the father of modern space exploration!
I’m feeling a bit sad that our media are more interested in pubs reopening rather than one of the greatest achievements of humanity on this day... These men should be celebrated way more, especially Sergey Korolev, a genius scientist and wonderful human being!
So I guess my AIBU is
AIBU - eh, I couldn’t care less
AINBU - yes, let’s have more coverage about this amazing leap of science!

On a brighter side I read somewhere long ago that Gagarin’s attractiveness was one of the reasons why he was chosen!

Well, if you are going to send someone on a mission that they have roughly a 75% chance of not returning alive from, and you are in the habit of martyring your dead and waving giant paintings of Heroes of the Soviet Union around, why would you choose someone whose visage is sure to ruin the ambience of your parade every single year? :p

Personally, I'm not 100% convinced Gagarin was the first Soviet in space, more that he was the first to successfully return to both Soviet territory, and do so alive.

@Burgersandfries These men should be celebrated way more, especially Sergey Korolev, a genius scientist and wonderful human being!

Have you watched For All Mankind? It's an alt-history tv series where the point of change in our histories is that Korolev survived his surgery in 66 and as a result the USSR made it to the moon first. It's not explicitly mentioned in the series but the creator, Ronald D Moore has stated it's Korolev's lost potential that inspired the series and he appeared as a character in the second to last episode.

As a little girl I was fascinated by Gagarin, Tereshkova (first woman in space) and the whole
Soviet space programme. I wanted to learn Russian and be a cosmonaut too.

@XDownwiththissortofthingX hmmm interesting theory, wouldn’t surprise me if it was true
@alittleprivacy i’ll look it up, thank you for suggestion!
I’d love Hollywood to make a film about Alexei Leonov, the first man to walk in space, his description of how it went before, during and after is a screenplay of its own, it would be such a thrilling space adventure story!

@ChaToilLeam how wonderful! My parents were teenagers back then and becoming engineers or physicists was all the hype among their age group. So much so my dad actually became one not just because of Gagarin obviously, but the influence was there

Anyone else excited by the possibility that soon there will be a Moon base and that there are already candidate astronauts?

I follow the Angry Astronaut - anyone else?

I was amazed to learn that Gagarin didn't come down in a capsule with parachutes like we see today. High in the atmosphere with his re-entry capsule still hot, he got up, opened the door and jumped out to parachute down to earth - that's some bravery.

When we went to Bulgaria on holiday, I read there was a statue of him and a memorial to all the cosmonauts in the park in Varna. I insisted on trekking DH and DS through the park in the rain to go find it.

The only two other things I really know about Gagarin are that he was one for the ladies and had to make a quick escape out of bedroom windows on a couple of occasions.

Before his historic flight he stopped on his way to the rocket and had a wee on the wheel of the bus taking him to the launchpad. Apparently male cosmonauts still do this for luck and as a tribute to him.

The Vokshod capsules had a ballistic trajectory - these were not slowed down by much when passing through the atmosphere so you had to bail out and parachute the last 7km.

One of the main reasons Valentina Tereshkova became a cosmonaut was that she joined the local parachute club when she worked in a factory.

Well while it is an achievement I agree with the poster who mentioned the millions spent space exploration

I think it a total waste of money

It isn't. It has driven advances in engineering and technology in a wide range of scientific processes from materials science to big data handling. We would not have pocked supercomputers or the Internet as we know it without the space program.

Not sure I mentioned it but also the space program being instrumental in ending the Cold War.

I’m with @ShesMadeATwatOfMePam it’s a total waste. Pointlessly killed animals in horrific ways. Velcro and Dustbusters aren’t enough to justify the money wasted. We should be investing that into the environment here, instead we destroy the environment to go up there. In Cornwall they are spending millions on a new spaceport - desperately needs a bigger or second main hospital but nope, space it is.

Why the negativity? Although I am also critical of the space program and the sheer amount of waste that does happen it has also done a great deal to broaden mankind's horizons and to transcend nationalism as well as bring up and upgrade science and technology across the board.