Daily Archives: April 17, 2022

Tensions ran high at the Baikonur Cosmodrome on the morning of April 12, 1961, as the Soviet Union prepared to launch the first human into space. Of the 16 previous attempts to propel the U.S.S.R.s Vostok rocket into orbit, half had failed. Two of the space programs top engineers reportedly had to take tranquilizers that day as they waited for liftoff at the Kazakh launch site.

But Yuri Gagarin remained calm in the capsule atop the rocket. After months of rigorous physical and technical training, the 27-year-old cosmonaut had been chosen for the historic flight in part for his unflappability. Intelligent, diligent, and well-liked among his comrades, one memo written by Soviet Air Force doctors and obtained by historian Asif Siddiqi noted that Gagarin understands life better than a lot of his friends.

At 9:07 a.m., Gagarin called out Poyekhali!Russian for Off we go!as the rocket lifted off. He narrated his experiences to those on the ground as the rockets acceleration to 17,000 miles an hour pushed him back into his seat. I see the Earth. The g-load is increasing somewhat. I feel excellent, in a good mood. I see the clouds. The landing site ... it's beautiful. What beauty.

Moments later, the Soviet cosmonaut became the first person in space and, 89 minutes after launch, the first person to orbit the planet. It was a pivotal moment in the space race between the United States and Soviet Union that would put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. But it isnt where the story of human spaceflight truly begins: That trajectory was charted years earlier by another Soviet success.

(Subscriber exclusive: Explore 50 years of lunar visits with our newest moon map.)

Despite being allies during World War II, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. grew increasingly suspicious of one another as the war drew to a close in 1945. The U.S. had just demonstrated its ability to destroy entire cities by dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to force Japans surrender. Thus began the Cold War, in which the U.S. and U.S.S.R. jockeyed for world dominance.

To prove their superior technological capabilities, both countries began to build massive nuclear arsenals and rockets capable of hitting targets across the world. In the mid-1950s, both countries announced plans to use these rockets to propel artificial satellites into space. While the U.S. scheduled a 1958 launch for its Project Vanguard, the Soviets quietly resolved to beat the Americans to the punch.

This cannon launched our love of space

The urge to explore beyond Earth inspired great fictional works like From the Earth to the Moon and A Trip to the Moon. In turn, these early depictions of space travel made a lasting impression on real-life rocket scientists.

On October 4, 1957, the world was taken by surprise when the Soviet Union announced that it had launched a satellite called Sputnik, Russian for traveling companion, into orbit. Although it was no larger than a beach ball and had limited technical capabilities, Americans were frightened as they heard its radio signature beep, beep, beep as it passed overhead.

President Dwight Eisenhower had his own concerns. White House officials fretted over whether the world would see the Soviet Union as the more sophisticated superpower, writing in one report that Sputniks launch would generate myth, legend and enduring superstition of a kind peculiarly difficult to eradicate or modify, which the U.S.S.R. can exploit to its advantage.

Unwilling to concede space to the Soviet Union, the U.S. established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in July 1958 and began its own pursuit of spaceflight in earnest.

Human space travel was not a novel concept in the 1950s. The U.S. had been launching rockets with animalsincluding fruit flies and rhesus macaquesinto suborbital space since the late 1940s, while the U.S.S.R. began launching dogs in 1951. Just weeks after Sputniks 1957 launch, the Soviets famously sent a dog named Laika into orbit. (Laika died within hours of the flight from heat and stress.)

(Subscriber exclusive: See a visual timeline of every animal ever sent to space.)

But the true goal was to send humans to space. In 1958 NASA launched Project Mercury with three specific goals: Launch an American into orbit around Earth, investigate the human bodys ability to tolerate spaceflight, and bring both the spacecraft and astronaut home safety. The unstated goal: Accomplish all of this before the Soviets.

Yet once again the U.S.S.R. proved a step ahead. Gagarins historic flight took place a month before astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American in space on May 5, 1961. Although Shepards 15-minute suborbital flight aboard Freedom 7 was a key milestonewatched by millions of television viewersit was overshadowed by Gagarins journey all the way around Earth.

Weeks after Shepards flight, President John F. Kennedy stood before a joint session of the U.S. Congress. Acknowledging that the country hadnt treated space exploration with enough urgency, he declared his intention to make it a priority and issued a new challenge: Put an American on the moon by the end of the decade.

No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish, he said. In a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moonif we make this judgment affirmatively, it will be an entire nation.

Before NASA could venture to the moon, however, its scientists and engineers had much to learn. The space agency pushed forward with Project Mercury, making astronaut John Glenn the first American to orbit Earth in February 1962. In May 1963 Gordon Cooper completed a 22-orbit flight, a journey that took about 34 hours and 20 minutes. A month later, though, cosmonaut Valery Bykovsky spent four days and 23 hours in spacestill the record for the longest solo spaceflightand Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to fly to space.

After Mercury, NASA advanced its spaceflight capabilities with Project Gemini. Considered a bridge to the moon, Geminis goals were to rendezvous and dock in orbit, test atmospheric reentry maneuvers, and determine how longer periods of space travel affected humans.

Meanwhile, the Soviets were still logging milestones. In March 1965 cosmonaut Alexei Leonov became the first person to exit an orbiting spacecraft. Lasting 12 minutes, the spacewalk was particularly harrowing: Leonovs spacesuit was so rigid he had difficulty reentering the spacecraft and ultimately had to release some of his suits pressure to close the airlock behind him.

Ten weeks later Ed White became the first American to walk in space, spending 23 minutes floating at the end of a 25-foot umbilical line while he and astronaut James McDivitt in the Gemini 4 capsule circled Earth at 17,000 miles an hour. After that the U.S. began to gain on the Soviets: In December 1965 the astronauts aboard Gemini 7 set the record for the most time in space during a two-week mission. Gemini 8 achieved the first space docking in 1966though a malfunction sent the spacecraft spinning out of control, to be narrowly recovered by a 35-year-old Neil Armstrong in the commanders seat.

After 10 crewed flights in five years, the program ended with Gemini 12 on November 15, 1966a mission during which Edwin Buzz Aldrin logged a record-setting five hours and 30 minutes exploring outside a spacecraft. At last it was time to go to the moon.

As it conducted the Gemini missions, NASA had already begun developing the spacecraft for the Apollo program. The vehicle included a command/service module that would fly to the moon and enter orbit, and a lunar module that would undock for landing and then blast off to rejoin the command module for the return trip to Earth.

But the Apollo program got off to a tragic start. On January 27, 1967, astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee were killed in a fire on the launchpad during a ground test for their planned February mission. An investigation concluded that the fire was sparked by a short circuit in the wires near Grissoms seat, and that it spread quickly due to high oxygen levels and flammable materials in the cabin.

Following a lengthy reevaluation of the design and safety of the spacecraft, the first crewed Apollo mission launched on October 11, 1968, when Apollo 7 blasted into Earth orbit. On the first of 11 days in space, the three astronauts aboard came down with coldslearning the hard way that mucus cannot drain from the head in the weightlessness of space.

The mission was followed by the first flight all the way to the moon, more than 230,000 miles away. Before Apollo 8, the farthest humans had been from Earth was about 850 miles. The crew orbited the moon 10 times between December 24 and December 25, reading the opening lines of Genesis to a captivated audience of roughly a billion peoplea quarter of the global populationduring a Christmas Eve radio broadcast. The three astronauts were the first to see the far side of the moon with their own eyes and watch as Earth rose over the lunar horizon.

Apollo 9 was the first flight with the lunar module, testing the spacecraft in Earth orbit. Apollo 10 took the lunar module to the moon and descended to within 50,000 feet of the surface.

Finally on July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 blasted off. On the fifth day in space, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin began preparations to land the lunar module Eagle on the moons surface. They touched down at precisely 3:17 p.m. Houston time on July 20and hours later, at 9:56 p.m., Armstrong became the first person to step on the moon, famously proclaiming: Thats one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

Over the next two hours, Armstrong and Aldrin collected soil and rock samples and set up experiments. They left an American flag planted on the moons surface and a plaque that reads, We came in peace for all mankind.

The U.S. would make five more successful crewed trips to the moons surface in the years that followed. Astronauts collected samples, ran scientific experiments, and tested a lunar rover. The program ended in December 1972 with Apollo 17, which saw astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spend more than three days on the moon.

(A brief history of moon exploration.)

After the successful missions to the moon, the U.S. and the Soviet Union began to collaborate. In 1975 the countries launched their first joint mission, Apollo-Soyuz, in which American and Soviet spacecraft successfully docked with one another while in orbitallowing their crews to meet in space. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the U.S. and Russia continued their partnership in space, working together to build the International Space Station.

Several countries have since made uncrewed journeys to the moon, but the U.S. remains the sole country whose astronauts have set foot on the lunar surface. NASA intends to return astronauts to the moon by 2025 with its Artemis program, and other countries such as China also plan to send humans to the moon in the coming years or decades.

In the future, humans may venture all the way to Mars. Such a journey would require technologies that do not exist yetbut the same was true when the Apollo program was announced six decades ago.

We choose to go to the moon, Kennedy told the nation in a 1962 address. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.

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How the space race launched an era of exploration beyond Earth - National Geographic

Space travel has been a trending topic since celebrities landed a seat on the rocket ship, and Space Perspective is opening up a luxurious out-of-this-world opportunity for anyone to take flight.

Yes, that means you can go to space, too!

The tourism company created an upscale lounge attached to a SpaceBalloon for people to travel 6 hours off land to the edge of space, and the whole experience will be organized by Miami hospitality expert David Grutman.

The entrepreneur and now Space Experience Curator owns Groot Hospitality, which is known to be in charge of the biggest nightlife venues in Miami, Florida. Some of his company's hotspots include Komodo and LIV at the Fontainebleau, to name a few.

Customers will be entering the Neptune One which had a test run at Space Coast Spaceport located next to NASA's Kennedy Space Center and the launch was successful.

Now, the focus has been on the time spent at the lounge, which Grutman told Narcity he's "so excited to be working on such a great project."

Comfortably padded chairs, mood lighting, in-flight Wi-Fi, and a 360-degree view of the edge of space are a few of the amenities you get.

With an expert like Grutman in charge, you bet the drink menu will be top-of-the-line cosmic-themed beverages.

"We have so many ideas on how we can customize the journey from birthday celebrations and corporate getaways, to creating seminal moments that will capture the imaginations of all," says Grutman.

Flights are scheduled for 2024, and they are already sold out!

The voyage is priced at $125,000 with a $1,000 refundable deposit per seat.

Before you get going, check our Responsible Travel Guide so you can be informed, be safe, be smart, and most of all, be respectful on your adventure.

This articles right-hand cover image was used for illustrative purposes only.

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You Can Take A Boozy Space Travel Flight & The Experience Is Curated By This Miami Hospitality Owner - Narcity Canada

Team chemistry

Lindgren said the group has had several opportunities to bond, including sea kayaking off the coast of Washington state.

That team spirit, crew cohesion, is one of those things you cant really train for, he said, adding that its exciting to serve on a team that inspires the next generation and shows what is possible when we work together in an international partnership.

Lindgren said the mission patch, which is worn on the shoulder of their uniforms and features a dragonfly, was designed by his daughter.

We wanted to reconnect with the earth with our patch, he explained. The dragonfly is a beautiful and agile flyer, and in many cultures is a sign of good fortune.

Lindgren said blasting off from the Kennedy Space Center for the first time, where his friends and family can attend the launch, is especially meaningful to him since his last launch was from Kazakhstan.

Space travel feels like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so to be able to do it a second time seems surreal, he said, adding that his pre-flight traditions include launching model rockets on the beach with his family.

While Lindgren said there wont be bagpipe playing this time around, there may be other surprises in store.

What an amazing time to be part of NASA, he concluded. I feel like we won the lottery. We have programs that are figuring out how to get our astronauts to the moon, with Mars in our sights. There used to always be a running joke that Mars is 30 years away, and I have felt that horizon shrink.

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CSU astronaut alum will command mission leaving for space station April 23 - Colorado State University

The cynical narrative around the private space racefeelsunique to this moment of growing discontent about wealthy technologists and inequality, but it perfectly mirrors cynical (often forgotten) reactions to the early pursuit of air and space travel. We did a round up.

George W. Melville, Engineer-in-Chief of the U.S. Navy, wrote a scathing article about the pursuit of manned flight. He began with a Shakespeare quote that implied the goal was a childishvain fantasythatis as thin of substance as the air:

On the very first page he declared the entire notion a wasteful and delusional endeavor:

There probably can be foundno better example of the speculative tendency carrying manto the verge of the chimerical than in his attempts to imitate the birds, or no field where so much inventive seed has been sown with so little return as in the attempts of man to fly successfully through the air.

The New York Times predicted manned flight would take between 1 and 10 million years to achieve, in an article titled Flying Machines Which Do Not Fly. The piece ended: To the ordinary man, it would seem as if effort might be employed more profitably.

Only nine weeks later, the Wright Brothers achieved manned flight.

Once the Wright Brothers proved flight was possible, some assumed it was just a pointless rich play thing. Famed astronomer William H. Pickering said, The expense would be prohibitive to any but the capitalist who could use his own yacht.

We conquered the skies, then space beckoned

In 1955, President Eisenhower announced the first U.S. satellite program. When asked about the project, a British astronomer replied:Space travel is utter bilge,saying it would be a frightful waste of public money.

When President Kennedy announced his moonshot, there was some enthusiasm, but soon a movement grew against the idea. Barry Goldwater said it was a big waste (at a $100-a-plate dinner) and that the U.S. was moon-struck, saying:While our eyes are fixed upon it, we could lose the earth or be buried in it.

Many Americans and even astronomers opposed the plan for various reasons. Even former President Eisenhower (who created NASA) said:Anybody who would spend $40 billion in a race to the moon for national prestige is nuts.The term moondoggle was coined, and it stuck.

When the day of the moon landing arrived, public approval was higher. The entire world was excited but not quite everyone. The Guardian quoted a teachers union organizer who said he had decided to go to bed early on the night of July 20th, 1969 because it was a trivial prestige exercise which ignored the social conditions existing in the world.

These are important reminders that pathological cynics alwayswill find a way to complain. Before air and space travel were possible, they said it was impossible. When they were proven wrong, they said it was an egotistical waste of money with no real utility.The pattern continues today.

This article was originally published on the Pessimists Archive. It is reprinted with permission of the author.

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NYT once said airplanes would take 10 million years to develop - Big Think

The QUID was designed using polytetrafluoroethylene, a polymer that is heavily favoured on space missions for its durability and versatility. But while the age of space travel for people with deep pockets seems to be here, adoption of the QUID hasn't kept pace so far. (Illustration by Suneesh K.)

The unexpected and aggressive bid to buy Twitter, his favorite marketing platform, is not deterring Elon Musk from pursuing his holy grail of space travel for private human beings. Work on Starship, SpaceXs 400-foot tall rocket which will be the vehicle to carry groups of people beyond Earth, ostensibly to colonise Moon and Mars, is under way. As of now only prototypes have been tested with multiple high-altitude flight tests and going into space seems a long way off.

But if and when it does happen, and space travel becomes as common as going for a holiday to the south of France, there will be the issue of how to pay for products and services that you want to buy en route. Surely, the spaceship will have a cafon board and some duty-free shopping too.

Musk neednt worry about that bit since a 15-year-old technology is all but ready to be deployed as a space currency. For obvious reasons cards, cash and digital apps arent going to work when you are some 50 million kilometres from Earth and all along the way too since most would probably get destroyed by cosmic radiation.

Which is why in 2007 scientists at Britain's National Space Centre and the University of Leicester developed the Quasi Universal Intergalactic Denomination (QUID). Quite appropriately, it was designed for the London-based company Travelex which deals in international payments, foreign currency exchange and prepaid credit cards for use by travellers and for global remittances. The challenge for the scientists was to develop a currency that could withstand the rigorous demands of space travel. So no sharp edges or chemicals that might hurt space tourists.

According to science.com, using the polymer polytetrafluoroethylene, heavily favoured on space missions for its durability and versatility, the scientists created a currency with rounded edges and also encompassing the eight planets orbiting a sun. Each of the orbiting planets contained a serial number and taken together, these numbers would give each QUID disc a unique code to prevent counterfeiting. Yes, even in space that is a threat.

Of course, the currency was created as part of a viral marketing campaign by Travelex. As a public relations exercise it was clearly successful with most publications including the venerable BBC carrying reports on it though the Wired piece was a bit caustic. It said: If you're wondering why people would be (a) spending money while wearing NASA space suits and (b) while floating in space rather than inside some kind of space-shop... Well, I don't think you're supposed to be wondering that.

At the time, the new coin was pegged at an exchange rate of 6.25 to 1 QUID, not that many transactions took place. But the demand seemed real enough coming just when Bigelow Aerospace was developing an inflatable space hotel in the US, and Virgin Galactic was developing its own SpaceShip. Space travel seemed a very real possibility and Travelex really backed its new product declaring: "It's only a matter of time before people will be walking up to our shops and asking for QUIDs for their two weeks in a space hotel." Indeed, such was the optimism in 2007 that the National Space Centre predicted that regular trips to space would be commonplace within five years with tourist facilities on the moon a distinct possibility by 2050.

That deadline may have been extended a bit, but earlier this month, a SpaceX rocket carried a private crew to the International Space Station in a historic launch. The era of ordinary people, with deep pockets, flying into space is clearly here.

Download your money calendar for 2022-23 here and keep your dates with your moneybox, investments, taxes

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Fly me to the moon with a QUID or two - Moneycontrol

When a trio of paying customers and their astronaut chaperone were blasted off to the International Space Station, their voyage was touted as a milestone for the commercialisation of spaceflight.

For the Michelin-starred Spanish chef Jos Andrs, however, the recently departed mission ushered in another albeit more niche breakthrough: the first time paella was sent into orbit.

Astronauts from different countries and nationalities and backgrounds and they are all going to be eating, at once, paella Valenciana, he said on social media. And this makes me so proud.

Andrs is the latest in a string of top chefs around the world who have turned their attention to space food, seeking to push fine dining beyond a frontier long marked by offerings such as dehydrated versions of mac n cheese or prawn cocktail.

Among the first to pioneer chef-approved space food were the renowned French chefs Thierry Marx and Alain Ducasse, each of whom carved out a repertoire of space-ready classics dishes that ranged from beef bourguignon to almond tarts.

Some of Spains top chefs have gone further, seeking to bring their brand of boundary-pushing cuisine into space. Last year, ngel Len of the three Michelin-starred restaurant Aponiente proffered to Nasa a nutrient-dense dish of rice cooked in collagen extracted from fish scales and flavoured with freeze-dried plankton.

Andoni Luis Aduriz of the top-ranked Mugaritz, meanwhile, has sought to recast freeze-dried creations such as a marshmallow-like cauliflower with strawberry cream as the perfect space food, marrying nutrition and functionality while also playing to a sense of taste that can at times be dulled by microgravity conditions.

Aduriz pointed to the commercialisation of space to explain the interest. Until now, space travel was done by men and women who were very trained to have a spartan spirit and mentally prepared to live in extreme situations, he said.

With companies such as Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic looking to court deep-pocketed passengers, this profile is set to change. Were talking about people who will likely not want to do without anything and who will want to eat well, said Aduriz.

He saw the discussion on space travel as one that would intensify in the coming years. Im convinced that our species, especially in the long term, will be spending much more time in space. And they will colonise some spaces, said Aduriz. And then food will be an important tool related to the mental health of the people who are there.

The entry of chefs into an area long dominated by food scientists, however, is far from a seamless transition. The team behind Andrs spent more than a year tweaking the paella and secreto de cerdo y pisto a cut of Iberian pork with tomatoes, onions, eggplant and peppers that were sent to space, said Charisse Grey, who leads research and development for the chefs ThinkFoodGroup.

Food scientists think a lot about nutrition, they think a lot about calories, said Grey. My goal is to meet your palates expectations for food.

The rules were strict; dishes had to be nutritious, survive microbe-killing sterilisation of 121C (252F), and largely avoid the use of free-floating liquids.

Things that are crumbly, like cookies and chips, wont make it up there because if theres little crumbs that come off it while youre eating, they just float into space and can get caught up in the air filtration systems and create issues, said Grey.

There was also no escaping the foil-laminated pouch used to serve the meals. I recall one of my first conversations that I had with Nasa and some of the food scientists They were, like, You have to let go of the feeling that the food has to look good.

While the team had yet to hear any feedback from the crew, Grey said she had been impressed by how the dishes turned out.

I wont say that theyre perfect and I wont say that theyre exactly what you would get out of a paella pan, as you cant mimic the actual cooking process of the paella pan or the stew process of a pot, said Grey. But theyre probably some of the best meals Ive had out of a pouch.

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Paella that is out of this world: Spains top chefs take space food to next level - The Guardian

NASA has teleported a doctor to Space via holoportation! Know all about this new technique for virtual travel.

Virtual travel to space is possible! Thanks to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which did it through what it calls the holoport. NASA virtually teleported a doctor hundreds of kilometres into space via holoportation. This also meant that this was the first human from teleported from Earth into space. The project happened late last year. In this remarkable development, NASA's flight surgeon Dr. Josef Schmid, who is the industry partner of AEXA Aerospace CEO Fernando De La Pena Llaca and their team members, is orbiting a space laboratory, the International Space Station (ISS), NASA revealed. So, what is holoportation? How does it work? NASA answers all the queries. Read on.

Dr. Schmid explains that Holoportation is a type of imaging technique that permits high-quality 3D models of humans to be reconstructed, compressed, and broadcast in real-time anywhere. When used in connection with mixed reality displays like the HoloLens, users may see, hear, and interact with remote participants in 3D as if they really were physically present in the same place. Microsoft has been using holoportation since at least 2016, but this is the first time it has been used in such an extreme and remote setting as space.

Due to the holoportation, a European Space Agencys astronaut Thomas Pesquet held a two-way chat with live images of Dr. Schmid and his teammate De La Pena placed in the middle of the International Space Station using the Microsoft Hololens Kinect camera and a personal computer with special software from AEXA. This was the first time in history when someone from Earth met an astronaut as if they were right beside them.

NASA is referring to the holoportation as a new form of communication as a staging point for wider usage on future missions. The next step is to employ this technology for two-way communication, in which people on Earth will be holoported to space and astronauts will be returned to Earth. We'll use this for our private medical conferences, private psychiatric conferences, private family conferences and to bring VIPs onto the space station to visit with astronauts.

NASA further shared its plan to integrate holoportation with augmented reality to fully enable Tele-mentoring. NASA said that Holoportation could have great implications on the future of deep space travel. Also, it has some direct applications on Earth. Such as it will bring people together in situations and places such as Antarctica, offshore oil rigs or military operation theaters.

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Wow! NASA teleports first human into Space! Man holoported to the International Space Station - HT Tech