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Yuri's Night Will Celebrate Forty Years Of Human Spaceflight

Major Yuri Gagarin�s mission of 108 minutes was short in duration, but significant to the entire world.
by Morris Jones
Moscow - April 4, 2001
On April 12, 2001, the world will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the first human spaceflight. Major Yuri Gagarin�s mission of 108 minutes was short in duration, but significant to the entire world. The past century was filled with a regular series of amazing historical events, yet Gagarin�s flight is still one of the most amazing events of this incredible time.

It�s appropriate that the world pauses to commemorate this event, and a series of Yuri�s Night parties will take place around the globe, in places ranging from Moscow to Antarctica.

The events will be linked by that other major technological development of the last century, digital telecommunications, which seemed to grow in parallel with so many of the events that happened in space exploration. People who don�t visit a Yuri�s Night party in person will still be there as they monitor events on the Internet at www.yurisnight.com.

It�s sad that the world�s first space traveller will not be at any of these events. Gagarin died in an air crash in 1968, still young and energetic.

As with Princess Diana and other early deaths from the celebrity world, Gagarin will always be remembered as something close to the 27 year old military officer who boarded the Vostok 1 spacecraft. He would have been 67 on the night, older but still young enough to take part in the festivities and reminisce on the event. What would he say?

As a man who was so closely guarded by an immense Soviet propaganda apparatus, we really didn�t know Gagarin at the time of his flight. Details of his life have since emerged in a handful of biographies, but it�s impossible to know how he would react to the celebration of this event in 2001.

Would he be impressed that space travel has captured the attention of the world? Would he be disappointed at the slowdown in activity from the pace of the nineteen sixties? We will never know.

The celebration of Yuri�s Night is as much about the present as it is about the past. So much has changed, both in space and on the Earth itself.

The Soviet Union no longer exists, and the problems of the cold war at the time of Gagarin�s flight have shrunk considerably. Hundreds of people have followed Gagarin into space, and thousands of satellites have been launched. Yet it�s somewhat ironic that the basic R7 rocket that served as the foundation of the Vostok launcher is still one of the world�s most reliable systems for space transportation.

The laws of physics haven�t changed in the meantime, but most of the engineering of space hardware has also remained the same. The Soyuz spacecraft, currently the only Soviet crew-carrying spacecraft, hasn�t changed its basic design since the nineteen sixties.

Even the United States, the world�s richest nation and only superpower, is struggling in its attempts to build a vehicle more sophisticated than the ageing space shuttle.

Observations like these are a reminder that this is more than Yuri�s celebration. Hundreds of workers who developed the rockets, spacecraft and associated hardware for his mission are also celebrated by this achievement.

Most worked in obscurity, including the Soviet space program�s chief designer Sergei Korolev. The longevity of the systems they devised is a testimony to one of the greatest periods of mechanical engineering in human history. It also presents a thought-provoking parable of management practices: If something isn�t broken, it�s usually best not to fix it.

Probably the most significant aspect of Yuri�s night is that it is a global event. People in various nations, regardless of politics or other factors, are all united by recognising this as an achievement for the whole of humanity. With so many problems and events dividing the world at the present, it�s refreshing to experience an event like this.

Morris Jones is a Sydney, Australia-based consultant and journalist. He will speak at the Sydney leg of Yuri�s Night. He can be reached at morrisjonesNOSPAMhotmail.com. Replace NOSPAM with @ to send email.

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END OF MIR
Russia Burns Mir To The Ground
Korolyov - March 23, 2001
Mir, the world's first international space station, exploded into thousands of pieces after a successful deorbit at apx 5.59 GMT March 23, 2001 over the western central Pacific.



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