What else have the Russians ever done for space travel?

On the 12th April 1961, or so the story goes, a young man stood in front of his vehicle and urinated.

Nothing unusual you may say, but this young man's name was Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, an officer in the then Soviet Air Force and his particular mode of transport was about to make him a legend.

Vostok 1 left the surface of the Earth and turned Gagarin into the first human in space. He orbited the Earth and returned safely, drifting safely down after parachuting from his capsule. The capsule itself 'dusted' down onto the ground.

Approximately one month later an American by the name of Alan Bartlet Shepard followed Gagarin, but this was no orbital flight. Shepard's historic journey lasted approximately 15 minutes from start to finish, ending with him splashing down with his Mercury capsule into the Atlantic Ocean.

Space travel as we know it, had begun.

I wasn't born when these particular events took place. But as I got older and read about them, they filled me with awe and wonder.

What was it like to be a spaceman? What was it like to look upon the Earth from a vantage point so high you could see this silver, blue and green ball of life in its full glory?

I would never know, but I could dream.

My interest in space and space travel goes back a long way. My first real recollection of anything to do with space, outside of the Star Trek universe, was a television programme on the BBC.

The programme featured an interview with one of the crew of Skylab, America's first and so far only, space station.

Dr Owen Kay Garriott was selected by NASA in 1965 to be one of the six Scientist-Astronauts to take part in the space programme. His first space-flight, the Skylab 3 mission in 1973, set a new world record for duration of approximately 60 days, more than double the previous record. Extensive experimental studies of our sun, of earth resources and in various life sciences relating to human adaptation to weightlessness were made made during this flight.

Here was a real spaceman. A real 'star voyager' This man was actually going to voyage into space. Okay, he wasn't going to the moon or to Mars, but he was going to a space station. A real life space station.

Living in the 'west' all I really heard about were the flights of NASA, I never really heard much about the Soviet exploits. It wasn't until 1975 that the Russian space programme really came into my consciousness.

I did of course know about the Russians, I learned about them from my book.

When I was about 8 years I asked for a book. I begged for a book. That book was called Look-It Up Book of Space edited by by Ira M. Freeman. I still have that book and still treat it with the reverence it deserves.

What amazed me was the number of times the Russians were mentioned. After all, it wasn't as if they were the Americans. So what made them so special?

Apart from being the country that put the first man into orbit, what else had they done?

After Vostok 1 there was Vostok 2 carrying cosmonaut Gherman Titov into orbit for a full day. This was done to study the effects of a more prolonged period of weightlessness on the human body. Titov orbited the earth over 17 times, exceeding the single orbit of Yuri Gagarin on Vostok 1 − as well as the suborbital space-flights of Alan Shepard and after him,  Virgil I. 'Gus' Grissom aboard Mercury-Redstone 3 and 4 missions.

Next there was Vostok 3 and Vostok 4 which were launched a day apart on trajectories that brought the spacecraft within approximately 6.5 km (4.0 mi) of one another.

The cosmonauts aboard the two spaceships also communicated with each other via radio, the first ship-to-ship communications in space. These missions marked the first time that more than one manned spacecraft was in orbit at the same time.

Okay, apart from the first man in space, the first orbital flights, the first time two space had been in orbit and the first orbital communication, what else have the Russians ever done for space travel?

Well... on 16th June 1963 Vostok 6 was the first human space-flight mission to carry a woman, cosmonaut Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova, into space. This also made her the first civilian in space.

To be honest the number of achievements by the Soviet Space Agency is pretty impressive, and you want to learn more check out the  website of the Russian Federal Space Agency and for a bit of balance check out the website of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Have fun.

A Flight of Fancy

The following is not really a blog entry, but a flight of fancy, on my part anyway.

I originally published it on the Jottify website and got some good feedback as a result. At the time I meant to dedicate it to the men (and yes, at that time it was only men) of the Apollo Space Programme who inspired the story, but I didn’t. I would like to correct that omission now and hopefully share my dream with whoever is interested,

The crew of

Apollo 11 (1969)    Neil A. Armstrong, Edwin E. Aldrin Jr, Michael Collins   
Apollo 12 (1969)    Charles Conrad Jr, Richard F. Gordon, Alan L. Bean   
Apollo 14 (1971)    Alan B. Shepard Jr, Stuart A. Roosa, Edgar D. Mitchell
Apollo 15 (1971)    David R. Scott, Alfred W. Warden, James B. Irwin
Apollo 16 (1972)    John W. Young, Kenneth Mattingly II, Charles M. Duke Jr
Apollo 17 (1973)    Eugene A. Cernan, Ronald E. Evans, Harrison H. Schmitt

I hope you enjoy it. If you do, please let me know. If you don’t please let me know and I will try harder next time. Until then, here is the story.

* * *

Magnificent Desolation.
 

As I stand here looking over the grey landscape, I understand those words.
 

The desolation is magnificent and for the few moments of loneliness that I have before my colleagues join me, I am utterly alone. In the four days it has taken us to reach here, we have had little time to ourselves. So I am savouring this moment.

I am the first human being to stand on this surface in hundred years.
 

We are the first of three ships. We are Faith. Our sister ship Hope will leave Earth in one months time, one month after that Charity will leave from Centre Spatial Guyanais.
 

Our tour of duty on the moon will be six months. In that time we will establish the first of three modular bases made up of the lower parts of our landing craft, after that we will return to the silver blue ball that is earth. Three more crews will arrive and Tranquilty Base will be a reality.
 

Before me is a dust bowl. In the centre of that dust bowl is a white metallic spider, Eagle. The remains of Apollo 11. Her structure barely marked after all these years.
 

We descended into Mare Tranquillitatis, the Sea of Tranquillity. There is slight bluish tint, that I thought was due to the glass in my visor, but it’s not. There is higher metal content in the basaltic soil or rock.
 

I feel, rather than hear one of my crew members by my side. As I turn, I move back, I take a moment to look at my foot prints. I see my footsteps in the moon dust. If I walked to Eagle I would see the ‘one small step’ that Armstrong made as he stepped off the ladder.
 

I see the solid form of my boot print and I smile. As I look up into the visor of my fellow moon-walker, Helen, she returns the smile.
 

‘Mission control, Tranquillity Base here…’
 

This is no longer one small step, but a giant one towards the stars...

We'll zoom our way to Mars, My heart would be a fireball, A fireball, If you would be my Venus of the stars.

Space. The Final Frontier.

These are the voyages of... well, me.

Needless to say, I never made it to the final frontier of stars and galaxies. The farthest I have ever travelled is to the area of Florida that I have already discussed.

I loved every minute of my trip to Florida and the trips to the Astronauts Hall of Fame and The Kennedy Space Centre. I admit it, I was like a 'kid in a candy store'. Every object, every item, every moment was wonderful. I felt excitement and when I left I felt sadness. I still have the photos and the mementos and the memories.

Will I ever get back to 'the gateway to the stars'?

I don't know.

Would I like to go back?

Oh yes.

If I do ever get the chance to visit any other space facility I will be sure to let you know.

Until then my imagination will take me to the surface of our moon to endure the magnificent desolation. I will walk along the edge of the canyons of Mars and survive the sandstorms to live another day, and I will watch from orbit the Europa, the sixth closest moon of Jupiter, but not descend. Why will I not descend? To quote Arthur C Clarke's 2010: Odyssey Two...

"ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE."  

I wouldn't want to upset the creators of the Monolith now, would I?

To our wonderland of stardust, we’ll zoom our way to Mars...

The 140,000-acre John F. Kennedy Space Center is the principal launch site for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Here I am going to talk about the enormous Vehicle Assembly Building and its environs.

Except for certain restricted areas, the KSC reservation is designated as a national wildlife refuge. Canaveral National Seashore lies within the refuge area. These are open to the general public during daylight hours except when rocket launches or launch preparations are in progress. Not a good idea to be around when they are launching a rocket, it can get a bit hot!

The Vehicle Assembly Building or VAB for short, and believe me its the only short thing about it, stands 525 feet tall. It covers 129, 428, 000 cubic feet (3,6664,833 cubic meters) and is the worlds third largest building! Rumour has it there are clouds inside! It was originally built to accommodate the massive Saturn V, but has been adapted for the more diminutive space shuttles. It should be pointed out that these things were built standing up! Hence the reason for the massive building!

Before the advent of the Space Shuttle, spacecraft such as Apollo (Apollo 7 to 10, no lunar landings, then Apollo 11 to 17, which landed men on the Moon) lifted off from here; after that another five Apollo missions, four flights to Skylab the first United States space station, (first unmanned, then three manned with crews of three in each); and the Apollo/Soyuz Test Project mission (the link up of three U.S. Astronauts and two Soviet Cosmonauts) lifted off from Florida.

The primary launch at the Kennedy Space Centre is now Launch Complex 39. The tour of Launch Complex 39 includes a drive past Pad 39A, one of two pads at KSC capable of launching Space Shuttle vehicles. A mound located between Pads A and B provides visitors with a good vantage point from which to photograph both launch sites. When a launch takes place there is that much noise which (if let loose) would cause damage to the tower due the vibration the noise produces, that they have to dump 300,000 gallons (1.1,000,000 litres) of water onto/into the pad just seconds before the launch!

If you are really lucky, and I considered myself to be very lucky, you may see a Space Shuttle on the pad. So how lucky was I that day to see not one, but two shuttles sitting on the pad and coming back from one of those pads a crawler-transporter! The transporter is so damn big and heavy it has a maximum speed, when not carrying a spacecraft of two miles per hour! Not exactly a high performance vehicle, but stunning none the less to watch and admire for its sheer engineering spectacle, weighing in at a mere six million pounds (that's 2,727 metric tons)!

We'd take the path to Jupiter, and maybe very soon, we’d cruise along the Milky Way, and land upon the moon…

The John F. Kennedy Space Center is located on Merritt Island on Florida’s east coast. From here NASA launches Space Shuttles and rockets for both the U.S. Air Force and commercial companies, and Lockheed Martin launches Titan and Atlas rockets, and McDonnell Douglas launches Delta rockets, from the Cape Canaveral Air Station to the east. These are open to the public, but I would advise calling before dropping in.

Tours of Kennedy start at the Visitor Complex. In this section I will give you a brief run down of the Kennedy Space Centre then move on in more detail to the bits that made me go "ooooh!"

One of the highlights of the tour is the giant Vehicle Assembly Building, the Space Shuttle launch pads, the huge Mobile Launch Platforms on which Space Shuttles are assembled, and the slow moving and awesome Crawler-Transporters which haul the Shuttle on its Platform to the pad.

The Apollo / Saturn V Center. Ah! This houses one of the mammoth 363-ft (110m) tall Saturn V/Apollo vehicles that took astronauts to the Moon, and copious Apollo Program artifacts and exhibits.

Bus tours run until just before dark. Taking pictures is allowed everywhere visitors are allowed. Just make sure that you have your little badge on!

The building immediately in front of the parking lot is Spaceport Central, which has a huge number of fascinating and educational exhibits. At the information counter you can pick up schedules and free maps. When I see the word “free” it just encourages me to pick things up… I walk away with my pockets stuffed with free maps and leaflets.

North of Spaceport Central is the Gallery of Space Flight, where you can see real Mercury, Gemini and Apollo spacecraft. They were recovered after their missions and brought here, to be preserved as part of NASA's history. The exhibits give an insight into the early days of the U.S. manned space flight program.

The Rocket Garden takes you from the tiny (and I mean tiny) Mercury/Redstone that lifted the first U.S. Astronaut into space, to the enormous Saturn IB vehicle. This Saturn launched three-man Apollo crews into Earth orbit during the Apollo, Skylab, and Apollo-Soyuz Test Project programs.

To the east of the Visitor Complex, there is a full-size model of a Shuttle orbiter. It allows the visitor a detailed look at the cargo bay, living quarters and cockpit of the orbiter. Not far from that there mock ups of two of the giant solid rocket boosters and external tank that supply the monster power to lift the Shuttle into space.

Way out in space together, Compass of the sky...

One of the great things about the Astronauts Hall of Fame is the fun side of space!

If you ask nicely, or if the man in charge can see that you are a bit of a space nut he will allow you to put on a parachute like harness and let you feel what it is like to walk on the moon. Yes. You're right, I did it! It was so much fun! I was bouncing about like a puppet on a string feeling the "moondust" under my trainers!

After that I headed towards the shuttle trainer. This is a computer flight, to be more accurate, computer landing simulator. I sat in the command seat, bringing home my own space shuttle. Okay, it took about 6 attempts to get close to achieving death-free approach and touchdown, but "Major Jim" could see the runway, guided his multi-million dollar spacecraft safely onto the welcoming earth and ground to a halt without killing all the crew on board.

I have to say my hands were clammy and my brow frowning as I brought that big white bird of a space ship home. I was grinning like an idiot. I had done it! More importantly, I had landed before my friend, also called Jim, had. He was about to have his tenth crash! Result! Childish? Yes! Satisfying? Oh yes!

Next! Next was flipping and zipping through ariel roll overs on board the 3D 360 degree flight simulator. Wooo hooo! Science is a wonderful thing!

Another joy awaited me. The Mercury spacecraft simulator! I climbed in. It was calling me! Would I be able to be as fast as the Mercury crew? The simulator gives you a number of commands that you must follow to test your reflexes. Was I fast enough and bright enough to be a Mercury astronaut? Ermm... no! The astronaut candidates of NASA have no fear of losing their places to me.

I was having a great time, but it was getting time to move on. We had arrived at 0830 and it was now 1230 and hunger was setting in.

We headed to the cafe for a slap up meal and a few soft drinks. After that, I headed to the shop to pick up some mementos of my morning.

As I have said before, this day I was 11 years old again and I was going to enjoy it. After this we headed towards the highway and on our way to Spaceport USA. What joys would await me at the John F Kennedy Space Centre? That is another story...

I'd fly around the universe in Fireball XL-5

The next doorway takes the visitor toward a large display depicting the evolution of the space race, then moves on to a historic collection of spacecraft including the Mercury Sigma 7 space capsule, a Gemini two man spacecraft trainer, and the Apollo 14 command module. There is also a tribute to the three astronauts (Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Edward H White, and Roger Chaffee) who died in the Apollo 1 fire back in 1967.

Lighter moments give me the opportunity to sit at Mission Control consoles, which I admit (remember my mental age was 11!) I did sit at and recounted my own space missions in my head. I looked over all the information about the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions that I had dreamed of as a kid. I use to land my little Airfix Lunar Excursion Module on its simulated lunar surface over and over again and I was the astronaut who set foot on the moon (as well as Mars) and discovered the wonders of the universe. ‘Ground Control to Major Jim…’ but I always made it back, and sitting at the console brought back all the old dreams and fantasies. Ah, the innocence of youth.

Being so close to Sigma 7 and to the Gemini trainer and the Apollo 14 command module made me realise something. Something I had never really thought of before. These things are small. Not just small, but really small. Mercury had a crew of one. Gemini a crew of two and Apollo a crew of three, but oh my, these things are really small. I once heard a description of a Gemini flight which was described something like this, ‘try to imagine sitting in the front seats of a Volkswagen Beetle with your best friend, for two weeks’. Now, that gives you an impression of how small these things actually were, not like the “luxury” of the Space Shuttle.I

In case you are not aware the maximum crew a shuttle can take comfortably is seven.

The next part of the Hall of Fame features displays and tributes to a number of astronauts that have served the cause of space exploration. The mission patches of all missions are featured and displayed as well as the world largest collection of astronaut personal mementos. And yes, I got all dew eyed looking at the cloth and Kevlar and steel that made up the patches and flight suits and spacesuits that filled my slightly misted vision.

I looked through and studied histories of the heroes I knew from watching moon-shots, (Apollo 15; David Scott, Al Worden, Jim Irwin, Apollo 16; John Young, Ken Mattingly, Charlie Duke; Apollo 17; Gene Cernan, Ron Evans, Harrison “Jack” Schmitt;) Skylab and the Apollo-Soyuz link up of 1975. I remember seeing the floating images of the Americans and Russians wondering who was going to make the first move. Then the smile of Alexei Leonov as he greeted Donald “Deke” Slayton filled the screen. 

It showed that even if two “cold warriors” from different sides of the Iron Curtain (remember this was 1975) respected each other and were prepared to work together “for all mankind.”