>> ... If you want to get technical, Gagarin did actually do an EVA of sorts.
Thanks, Rick, for trying to bail me out ... But it was a mistake/typo on my part ... (grin) Yes, after his 108-minute flight, Gagarin ejecting from the spacecraft at 7,000 metres (23,000 ft), and landing by parachute. Under International Federation of Aeronautics (FAI) qualifying rules for aeronautical records, pilots must both take off and land with their craft, so the Soviets kept the landing procedures secret until 1978, when they finally admitted that Gagarin did not land with his spacecraft. When the flight was publicly announced, after it was successfully completed, it was celebrated around the world as a great triumph, not just for the Soviet Union, but for the world itself, though it once again shocked and embarrassed the United States. Three weeks later, on 5 May 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American in space, when he was launched on the Mercury-Redstone 3 suborbital mission, in a spacecraft named Freedom 7. Though he did not achieve orbit, unlike Gagarin he was the first person to exercise manual control over his spacecraft's attitude and retro-rocket firing. The first Soviet cosmonaut to exercise manual control was Gherman Titov in Vostok 2 on 6 August 1961. Almost a year after the Soviets put a human into orbit, astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth, on 20 February 1962. His Mercury-Atlas 6 mission completed three orbits in the Friendship 7 spacecraft, and splashed-down safely in the Atlantic Ocean, after a tense reentry, due to what falsely appeared from the telemetry data to be a loose heat-shield. /end/ _______________________________________________ Sent via [email protected]. Opinions expressed are those of the author. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: http://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
