No doubt champaign bottles will be clutched and hands will clasp glasses of bubbly as Russia and space aficionados around the world celebrate the 80th birthday of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space. On April 12, 1961 the Russian built Vostok 1 Rocket ship successfully launched Yuri into low earth orbit. It took Yuri just 108 minutes to complete a full orbit around the earth, at the time this was monumental achievement for mankind!
A little known oddity about Yuri's trip to space is the fact that his spaceship was constructed without facilities and only had enough room for just one cosmonaut. These days Cosmonauts and Astronauts travel to space in teams and spend weeks if not months in space at a time. My guess is maybe the engineers of the Vostok 1 didn't believe he would succeed as all previous attempts at space flight had failed. Or perhaps in the zest to be the first country to put a man in space they just forgot to add a toilet!
A little known oddity about Yuri's trip to space is the fact that his spaceship was constructed without facilities and only had enough room for just one cosmonaut. These days Cosmonauts and Astronauts travel to space in teams and spend weeks if not months in space at a time. My guess is maybe the engineers of the Vostok 1 didn't believe he would succeed as all previous attempts at space flight had failed. Or perhaps in the zest to be the first country to put a man in space they just forgot to add a toilet!