"The Eagle has landed."

Neil Armstrong
1930 - 2012

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Today is also 30th anniversary of the first Space Shuttle flight!

Wow. Lots of history to be commemorated today. Now I'm being reminded that it was thirty years ago today that the first Space Shuttle flight - which was the orbiter Columbia - took off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

Here's footage of the launch...

I remember watching that! 'Twas knee-high to a grasshopper as they say. It was supposed to have lifted off a day or two before, but the launch was scrubbed 'cuz of technical problems. And I was about to leave for school that morning and really hoping that it would take off without any more delay and then... WHOOOOOSH!!! It was the first manned spaceflight that I ever got to watch live on television.

In case anyone's wondering why the external tank is white in this clip, the tank was painted on the first three flights of the space shuttle, but after that it was left its normal fiberglass-y orange: not painting the tank saved a lot of weight (and subsequently, fuel).

And unfortunately as everyone knows, Columbia was lost in that tragic re-entry accident over Texas in 2003.

But on this day, this blogger honors its maiden flight, and the inauguration of the Space Shuttle system.

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50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight into space!

Longtime readers of this blog know that one bit of history that I'm particularly fond of is Russian space exploration. Say what one might about the policies of the Soviet government during those early years, I can't help but have huge appreciation for the engineers and pilots who took part in that endeavor. It wasn't politics that drove those men and women: just good ol' human adventure and tenacity.

So that said, The Knight Shift salutes the memory of Yuri Gagarin, who on this day in 1961 became the first human to journey into space... and not only that but became the first person to complete an orbit of the Earth! His flight aboard Vostok 1 would be his only spaceflight. And unfortunately a few years later Gagarin perished during a training flight in a MiG 15. He was only 34 at the time.

I don't look at it in terms of nationalities. I much prefer to see things on a larger scale. Gagarin was the first human to leave the confines of Earth's gravity and atmosphere. And just think: a little more than eight years later, we were walking around on the Moon.

Kinda makes you wonder whatever happened to that kind of gumption.

But on this day, we honor Yuri Gagarin: the first man in space.

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45 images of a future that never was

It's almost a half-century later... and we still don't have that personal one-man sub! Or domed cities on Mars. Or cars with interchangeable bodies. Or robots to decorate our Christmas trees.

WellMedicated has put together a collection of 45 magazine covers depicting the space age "world of tomorrow" that for some reason or another didn't arrive. I'm sure that many if not most of these images evoked a "golly, would you look THAT!!" reaction back in the day, but in retrospect the majority of them are now just downright ridiculous (I mean: water polo with mechanized polo horses? Seriously?).

Mucho thanks to friend and fellow blogger Shane Thacker for a great find!

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