Happy Cosmonautics Day! Happy Yuri’s Night! Happy Space Day!
However you slice it: today is the 50th anniversary of human space flight, which began with Yuri Gagarin”s launch on April 12, 1961. It”s also the 30th anniversary of the first space shuttle launch on April 12, 1981.
There are many videos and articles and tributes on the web today, but I”m going to link to this single video greeting from the current crew of the International Space Station — 3 Russians, 2 Americans, and 1 Italian. Our journey into space began as a competition, but would today be impossible without the cooperation and support of like-minded individuals, government agencies, and private companies around the world. The crew’s simple words, in three very different languages, are the embodiment of space exploration today.
I don’t know what will happen in the next 50 years. These feel like dark times at NASA as we are asked to do great things but are given little money and burdened with bureaucracy.
But I have to believe that space is important, that exploration is important, and that pushing ourselves to do what was once impossible is a part of the human spirit that cannot be defeated.
As Yuri said on the day of his launch: “Poyekhali!”
“Let”s go!”