Fifty Years Ago, Yuri Gagarin Was the First Person in Space — and the United States Quickly Developed a More Purposeful Energy than It Has Displayed Since

© 2011 Peter Free

 

11 April 2011

 

 

12 April 1961 — was it just youthful excitement, or something more profound?

 

Fifty years ago, Yuri Gagarin became symbol of what the Soviets could do, when they put their minds to it.  I was 14 and still remember the excitement of his orbital flight, which built on Sputnik’s earlier promise.

 

In lifetime’s retrospect, the space race seems to me to be the United States’ most motivating achievement.

 

Since that competition’s de facto end with the demise of the Soviet Union, we do not have much to be proud of regarding our overall performance as humanity’s self-appointed leader.

 

 

Perspective

 

We Americans appear to need powerful adversaries to bring us out of characteristic complacence.

 

When the Soviet Union selected space exploration as challenge’s arena, its subsequent effort transcended the emptiness that ideological posturing usually brings with it.  What had been a purely military provocation evolved into something meaningful.  Ideology transcended itself on both sides.

 

That could be a boy’s passion talking.  But I don’t think so.

 

Something fell off American greatness when the Soviet Union died.

 

It is paradoxical that such a misbegotten Soviet society could generate two of the most spectacular achievements of the Twentieth Century:

 

(i) defeating Hitler single-handedly on the Eastern Front, at a cost in lives that dwarfs every other nation’s, thereby making Allied victory possible;

 

and

 

(ii) so dramatically opening the space frontier.

 

Rest in peace, Yuri.