Yuri's night!

Time to open a bottle or join a party as it is (tomorrow) the 45th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight in space, as well as the 25th anniversary of the first manned flight of the Space Shuttle (STS-1). There have been over the past weeks a lot of coverage on STS-1, especialy at NASA (and on NASA TV), and more to come tomorrow. Space-multimedia is hosting a KSC video from last week where the crew of STS-1 talks about their experience and answers a few questions. In a way it's very similar to the interview posted on collectSpace.

I think John Young is my favorite astronaut. He's most definitly a very interesting person (and according to Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth author quiet anti-social, like any good geek will be) and one of the few to have flew in space 6 times (over 3 different programs). There (AFAIK) haven't been any biographic book yet on him, and even the JSC Oral History Project haven't interviewed him (which is surprising). I do hope we will get both in the not to distant future 'cause sadly time is passing by and no one is getting younger ... :-\ In the meantime, make sure to paid a visit to Mr Young unofficial web site, which hold quiet a set of images.

A way of celebrating, likely to be favored by space geeks around the world, will be to recreate both missions in Orbiter. For STS-1, you will need to download Gazza's addon (10Mb) which contains more than just this mission, and thanks to McDope it is also possible to fly the first manned flight of Vostok (link to download). To add a touch of authenticity, some Orbiter's users have even changed the 2D panel in Cyrillics. Have fun!