|
05.11
 50th Anniversary of the First Man in Space: Yuri Gagarin
By Terrance Malkinson
“While I was flying round
the Earth on sputnik spaceship, I saw how
beautiful our planet is. People of the world
let us preserve and never do harm to its
magnificence!”
— Yuri Gagarin
12 April 2011 marked the 50th
anniversary of the first manned spaceflight. In
1961, Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin (9 March
1934 – 27 March 1968) became the first person
leave the Earth and venture into space. The
Vostok rocket, with Gagarin in a tiny capsule at
the top, blasted off from the Baikonur
Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. After a trip lasting
just 108 minutes, controlled entirely by
pre-programmed commands and by controllers on
the ground, Gagarin ejected from his capsule at
an altitude of approximately 4.3 miles and
parachuted down into a field in the Saratov
region of central Russia. The event is still
remembered by Russians as their finest hour.
Gagarin, a 27-year-old carpenter’s son made
history and became a worldwide celebrity. His
smiling face and short stature captured the
hearts of millions around the globe.
That historic flight was
Gagarin’s only spaceflight. Soviet officials
were worried about losing their hero in an
accident. He assumed a number of roles and
became deputy training director of the Cosmonaut
Training Centre outside Moscow, which was later
named after him. Regrettably, Gagarin died in
1968 when the MIG-15 training jet he was
piloting crashed.
At a young age, it became
obvious that Gagarin had a natural talent for
flying, and that his abilities as a pilot were
beyond normal. He became a test-pilot, flying
experimental aircraft. He volunteered, and
became one of a special group of the Soviet
Union’s top test-pilots selected to train as
cosmonauts. Gagarin excelled in the cosmonaut
training and stood out as being impossible to
upset, intelligent,
a man of principle, a
natural leader, and an extremely devoted family
man.
With this flight, the course of
space exploration would never be the same again.
The Soviet Union had scored a great propaganda
victory in the space race over the United
States. Shortly thereafter, President John F.
Kennedy challenged America to put the first man
on the moon by the end of the decade. This was
accomplished in 1969.
In their book Starman: The
Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin,
Jamie Doran and Piers Bizony reveal the story
behind the scenes of this space adventure,
including Gagarin’s journey from peasant to
international hero, as well as insights into the
secretive Russian space program.
Today, in contrast to the
competition of the 1960s, space activities are
taking on an international cooperative scope.
An example is the international space station, a
joint effort between Russia, the United States
and other partners. Russia will this year take
full responsibility for ferrying astronauts to
the station when the U.S. shuttles are retired.
It is interesting to speculate
on the limited body of knowledge and the simple
technology used in the early phases of the
Russian and American space programs. Today, we
wonder how they could possibly have been
successful under such “primitive” conditions?
Why would an individual even consider being a
“spaceman” when by today’s standards the risks
would be unacceptably high? In 1961, there was
no knowledge on how the human body would respond
to the demands of spaceflight and
weightlessness. Computer power, communications,
navigation, and life support were minimal.
Despite this, we progressed in those early years
with simple but generally reliable engineering,
coupled with courage, a willingness to take
risks, a sense of adventure, effective
leadership, craftsmanship, skilled
technologists, ingenuity, teamwork, a passionate
human commitment to a goal, and national pride.
It is important to always
remember that regrettably fatalities have
occurred from which we have learned important
lessons. We must continue to honor and respect
the sacrifices of those involved in advancing
our scientific initiatives and who perished
doing what they loved for our benefit.
Information on Yuri Gagarin is
available at
Russian Archives
Online.
Other Bytes
Here are some of the things
going on in and around the community:
·
A special 16-page report “Falling
Short” in the 9 April issue of The Economist
[399 #8728,
www.economist.com] provides a series of
articles discussing important issues related to
the sustainability of pensions in a world where
people are living longer, birthrates are
dropping, and defined-benefit pension plans /
defined contribution plans that are not adequate
and that transfer the risk to employees.
Following an overview of pension demographic
problems in the reports introduction,
discussions include increasing the age of
retirement, defined-contribution plans, changing
employee behavior persuading them to make
provisions for their old age, economics of
public-sector pensions, valuing pensions and the
outlook for pensions. First steps suggested in
the articles conclusion include increasing the
retirement age and discouraging workers from
retiring long before the official pension age.
While on the topic of retirement, Ashlea Ebeling
in “The Inheritors” [Forbes,
187(6):46-48, 11 April 2011,
www.forbes.com] discusses six important
strategies that baby boomers might employ as 70%
of this cohort group is estimated to soon
inherit an estimated $8.4 Trillion.
·
Bob Holmes provides his thoughts
on what the world would look like if we took
everything that we have learned and rebuilt
civilization from scratch in “Total Reboot” [NewScientist,
209 (#2805): 40-45, 26 March 2011
www.newscientist.com]. In the articles
introduction he speaks of the remarkable
developments throughout history, doing the best
we could with what we inherited from previous
generations. By taking all of the knowledge that
we have accumulated about what works and what
does not and then starting again; rebuilding
everything we would avoid mistakes made in the
past and built a better world. The information
hints at positive changes that might still be
possible today.
·
More changes than at any time
since FORTUNE’s annual survey of admired
companies started thirteen years ago emerge in
this year’s survey. A global shakeout has
occurred as a new world industry and business
order has emerged. These are presented by Geoff
Colvin in “The World’s Most Admired Companies.”
[FORTUNE, 163(4):109-147, 21 March 2011,
www.fortune.com]. Companies such as General
Electric which has led the ranking many times
fell victim. The reason — recession and
financial crisis where companies that were
financially conservative, who avoided excessive
debt and high priced acquisitions succeeded
where others failed. They took advantage of the
recession environment to improve their
position. As Geoff Colvin states in his
conclusion “Good times may be when you make
the most money ― but bad times may be your
greatest opportunity.”
·
Craig Reiss provides a three step
brand-building strategy in “How to Build a
Winning Brand” [Entrepreneur”
39(4):89-93, April 2011,
www.entrepreneur.com]. The three steps
include: 1) craft your image, 2) get known and
3) know what the customer wants. Your brand
must position you so that others will be forced
out of their routines.
·
Failure is an essential component
of growth. The April issue of Harvard
Business Review [89(4),
www.hbr.org] focuses on failure: how to
understand it, learn from it, and recover from
it. Eight comprehensive articles examine the art
and science of failing well. Common types of
failure, how to learn from failure and why some
people don’t, why should failure be tolerated,
teaching of resilience, how to take the blame
for failure and many other aspects of the topic
are discussed.
·
There has been an explosion of
apps accompanying the proliferation of tablets
and smartphones. In “101 Travel Apps” [Business
Traveller, 50-55, March 2011,
www.businesstraveller.com] Mark Prigg and
Andy Tweedle provide their selection of the best
travel applications, a description, and where
they can be downloaded from.
·
Twenty innovations that will have
big impacts as well as five prospective
technologies that could have major repercussions
in the longer term are discussed by James Irvine
and Sandra Schwarzbach in: “The Top 20 (Plus 5)
Technologies for the World Ahead” [The
Futurist, 45(3):16-24, May-June 2010,
www.wfs.org].
·
In today’s information intensive
world writers are in demand and many
opportunities for an interesting career emerge
daily. “Writer for Hire” is the theme of the
March/April issue of Writers Digest,
[91(3),
www.writersdigest.com]. A series of articles
whose titles include “Getting Started in
Ghostwriting,” pp. 20-25; “Get Paid to Be a
Word Nerd,” pp. 26-30; “Freemoney,” pp. 31-35 ;
“50 Simple Ways to Build Your Platform in 5
Minutes a Day,” pp. 40-45; and “Finding the
Upside,” pp. 46- 51 provide strategies to take
advantage of opportunities in writing. Three
articles in a special section of May issue of
The Writer [124(5):32-34,
www.writermag.com] are of interest to
freelance writers. “Find your Work/life
Balance,” pp. 32-34; “Rules are Meant to be
Broken,” pp. 35-36; and “Nurture Your Networking
Tree,” pp. 37-38 provide further information of
value to those who are skilled and passionate
about written communication. IEEE-USA provides
many opportunities for you to publish. Everyone
has ideas that should be shared. Please contact
us at Today’s Engineer should you be
interested in submitting articles. We are here
to help you.
Terrance Malkinson is a
communications specialist, business analyst and
futurist. He is currently an international
correspondent for IEEE-USA Today's Engineer, an
associate editor for IEEE Canadian Review, and a
member of the editorial advisory board of IEEE
The Institute. He was Vice-Chair of the IEEE-USA
Communications Committee (2004-2010), and
editor-in-chief of IEEE-USA Today's Engineer
Digest (2004-2008). He was an elected Senator of
the University of Calgary and an elected
Governor of the IEEE Engineering Management
Society as well as an elected Administrative
Committee member of the IEEE Professional
Communication Society. He has been the editor of
several IEEE conference proceedings, and past
editor of IEEE Engineering Management. He is the
author of more than 420 publications, and is an
accomplished triathlete. His career path
includes being an accomplished technical
supervisor and medical researcher at the
University of Calgary a business proposal
manager for the General Electric Company, an
associate for Sears Canada Inc. and research
administrator with the School of Health and
Public Safety/Applied Research and Innovation
Services at SAIT Polytechnic in Calgary Canada.
The author is grateful to the
professional support of the Haskayne School of
Business Library at the University of Calgary.
He can be reached at
todaysengineer@ieee.org.
|
Comments
on this story may be
sent directly to
