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Nikolay Korchekov / Reuters
Spectators watch a fireworks display presented to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's historic spaceflight, in Moscow's Victory Park on April 12.
More than 500 parties are going on to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first human spaceflight and the 30th anniversary of the shuttle program. Among the highlights: the debut of the trippy space documentary “First Orbit,” greetings from the International Space Station and the Mars500 simulation of a Red Planet mission, contests, giveaways — and the Google doodle of the day.
All these events tie into Yuri's Night, a global celebration of spaceflight that originated in Los Angeles 10 years ago. The annual event commemorates Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's blastoff on April 12, 1961, plus Columbia's first-ever space shuttle flight on April 12, 1981. Today's anniversary is bittersweet because this may be the last year of the shuttle fleet's service.
Tonight's L.A. party is a star-studded affair at the Griffith Observatory, during which Yuri's Night co-founders Loretta Hidalgo-Whitesides and George Whitesides (who is now Virgin Galactic's president) will reflect on the past and look forward to the future. They're not the only ones. This year the parties are proceeding on all seven continents.
The logo on the Google homepage was set up to launch Yuri Gagarin's rocket when moused over.
"Everyone from Google to the Los Angeles Times is making note of this historical landmark, and I'm thrilled to see how excited people around the world are to celebrate the spirit of exploration and discovery that Yuri Gagarin embodied," Yuri's Night assistant director Brice Russ said in today's overview. "Whether your nearest Yuri's Night event is down the street or 100 miles away, there's something you can do to participate."
To find out about that something, check the event list at the Yuri's Night website. Some events take place after April 12, so if you have to stay in tonight, there's still a chance that you can party down.
Also, there's still a couple of days before the deadline for the Yuri's Night video and print ad contests, as well as a space-tour sweepstakes. You could win an expenses-paid trip to Russia for a zero-G flight, or even to Baikonur to watch a Soyuz liftoff.
A whole constellation's worth of websites are celebrating spaceflight today, including Scientific American, Wired, Smithsonian Air & Space and of course our partners at Space.com.
Over at Spacevidcast, meanwhile, you could watch a global Yuri's Night webcast and snag one of a million e-book copies of Andrew Kessler's "Martian Summer." Yuri's Night has also teamed up with Posterous to set up a "Yuri's Night Live" sharing site for photos and videos. Don't forget to check in with Yuri's Night via Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube.
And speaking of YouTube, here's a selection of videos to get you in the holiday mood:
More about Yuri Gagarin and space history:
- Why the world remembers its first spaceman
- Fifty years later, relive the first space odyssey
- The sky's the limit for outer-space records
- Look for Yuri Gagarin on msnbc.com
Join the Cosmic Log community by clicking the "like" button on our Facebook page or by following msnbc.com science editor Alan Boyle as b0yle on Twitter. To learn more about my book on Pluto and the search for planets, check out the website for "The Case for Pluto."
Leave a Comment:
Where have all the monkeys and dogs gone? Where no other man had gone before!
Too bad we're not doing all of this celebrating on the moon, or Mars ... but, then, moving backwards is so much easier ...
This is true. At first the space exploration venture was a political ploy to beat the Russian's and break the Cold War in America's favor which it did.
What Kennedy failed to realize was he started something that has inspired billions to look in the night sky.
Many of today's achievement's would not have been possible without space exploration. The more space exploration continues to advance the more achievement's in science and industry will evolve.
The only reason that space exploration has not sent us too the Moon is because of the Nazi's who through political manipulation have thwarted space exploration due to the fact that they are still pissed about losing the second World War in which the V-2 Rocket paved the way for manned exploration and today's space exploration programs which is a glory that all countries now share due to the Nazi's loss where the Nazi's wanted all of the glory for theirself.
So who is the main detrement to the space exploration program in America? Every single person that wears a swatztika or consider theirself a Nazi.
The Americans and Russians got into space with Nazi technology: Pagan matriarchal technology!
You have everything right - in reverse!
I can feel the excitement! More great scientific breakthroughs to come under Roman Catholicism - kiss the Beast's ass! Tomorrow the Stars?! Absolutely not going to happen now!!!
Nazis built stealth jet fighters! And the U.S. copied them like monks in monasteries!
Roman Catholicism, Islam, Al Qaeda, the U.N.- Human Rights dictatorship, corporate incognito demons rule the World now, one Unified, United World Under God! And patriarchy is the enemy of science, as science is the enemy of patriarchy, which seeks to preserve the status quo, and fears freedom, and change, and truth - all you know and will admit to is cover-ups, propaganda and lies by the U.S.-Vatican-U.N. tyranny of Earth.
Nazism, when will we pagans be free?! Let Danzig be free and all Polish Occupied Germany be free - free and Nazi! Let the Swastika fly freely! Let Pagans have our enclave to begin with, in North-Eastern liberated Germany, and we will tell you the truth, the truth that the U.S. covers up with its puppet governments in Germany and its multicultural philosophy of "you can be anyone you want to be" - anyone except who you are in reality, who you are, immortally for all time and from before you were incarcerated or incarnated into this world, this prison camp on the physical plane!
Nazism came from the Vril and Thule Societies, and Vril was incorporated into the S.S. when Adolf Hitler banned secret societies. Vril wanted to travel beyond the earth - to develop interstellar craft. As part of the pagan S.S., which has the symbol of the death's head, which means transcendence of death, they developed the Hannebu and Vril and other craft used for reconnaissance in World War II - Germany had the means in the 1920's to go to the stars, if only the science was developed and put into practice, and that is what Hitler did, and that is Nazism! The U.F.O.s that the U.S. covers up were developed by the Nazis and, in January-February 1946 Admiral Byrd's Naval military expedition to Antarctica was defeated in an air and sea battle in which the pagan S.S. who re-settled in Antarctica, taking all the U-Boats- huge submarines - and hundreds of thousands of German citizens, used their U.F.O.'s (which Admiral Byrd described as being capable of flying "from pole to pole" at incredible speed) to attack the U.S. navy ships and sent them fleeing, and limping, prematurely, back to the United States - the greatest Naval expedition in history repudiated and defeated by the pagan S.S. in 1946 - and there is the source of your country's, and the world's, cover-up of U.F.O.'s. (This naval battle was captured on Navy film and is in the public domain in both Russian narrated and English-original versions.)
And as for the German "defeat", that was - as can be seen by who was given power to rule in Italy and Germany by the United States after the "end" of the Second World war in 1945 - a "stab in the back" - betrayal, worm-eating of German society, by the internationalist Roman Catholic Church, and the Lutherans, who together conspired in a policy of extermination of the Jews of Europe, rather than to agree to and facilitate re-location to Israel instead of subverting and frustrating it, as was Nazi policy, (which was afterwards followed by Britain and the U.S. anyway, as Zionism, with the handing over of Palestine for the creation of a Jewish state of Israel) just as they have done throughout history, through pogroms based upon Christian doctrines, and forced conversions and through the banning of Jewish people from occupations other than "usury", by which means they intentionally created a monster that they themselves are, in reality, so that they could kill it and feel justified in doing so - and then take power in Germany and Italy with the support of the U.S. and the Vatican in a patriarchal alliance against us pagans - as they have always been, trying to exterminate us, too, because we are matriarchal, not patriarchal liars like them - wherein they have the means to ban, misrepresent, impersonate and defame and slander us in government as "the Christian Democrats" in both countries after the war - U.S.-Vatican imposed puppet governments propagating lies to survive with CIA-Papacy backing! The same alliance that "defeated Communism" wormed its way into power in Germany and defeated Germany, and then took and maintained self-righteous power over the true people, matriarchal people, who are being exterminated under the Great Lie of patriarchy because we will not bow down and worship The Beast, as it says in "The Book of Revelations" would come to pass!
So when will we be free, and the truth be known? Give us the "Polish corridor" now!!!
Geez Lizzy, I told you not to remove that tin foil cap. Now look what's happened, it's the old CIA/PAPAL Polish Corridor Conspiracy all over again. Nurse! Nurse! Lizzy is off her meds again.
That had to be something to be straped to a rocket for the first time, back in the day. Can you imagine what must have been going thru his head.OMG lol.
I find it very hard to celebrate when the United States has stopped being a Space Fairing nation. We have NO MANNED SPACE PROGRAMME thanks to OBAMA, who is leaving space travel up to Amateurs and their toys.
Its time to re-start Constellation and at least build something that will get the USA not some Amateur club to the Space Station.
Not now john, we gotta get on with this. I am glad people can be happy, magnum has a point insofaras we gotta move our national space program forward, I'll take the amatures too, but it is NASA's mission to define the science. If Dod's around the world take up the slack, well I will leave those comments for later, at least THEY are doing something, along with the russians and the french...er, ok, not the french, the chinese....I still like the concept that if Mexico lands men on the moon first, the capitol of Mars will be named Los Huevos....and I am not laughing...it would be just our luck they would land and find fossil eggs in a fossilized nest and scoop the world...but hey, in the meantime...party on dudes and dudettes.....just get back to work in the morning, the chinese are not waiting around for us, they already offered us their help. Happy Yuris night, and hoorah for the shuttle!! best damn space ship in this federation of planets quadrant!!....so far...
Since this thread seems to have a fair share of wacko's I'll put in my 2 cents:
This planet has way too much geologic activity. We are going to be detroyed eventually just like every other civilization before us. We need to figure out how to get off this planet before it is too late!