Star Points for April, 2001; by Curtis Roelle April Marks Forty Years of Manned Space Flight Last month the mighty Mir space station was brought tumbling down in a spectacular fireball into the waters of the South Pacific through a controlled de-orbiting maneuver initiated by its control center handlers. Mir had served as host for long duration manned space missions for more than 15 years during which time occupants from a host of countries, including astronauts from the USA, spent up to one year going round and round the world 16 times per day. The dramatic destruction of Mir marked the end of an era that was punctuated with dramatic achievements in Soviet and Russian manned space exploration. This period began 40 years ago this month with the launch of the first human in space, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. Gagarin rode into orbit aboard a 125 foot tall rocket in the Vostok 1 spacecraft which was launched from the Tyuratam space center near the Kyzyl Kum Desert. Vostok is a Russian word meaning "east." Gagarin spent 89 minutes in space circling the globe three times at an altitude of over 200 miles before landing. It was an international public relations bonanza for the Soviet Union because they were the first nation to put a man in space. What is not widely known was that the Gagarin flight was preceded just a few days earlier by tragedy. In late March Valentin Bonadarenko was the youngest cosmonaut at age 24. Part of his training involved spending 10 days in an oxygen pressure chamber. At the end of the test he was removing sensors that had been attached to his body using alcohol soaked cotton to wipe his skin. Valentin discarded the cotton and it landed accidentally on a hot plate used by him to prepare his meals. The cotton burst into flames and in the pure oxygen atmosphere the fire soon spread to his suit. To the horror of a doctor viewing through a porthole Valentin became fully engulfed in flames. The heat of the fire increased the pressure in the chamber preventing the door from being opened from the outside. One attending physician was quoted in T.A. Heppenheimer's book "Countdown: A History of Space Flight" saying, "The body was totally denuded of skin, the head of hair; there were no eyes in the face. It was a total burn of the severest degree." As he was treated Valentin was conscious and speaking. "It's my own fault; don't blame anyone else...Too much pain -- do something, please -- to kill the pain." Valentin lingered eight hours until he died. Gagarin's orbital flight was followed less than one month later by the first U.S. manned launch, although Alan Shepard's suborbital flight lasted a brief 15 minutes and reached a maximum altitude of just 115 miles. America answered back a second time with another suborbital flight, this time with Virgil "Gus" Grissom. By August the Soviets launched a second cosmonaut into Earth orbit. Gherman Titov spent 25 hours in space, including a sleep period and in-flight meals. The Soviet Union was making progress in leaps and bounds. The fifth earthling in space was John Glenn in Friendship 7. It was February 1962, but an American had finally been place into earth orbit. The first five humans to venture into space. Where are they now? 1) Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space in April 1961, died when his jet fighter crashed in 1968. 2) Alan Shepard, America's first astronaut in space and who in 1971 became the fifth of twelve Americans to walk on the moon during the Apollo program, died of Leukemia in 1998. 3) Virgil Ivan (Gus) Grissom, America's second spaceman, died in the Apollo 1 launch pad fire in 1967. 4) Gherman Titov died this past September, 39 years and one month after becoming the second cosmonaut in space. 5) John Glenn Jr., the third American in space but the first American to orbit the earth, was U.S. senator from Ohio from 1974 until 1998 and was the only astronaut from the Mercury program to also ride aboard the U.S. space shuttle. Speaking of the space shuttle, can you believe that the maiden voyage of the space shuttle Columbia was 20 years ago this month? The space shuttle has been flying for half the time that humans have been going in space. The space shuttle fleet currently consists of four orbiters: Columbia, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavor. Challenger, a fifth orbiter, and a crew of seven astronauts were lost in an explosion during launch in 1986. A sixth orbiter, Enterprise, was used for testing and never flew in space. Humans have been venturing into space for 40 years. In that time mankind has not traveled beyond the moon, and the last time that happened was over 28 years ago. When will we return to the moon? Will we go on to Mars? These are the questions that the human race and the tax payer will answer in the coming years.