Beautiful. Except why wear a helmut and goggles if you’re not going to use them?
Because he’s going flying, d’uh 
Who’s Helmut?
Except Laika couldn’t report observations about “fireflies”, educate the public, and do all the other things Glenn did. The bar to get into the space programme was a lot higher for the humans. Otherwise they would have used random people instead of test pilots.
Maybe they used test pilots because they were all batshit crazy enough to do it.
I already know the answer to that. Why don’t you research it if you don’t?
I already know the answer. (I watched The Right Stuff.) I only tossed that “maybe” in because I didn’t want to come off like a repellent, know-it-all tool.
Yeah, actually, it is. Do you think NASA sends [Joe the Plumber] to the ISS?
"Candidates must have a bachelor's degree from an accredited institution in engineering, biological science, physical science or mathematics. The degree must be followed by at least three years of related, progressively responsible, professional experience (graduate work or studies) or at least 1,000 pilot-in-command time in jet aircraft. An advanced degree is desirable and may be substituted for experience (master's degree = 1 year or a doctoral degree = 3 years). Teaching experience, including experience at the K - 12 levels, is considered to be qualifying experience.
Yeah, they sound like glorified stick jockeys, alright. /s
I remain unconvinced that we have sufficient energy supplies on Earth to maintain an advanced civilisation and to colonise even a few other parts of the Solar System. This especially as the really big problems are turning out to be radiation and meteorite shielding. The laws of thermodynamics, like economics, are a dismal science. If you don’t like this, suggest why I’m wrong; but don’t go spouting “we can mine the Moon, the gravity well is much smaller” without due consideration of the real resources you would need to get up there and keep there to do that.
As a planet gets bigger and more resource rich, so its gravity well gets deeper. It’s possible that there is a bell curve of available energy versus gravity and that the top of the bell curve is still inadequate to maintain colonies outside a home planet, which is the other (apart from the distances involved) reason the Galactic Federation hasn’t come knocking; there isn’t one.
Doubt it. Apart from being an atheist, I know enough about Gagarin to know that he died partly because of all the liquor he was forced to consume at state events. Unlike Stalin, he couldn’t carry around his own bottle of special vokda (proper water, not little water).
And yet it happened anyhow.
I guess we’re just two peas in a pod, aren’t we?
Giant Meteor 2016!
That’s a matter of perspective - others mentioned Yuri Gagarin. He was the first human in space.
Do you remember Sigmund Jähn? Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez?
He’s from that episode of The Adventures of Letterman in which the Spell Binder changed the letter e into the letter u, causing the kiwi to plummet out of the sky when it suddenly had a person named Helmut on its head instead of a helmet.
Either that or maybe I was a little inebriated. Hard to say.
“Pioneering” is typically used to mean “among the first to do something,” not necessarily “the very first person to do something.”
I agree, in a way. I mean, I feel some grief for the passing of one of my heroes, but there is no feeling that this is unfair, or too soon.
It is pretty much the ideal: a long life, full of adventure and making the world better. The world is a less without him, but so much greater than if we’d never had him here with us.
Ad Astra, indeed.
Ah, but he was a cosmonaut, not an astronaut! 
Do you remember Valentina Tereshkova (1963)?
