All posts tagged: space flight

Why Yuri Gagarin wasn’t the first in space – and who beat him to it

Why Yuri Gagarin wasn’t the first in space – and who beat him to it

Published by skeptic

Were these the first people to reach space? Heritage Image Partnership Ltd /Alamy If you were to take off from Earth on a clear day – the kind you want for a launch – you’d see the sky change colours before your eyes. It would shine a bright blue outside your window, becoming deeper as you climbed into the thinning air of the upper atmosphere. At some point, the blue would disappear entirely, and the black of outer space would surround your capsule. None of this seems controversial today. Everyone knows that the blue day sky is an optical effect caused by sunlight’s interaction with the atmosphere. Astronauts have gone up to see for themselves, returning with descriptions of the darkness of space. But this wasn’t always the case. So, who was the first person to experience this? You might instinctively say Yuri Gagarin, as he is often known as the first man in space. But was he? The first thing we have to consider is where space starts. And that really depends on what …

The first commercial space stations will start orbiting Earth in 2026

The first commercial space stations will start orbiting Earth in 2026

Published by skeptic

A digital rendering of Vast’s Haven-1 space station Vast The space station industry is starting to take off. For decades, if you wanted to send an astronaut or experiment into orbit, the International Space Station (ISS) was the only option. But now, as NASA and its partners prepare to deorbit the ISS at the end of the decade, commercially owned stations are preparing to take over. “These have been in development for a number of years now, mostly in partnership with NASA, and 2026 is really going to be the start of hardware flying,” says Mary Guenther, head of space policy at the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington DC. There have been privately developed modules attached to the ISS before, notably from the now-dissolved firm Bigelow Aerospace, but no stand-alone commercial space stations. In the absence of the ISS, though, such stations will be called upon to fill the gap. “It’s time for NASA to go further and do things that we’ve never done before, while leaving the rest – in this case, space stations …