Yuri’s Semi-Centennial… and other milestones

Monument of Yuri Gagarin on Cosmonauts Alley in Moscow. (Credit: Anatoly Terentiev)

Today marks the 50th anniversary of human exploration off-world.  Coincidentally, it also marks the 30th anniversary of the inaugural launch of NASA’s Space Shuttle.

Now is a time of transition in many respects; it’s a time of remembrance and of guarded (and sometimes not-so-guarded) excitement.  The Space Shuttle is retiring, the International Space Station is complete, the first commercial orbital transportation ventures have successfully flown and recovered spacecraft, and an armada of suborbital spacecraft are on deck to begin getting us off the rock.

So, with many celebrations occurring worldwide, I raise my glass in kind:

Here’s to those that have shown us the way and to what is yet to come.

May the wind be at our backs.