Fifty Years On...

[jjpor]

You know, you can be as cynical as you like about the politics surrounding the space race (and you'd be right!) and there are certainly serious arguments as to why we just don't need manned spaceflight, but my inner space cadet can't help thinking "Fifty years, and we're still tooling around in low orbit?" Apart from the moon landings, of course, but they were a long time ago too...

Plus great big rockets are really cool! ;D

Hopefully, though, to strike a sickeningly utopian retro-sf note, when people look back in centuries to come the Cold War will seem like a curiosity and Gagarin and the other space pioneers will be remembered as great figures in human history. Hopefully.