1961 - MAN IN SPACE
		SPACE RACE STARTS
	Just after 9 a.m.Moscow time on April 12, 1961, Russian test pilot Yuri Gagarin roared into space from the Soviet Union's top-secret rocket base in Baikonur. "I see the Earth!" the first human in space radioed back 40 years ago. "It's so beautiful!" After one orbit, Gagarin reentered Earth's atmosphere and parachuted to safety, landing just before 11 that same morning. He proudly introduced himself to startled villagers as "the first spaceman in the world." His 108-minute flight shocked the world. In 1961, the United States and Soviet Union were locked in a "cold war." They weren't shooting at each other, but they were competing hard. Each feared that the other would gain an advantage and try to attack. Each worried about its prestige in the eyes of the world. The fact that the Soviets had put a man in space - only four years after launching Sputnik, the first man-made satellite - alarmed many Americans. Were the Soviets better than us? Meanwhile, the Soviets were proud of Gagarin's flight. What they didn't say was how dangerous it had been. The authorities had prepared three press releases before the launch: one to use if the flight succeeded and two if it failed. The capsule had begun to spin wildly on its descent, Gagarin testified in secret. He had nearly passed out. And the Russians did not admit until much later that Gagarin was required to eject from his capsule in order to land. (Some aviation records require that a pilot land with his craft.) Many scientists in the US were excited by the news, says NASA historian Roger Launius. They congratulated their colleagues in the USSR. The US, in fact, had been preparing to send its first astronaut into space. But Soviet scientists hadn't set out to compete against the US in outer space, says RoaldSagdeev. He is a nuclear physicist who now teaches at the University of Maryland. Professor Sagdeev headed the USSR's Space Research Institute for 15 years. He says Sputnik was launched as part of an International Geophysical Year program to study the upper atmosphere. "The scientists didn't realize it would create such an international uproar," Sagdeev says. But once the Soviet government - and the US government, for that matter - saw the propaganda value of outer space, they devoted more resources to it. Sagdeev recalls those days as "a period of great enthusiasm for the Russian people.... We had the feeling that Russia was catching up to the West." But on the American side, Dr. Launius explains that "The Soviets were waxing our skis." What he means is that by seeming to challenge the US to a "space race," the Soviets were vastly speeding up America's space effort. Money poured into the US program. Less than a month later, on May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., aboard a spacecraft he named Freedom 7. He was in outer space for only 15 minutes. On May 25, without a single American astronaut having yet orbited the Earth, President John F. Kennedy said to the world: "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth." Go to the moon? American scientists were shocked again. "We didn't know how to do that in 1961," Launius says. They had to learn what humans needed to stay in space for a long time. They had to design powerful rockets and sophisticated spacecraft.