On April 12th, 1961 Yuri Gagarin launched into space on a Vostok rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, becoming the first person ever to leave the planet. Here's the crazy thing: today's astronauts travel to space on a nearly identical rocket, the Soyuz, which went into operation only five years after Gagarin's historic flight. Why? While we've seen innovations in rockets over the last half-century, the underlying physics of how we get people and things into space has not changed. Chemical propul...
On April 12th, 1961 Yuri Gagarin launched into space on a Vostok rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, becoming the first person ever to leave the planet. Here's the crazy thing: today's astronauts travel to space on a nearly identical rocket, the Soyuz, which went into operation only five years after Gagarin's historic flight. Why? While we've seen innovations in rockets over the last half-century, the underlying physics of how we get people and things into space has not changed. Chemical propul...
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