I am a couple days late with this, but April 12, 2012 marks the 51st anniversiary of the flight of Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space back in 1961. Saying, "Let's go!" as he lifted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan, 27-year old Soviet Air Force pilot Gagarin, in his spacecraft Vostok 1, made a single orbit of Earth, where he radioed back his observations of Earth, and his physical condition during prolonged weightlessness. After a harrowing re-entry back into the atmosphere where his craft's service module remained attached to his crew capsule before the connecting straps burned away, Gagarin ejected from his spacecraft and parachuted safely to the ground near Engels, Russia, while the Vostok landed separately by its own chute in a flight lasting 108 minutes. His flight was a propaganda victory for the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War with the U.S., beating by three weeks American astronaut Alan Shepard into space with his 15-minute suborbital flight on May 5. Had Shepard flown before Gagarin, it is possible President John F. Kennedy might not have set the goal of the USA landing a man on the Moon before 1970 in his speech before Congress on May 25, 1961, and the Space Race might have turned out slightly different.