It’s been forty-four years since the first man went into space, and orbit. On April 12th, 1961, the Russian Yuri Gagarin was the first human to go into extended weightlessness, a major event in the development of the race to the moon in the 1960s. For those who are into raves and partying, it has provided an excuse for young people to commemorate the event, so go see if there’s one in your area.

In addition, it is almost a quarter of a century since the first flight of the Shuttle (next year will be the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first flight of Columbia). That the two anniversaries are the same was not deliberate, but due to a computer glitch on the pad. It was originally supposed to launch on April 10th, 1981, but a timing anomaly between the flight computers caused them to scrub for two days. I was down at the launch, and took advantage of the delay to go over to Tampa for the day, and check out the beach and Cuban restaurants. Columbia’s last flight, of course, ended tragically a little over two years ago, when it disintegrated on entry, on February 1st, 2003.

At this point, I think it’s safe to say that the Shuttle program has a much longer past than it does a future, and while it’s done some interesting things, it was also a policy mistake in many ways, so this isn’t a bad thing.

[Update at 10:40 AM EDT]

I didn’t mention it yesterday, but it was the thirty-fifth anniversary of the launch of Apollo XIII. Tomorrow will be the anniversary of the oxidizer tank explosion that ended the mission, and almost the lives of the astronauts.