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12th April 1961 at 06:07UTC, Vostok 1 launches from Tyuratam, Kazakhstan and carries Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin to the first manned spaceflight and one complete orbit of Earth. Today a film called “First Orbit” premieres on YouTube and features footage shot from the International Space Station that recreates as far as is possible what Yuri Gagarin would have seen.

In the years after Vostok 1 we built ever more powerful spacecraft, travelled to the Moon with Apollo, and explored onwards to the planets and stars with Voyager.

Yet the vehicle that captured my generation’s imagination is the Space Shuttle.

Exactly Twenty years after Gagarin’s flight, and exactly thirty years ago today,  the Space Shuttle Columbia lifted from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Centre on STS-1, the first space shuttle spaceflight with astronauts Bob Crippen and John Young.

Columbia launches on STS-1 (Nasa : Public Domain)

Unfortunately after the first flights the shuttle only appeared in mainstream headlines in tragedy. Challenger was lost in January 1986 on STS-51-L and Columbia on STS-107 in February 2003.

I was 7 years old when Challenger was lost, and still remember watching TV when the show was interrupted with the news – I couldn’t believe what I was watching. President Reagan said later “Sometimes when we reach for the stars, we fall short. But we must pick ourselves up again and press on despite the pain.”

The shuttle program did continue after both disasters, with Discovery leading the return to flight in both cases. The continuation of the shuttle program has lead to significant achievements in space.

The shuttle facilitated the Hubble Telescope, and the uncomparable Hubble Ultra Deep Field image.

Hubble Ultra Deep Field (Nasa : Public Domain)

Every few days the unaided eye can now watch the International Space Station soar overhead just after dusk – and without the shuttle the space station would not have existed.

The ISS from Discovery on her final flight (Nasa : Public Domain)

Even the elevation data on my humble aviation GPS is provided thanks to Endeavour on STS-99 Shuttle Radar Topography Mission.

Discovery has already been retired, Endeavour and Atlantis will be following later this year, then we’ll be back to rockets and capsules for orbital spaceflight.

It took 32 years from the Wright Brothers to get to the DC3 and reliable, comfortable air travel, and 14 years later the de Havilland Comet made it’s contribution to jet transport and aerostructure materials science. In SpaceFlight the Shuttle was a massive leap ahead compared with Gagarin’s Vostok capsule, and was flown only twenty years later.

Yet in the thirty years since STS-1 have we moved forward significantly?

Would the Comet have been built if we were happy with the range and speed of the DC3?  Therein lies the problem – where do we go from here? Low Earth Orbit has become the desination rather than a waypoint. We’re going on holiday to the departure lounge.

Perhaps the Shuttle has reached the end of it’s useful life. Perhaps Low Earth Orbit is now solely the domain of commercial launch systems, but I for one long for the day when awesome sci-fi-esque spaceplanes once again convey humans to orbit, from where they can embark on journeys to the stars.

“What is the best spaceship from Science Fiction?” sounds like an interesting starting point for a geeky sci-fi debate – How would the Millennium Falcon fare against a Borg cube?  What about Battlestar Galactica and the Vipers vs. the TCS Concordia and her Rapiers?

One thing is for sure – all the best Sci-Fi spaceships have very little in common with real life rockets. The nature of real life rocket launch operations is a far cry from Mos Eisley spaceport, with the process being controlled by scientists, mathematicians, engineers and computers. With the Shuttle retiring, pure rockets were all we had left.

Until yesterday however, when Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo was unveiled.

Five years ago SpaceShipOne became the first commercial space ship designed for humans rather than satellites and science. But at that point, space tourism still sounded like the stuff of science fiction, right up there with moon biodomes and orbiting hotels.

Yet today we’ve got a suborbital system based on a platform that, whilst not exactly proven, is at least a real life system that has been demonstrated to work. Commercial launches may only be a couple of years away.

The best bit is SpaceShipTwo is a proper space ship!  She’s flown by two pilots, with joysticks, from a spaceport in the desert, and though I guess it would be asking too much to have a smuggler and a wookie up front, we’re on the right track.

We got back to the Island on Sunday morning after spending Christmas in Belfast and New Year in Ayrshire. Whilst we were in Scotland, the snow conditions in the Scottish Ski Areas meant it wasn’t worth making the trip up, but as a consequence we were able to finish the level 4 snowboarding at Xscape, and we’re both now able to hire snowboards and use the slope without an instructor!

It’s still dark getting home from work, so it’s unlikely I’ll be flying my Esky Belt-CP Radio Controlled Helicopter unless we get a nice weekend. I’ve had it since November and only flown it (well, skated around the floor), 5 times.

However, a nice clear night last night let me try out one of my other Christmas presents. My parents got me the Celestron Skymaster 15×70 Binoculars for starwatching. I’ve been talking off and on about a telescope for the past year, but always get put off as I probably wouldn’t have the time to take it out, align it and so on. The binoculars are a great solution and last night I was able to see the Pleiades Cluster (M45) and Orion Nebula (M42). The latter especially was great as although it’s almost visible with the unaided eye, the nebula cloud is clearly visible through the binoculars.

But why is the post called “Back to work!” – I hate going back to work after Christmas without a holiday booked, and we had nothing booked for 2009. So, first day back I requested a holiday week at the end of February so we can go skiing, and by the end of the week the holiday should be booked! Anyway, as it stands, today I’ve got 37 work days till that comes around. That’s only 6 full Mon-Fri weeks!

On the 22nd of December we left the island to spend Christmas in Belfast and New Year in Ayrshire. We normally leave the dogs at my parents house in Stevenston before flying over to Belfast and this year was no different. However, the trip up the M6/M74 from Heysham was slightly different. Usually it’s non-stop, but this year we stopped for a few minutes at Sherwood Crescent.

At a point in time 20 years, 30 hours and 40 minutes before when we arrived, Sherwood Crescent was like any other street in Scotland, with families getting ready for Christmas, perhaps just sitting down to dinner. Five minutes later the majority of the Pan-Am Boeing 747 “Clipper Maid of the Seas” would impact 13 Sherwood Crescent killing all 259 on board and 11 on the ground.

Sherwood Crescent is in Lockerbie, Scotland – a name that has become synonymous for both the worst loss of life in an air disaster on British soil, and one of the most complicated legal trials under Scots law.

The images at the time showed the massive destruction caused by the remains of a 747 fuelled for a transatlantic flight. The cockpit section lying in a field near Tundergarth must be one of the defining media images of the 20th century. These images shown on the TV the next day are etched in my mind, and along with Challenger, Piper Alpha and the Herald of Free Enterprise are probably amongst the first real human tragedies I was aware of.

A few months before, for my 10th birthday, we had been plane spotting at Glasgow Airport, and it was the first time I’d seen a 747 up close. They were, and still are, quite rare at Glasgow and the noise and power were quite awesome. At the time it seemed to have all the power in the world, a machine that was clearly greater than the sum of its parts. It seemed invincible.

Yet here were the remains of the cockpit and first class section severed from the fuselage and lying in a field. It is reported that the flight attendant in this section was still alive after the impact, but died before any help arrived.

The images of the cockpit section capture both the ability of mankind to engineer something remarkable, something awe-inspiring like the 747, and also sadly the ability to cause unbelievable harm and destruction to others. One had hoped such a sight would not be seen again…

Freezing cold last night – icy roads this morning. Fingers cross the Scottish Highlands are going to get a huge snowfall on Thursday, and if the temperatures remain low some Christmas skiing may be a possibility.

Ice buildup on the MX-5