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.