This week marks the anniversary of the first time a human,
Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, went into space. It's also the
anniversary of the inaugural launch of NASA's space shuttle
program. We've assembled a slideshow representing some of the
spacecraft used for manned space travel in the past, present,
and future. Seen here is Gagarin before he took off on his
108-minute orbit around the Earth, an event that shocked the
world and accelerated the space race between the Soviet Union
and the U.S. April 14, 2012 3:59 AM PDT Photo by: NASA | Caption
by: Martin LaMonica Conversation powered by Livefyre