Operation AXIOM: The Space Race—The 60th Anniversary of Vostok 5 & Vostok 6, Part I
14-16 June 1963:
Vostok 5 lifted off from the Kazakh S.S.R.'s Baikonur Cosmodrome, carrying Pilot Valery Bykovsky aboard a
Vostok 3KA capsule atop a
Vostok-K rocket; two days later,
Vostok 6 lifted off, carrying Pilot Valentina Tereshkova; Bykovsky was meant to orbit for a record eight days; Soviet propaganda made much of Tereshkova, a skydiver rather than a pilot, being the first woman in space.
Commentary: We here at "The Explorers' Club" are not sexist, & so we refuse to judge Tereshkova's performance as a cosmonaut by the bigotry of low expectations, as you'll read about in "The 60th Anniversary of Vostok 5
& Vostok 6
, Part II." Soviet boasts of sex equality would prove hollow: the next female cosmonaut, Svetlana Savitskaya, would not fly until 1982, nineteen years after Vostok 6
, & even then only to preempt the flight of the first female American astronaut, Sally Ride aboard the Challenger
during 1983's S.T.S.-7.
Bonus! Space Race Song o' the Day: Vostok 5 & Vostok 6
Public Service Broadcasting featuring Smoke Fairies, "Valentina" from
The Race for Space (Space Comrade Mike Papa Whiskey)
Semper exploro.
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