I am, despite a certain lack of athleticism, a member of the mile high club. I am distressed not to be a member of the sex in space club yet. On this date in 1961, dashingly handsome Russian Yuri Gargarin became the first man in space. Google is flying cool decorations to commemorate this 50th anniversary of a great achievement in space flight. Alas, Yuri Gargarin died young and would have left an extremely good-looking corpse, except he died in the crash of a supposedly routine jet flight. A KGB investigation indicated human error on the part of the air traffic control people as the cause. Whether one believes the conspiracy theories about the demise of this popular figure, he continues to be a great hero of the Russian space program today. The Russians had better do a good job moving space travel forward. If we hit space fifty years ago, we really ought to be farther along at this point, and the Americans are obviously not trying hard enough. I salute Google for honoring this great (and really sexy) astronaut.