VOSTOK ONE Following on from their success of four years earlier, the Soviet Union would once again top the United States in the field of space exploration when Vostok One and its pilot Yuri Gagarin lifted-off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in northern Kazakhstan on the 12th of April 1961, placing into orbit the first human representative from the planet Earth. Whilst the craft would only orbit the Earth once it would once again prove the lead that the Soviet Union had over its American counter-parts. Vostok One would once again use the same R-7 booster the Russians had originally developed as an inter-continental ballistic missile with adaptations made to accommodate the Vostok�s upper stage, service module and capsule. Just less than one month later the United States would launch astronaut Alan Shepard into space in his Freedom 7 Mercury Programme capsule with American President John F Kennedy making the historic announcement not long after this flight that the United States would place a man on the surface of Earth�s Moon by the end of the decade. From this point on-ward it quite literally became a race into space between the United States and the Soviet Union as the Vostok Programme led to the Voshkod Programme which led to the Soyuz Programme. Whilst in the United States the Mercury Programme gave way to the Gemini Programme leading to the historic Apollo Programme. The race would only truly come to an end when on the 20th of July 1969 American astronaut Neil Armstrong would become the first representative of the human race to set foot upon the surface of Earth�s nearest neighbour in space � The Moon. New Series Introduction � Day Three Once again following on from yesterday and my introduction to the new interlocking, multi-part series which will have its beginnings next Monday. October, 15th 2003, had seen the launch of the first manned Chinese spacecraft, the Shenzhou (Heavenly Vessel) 5, a one-man spacecraft which had orbited the Earth and would be the total equivalent of the Soviet Union�s entire Vostok and America�s Mercury Programme�s. The following years had seen the launch of the China�s first two-man spacecraft, the Shenzhou 6, china�s equivalent of the Soviet Union�s Voshkod and America�s Gemini Programme�s, followed not long after by the launch of China�s first three-man mission in the Shenzhou 7 spacecraft, a mission which would also feature China�s first spacewalk. The following years would see a slow in China�s progression into space, as time was taken to develop new spacecraft and boosters until on the 1st of January 2015, to the surprise of the world, China uses a newly developed super booster to launch into space its Tiangong-1 space station. The launch is followed one week later by a crew to man the station and from that moment onwards a steady flow of men and materials is launched into space to constantly enlarge the station for the crews which are sent into space to man it. To be continued