My friend Isabel Lara at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum shared a funny Onion article with me today: "USSR Wins Space Race As U.S. Shuts Down Shuttle Program." But as she pointed out, the truth is just as weird. Back in February, I visited Moscow with space journalist Miles O'Brien for the golden anniversary of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becoming the first human to reach space. The Kremlin gala we witnessed included Russian president Dmitri Medvedev saying lines that sounded like they were right out of this Onion piece:
"At long last, our great Soviet republic has conquered the West and achieved technological and ideological superiority over America," Kremlin representative Sergei Voronin said Wednesday, announcing the achievement to an audience of joyous beet farmers and steel factory laborers assembled in Red Square. "We have established our unrivaled dominion over the stars and planets and stand now at the dawn of a new era, an era in which the tenets of communism shall echo loudly across the Earth's entire expanse."
We didn't see any beet farmers (well, no, wait, there was that b-roll playing behind the space breakdancers during the cosmonaut telecast), but yeah. It was pretty much like that. Much political hay being made over the US terminating the shuttle program, with an unclear future for NASA.
The image above, by the way, is one I shot during the real deal—not from the Onion piece.
- Russia: Cosmonaut’s Day and Yuri Gagarin gala at the Kremlin (video)
- Cosmonaut’s Day in Moscow: Notes from Yuri Gagarin gala inside the Kremlin
- Xeni on The Madeleine Brand show: Russia’s “Gaga-esque Gagarin Glitzothon”)
- Yuri’s Night: spacemen branded me with Yuri Gagarin’s head!
- Auction item: heat-deformed bolt from Yuri Gagarin’s Vostok spacecraft
- In Yuri Gagarin’s carry-on bag
- Video footage of Yuri Gagarin’s historic spaceflight
