Well so much for school. All my prior knowledge of the first man into space was blown into stardust (excuse the pun). It was not Yuri Gagarin, sorry USSR.

Just been researching and in fact on April 12, 1961 Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the Earth, not into space as I was always led to believe.

Anyway to stop the rambling the first man into space was…. Wait for it!

Joseph Kittinger! HE WAS the first man in space. Joe took a hot air balloon ride to about 30km from the earths surface, and then when he got to the edge of space done something even I would think twice about… jumped!

Now if Richard Branson knew this maybe he wouldn’t keep messing around trying to go over various seas in his little balloon.

So the first man into space was actually the first man to skydive from space too! Now beat that Russia. Check the video out.

Anyway this was an experiment which proves one of Einstein’s Relativity Theories, ‘A Happy Idea’. This stated that a man in space would not be able to detect that he was falling under gravity. This sure beats my attempts of skydiving.

PS. This is an arguable subject, due to large amounts of cramming this morning I have realised that it depends on where we say space starts. According to the FAI the internationally designated altitude of ‘Outer Space’ is at 100k from mean sea level, and since they are the same people which gave me my skydiving licence had better not argue. This invisble line just like the equator, between space and our atmosphere is called the ‘Karman line’.