The Legend and Name of Sally Ride Lives on as AGOR ship

Prof Sally Ride

The United States Navy's first academic research ship to be named after a woman will be christened R/V Sally Ride after NASA's first female astronaut to fly in space.

She became the first American woman to enter space in a low Earth orbit in 1983, a full twenty years after the Soviet Union's first woman astronaut Valentina Tereshkova.

Dr Sally Ride left NASA in 1987 to work as a Professor at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Arms Control and had served on the investigation panels for two space shuttle disasters (Challenger and Columbia)—the only person to serve on both.

Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announced Friday (April 12) the next ocean-class Auxiliary General Oceanographic Research (AGOR) ship will be named the R/V Sally Ride.

"As secretary of the Navy, I have the great privilege of naming ships that will represent America with distinction as part of the fleet for many decades to come," Mabus said in a statement revealing the names of seven ships, including the Sally Ride.

"These ships were all named to recognise the hard working people from cities all around our country who have contributed in so many ways to our Navy and Marine Corps team."

Mabus named the future R/V Sally Ride in memory of the astronaut, who also served as a professor, scientist and innovator at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) at the University of California in San Diego. Scripps will operate the R/V Sally Ride when it enters the Navy's fleet in 2015.

Dr Sally Ride, 65, died on July 23, 2012, as a result of pancreatic cancer.

The R/V Sally Ride, a Neil Armstrong-class AGOR ship, is the U.S. Navy's first research vessel named after a woman. 

It is named after the late great Prof Sally Ride, America's first woman in space.

CREDIT: Department of Defense

Valentina Tereshkova (born 6 March 1937) is a retired Soviet cosmonaut and the first woman to have flown in space, having been selected from more than four hundred applicants and five finalists to pilot Vostok 6 on 16 June 1963.

It took NASA and the US Adminstration a further 20 years to finally approve of women astronauts. Until that time they were thought NOT capable of the Right Stuff!

Yuri Gagarin: Former Cosmonaut Offers First-Hand Account Of His Death

Yuri Gagarin 50 Year Tribute

Russian pilot and cosmonaut Vladimir Aksyonov has offered the most plausible account to date of the crash of the fighter jet that killed Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, and Vladimir Seryogin, a regimental commander at the cosmonaut training center where Gagarin was enrolled.

Aksyonov, a two-time Hero of the Soviet Union, was with Gagarin at a pre-flight medical exam on March 27, 1968, the day of the crash. He flew in a different plane on that fateful day.

Gagarin's Capsule - Vostok-1

Aksyonov presents his unofficial version of events in his book "Along the Roads of Trial", which has just been released in a limited printing.

Gagarin and Aksyonov saw the same doctor before boarding different planes

Outside the Polbin Higher Air Force School, where Gagarin was enrolled from 1955 to 1957, stands a concrete pedestal supporting the MiG-15 jet in which the world's first cosmonaut learned to fly.

"The first person to offer this version of the crash was Hero of the Soviet Union Sergei Anokhin, an experienced test pilot, and a member of the commission that investigated the disaster," Aksyonov told me.

"It was soon after the crash. He told me first not only because we were friends and knew each other so well that could finish each other's sentences, but also perhaps because on that tragic day I shared the same changing room with Gagarin, got my pre-flight medical clearance from the same doctor and was briefed about the weather by the same officer."

Aksyonov says that the crews then went to their separate aircraft, with Yury Gagarin assigned to fly in a MiG-15 with Vladimir Seryogin, and Aksyonov assigned to a plane conducting training in zero-gravity conditions.

Bad weather a factor
Aksyonov says that weather conditions on that day were difficult but still within the acceptable range: "The cloud cover was far from standard. Its lower edge was at an altitude of 600 meters. Then there was a solid mass of clouds up to 4,000 meters, with few openings. Beyond that there were no clouds; the sky was clear and visibility was very good. We were even shown photos of the upper edge taken by a weather plane."

Vladimir Aksyonov

Gagarin's last words
Aksyonov says that Gagarin's last message from the jet was that they had completed their mission to reach the upper edge of the cloud cover, at an altitude of 4,000 meters.

They were flying at a low speed but at a great altitude. Their next maneuver was to make a rapid descent and prepare for a dive through the cloud cover.

Minutes before Gagarin's death
"A descent can be performed in several ways," Aksyonov said. "There is the downward spiral with several rotations, or you can perform a half-roll and then pull out of the steep descent in the direction of the airfield. 

The second method - a quick descent with a half-roll - is used by pilots who want to finish their assignment quickly to allow other pilots to use the plane. Cosmonaut Yevgeny Khrunov was scheduled to fly on that day, and this is why Gagarin and Seryogin opted for for the fast dive."

Vladimir Aksyonov

Aksyonov believes that Gagarin and Seryogin were two to three seconds late in pulling out of the dive after the half-roll, causing them to end up in the thick cloud layer. But there could have been other factors as well: the greater altitude and density of the cloud cover at the point of entry compared with the general level, or the inadequate height at which the MiG-15 started the half-roll.

Causes of the tragedy in Aksyonov's account
"So the causes of the crash could have been bad weather, with the upper edge of the cloud cover 4 kilometers up, and the lower edge at a mere 600 meters," Aksyonov said. "There was also the pilots' failure (primarily Seryogin's) to judge the weather correctly, and also the sudden entry into the unbroken cloud layer at a high speed while diving, which rendered the pilots unable to fly steady using the instruments. Another cause of the crash was the inadequate height between the lower cloud edge and the point at which the pilots pulled out."

Soviet MiG-15 UTI

Entering tailspin
The aircraft unexpectedly found itself in dense clouds, travelling at high speeds, with the attitude gauges - primarily the bank and pitch indicator - behaving erratically. In these conditions, the plane will most likely enter a deep downward spiral, or, if they pilot is making energetic attempts to pull up, enter into a rapid tailspin. 

According to official findings, Gagarin and Seryogin's aircraft emerged from the clouds nearly vertical, and hurtled towards the ground at a speed of 700 kilometers per hour. At this speed, the MiG-15 took three seconds to fall the remaining 600 meters to the ground.

Gagarin and Seryogin did not try to eject   
"The fact that Gagarin and Seryogin did not try to eject themselves, or to establish radio contact with the ground, can be explained by their sudden entry into the cloud cover," Aksyonov said. "Both pilots were struggling to regain control of the aircraft. If the emergency had been caused by some outside factor, the pilots would have immediately reported it by radio."

He also noted the difficulty of piloting a heavy MiG-15 UTI fighter in a vertical position.

"At the lower point of any aerial figure or half-roll, aircraft speeds are at their highest - about 700 kilometers an hour," Aksyonov said. "So it is quite possible for a MiG-15 in rapid descent to overshoot the target altitude by a few hundred meters or even a kilometer."

Official report on Gagarin's death still classified
The government commission that investigated the circumstances of Gagarin's death was never able to pinpoint the true cause of the tragedy. Its report remains classified.

According to the official version of events, due to a change in air conditions (the commission did not specify what change) the crew performed a sharp maneuver and entered into a tailspin. The pilots, despite their efforts to right the plane, crashed to the ground and died. No equipment failures or malfunctions were reported. An analysis of the pilots' remains and blood revealed no traces of foreign substances.

Aksyonov rejects rumors that the pilots were drunk
The secrecy surrounding the accident has given rise to rumors and conspiracy theories. One widely repeated story is that Gagarin and Seryogin each drank a glass of vodka before flying. Official sources reject this claim, citing the fact that investigators found no alcohol in the pilots' blood. Aksyonov agrees with the official explanation on this point.

"That day was very important for Yury Gagarin, and everyone who knew the details and the pilots personally find speculation that Gagarin and Seryogin were drunk during flight preposterous," Aksyonov said.

Alas poor Hobbit......we did not know you well!

Anthropology is comparing this small hobbit skull to that of it's square jawed Homo Sapien cousin and coming to differing views.

The tale of Homo floresiensis, aka 'the hobbit' is beginning to read less like a Tolkien epic and more like an Agatha Christie whodunit.

Two studies have added a new and interesting twist to the plot. One claims that the skeleton's ape-like feet push back its ancestry near the dawn of Homo. Another argues that the hobbit is a later offshoot of Homo erectus, dwarfed by aeons of island isolation, just like the British!

"Either answer is pretty damn exciting," says William Jungers, a palaeoanthropologist at Stony Brook University in New York, who led the analysis of the foot. "It's telling us something pretty amazing about human evolution."

The Hobbit skeleton

Researchers unearthed the hobbit's 18,000-year-old skeleton in Liang Bua Cave on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003. Then in 2004 partial remains from at least a half dozen individuals were uncovered.

Much of the subsequent research has focused on the skull, which encased a 417 cubic-centimetre brain; about the size of a chimpanzee's and a third the size of a human adult brain.

Allegedly, island species, separated from their mainland kin, tend to shrink over evolutionary time, so the main thrust of the "hobbit as a separate species" arguments have focussed on its small brain. However another theory holds that the skull is simply that of a diseased Homo sapiens.