America loses the Space Race
Despite Ham’s successful flight, it wasn’t a human being launched into space. Ham’s launch in January of 1961 revealed some flaws in the Redstone rocket. Ham’s flight was a success by NASA measures, but they wanted to enhance the reliability of the rocket before launching an astronaut. The United States, slowed by caution about failed rocket tests and the possibility of losing an astronaut, wouldn’t launch the first American man into space until May of 1961. Ham’s flight was a hit, but on April 12, 1961, the United States was dealt a hard blow- the Soviet Union announced that cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin not only made it into space, but for 108 minutes had orbited the planet. He was a Soviet national hero but infuriated the NASA astronauts. Alan Shepard, furious at having the Soviets, snapped, “We had ‘em by the short-hairs, and we gave it away!”