Soviet Right Stuff - The Story of the First Cosmonaut

John Glenn. Alan Shepard. Scott Carpenter. Gordon Cooper. Gus Grissom. Deke Slayton. Wally Schirra. These are the names of the members of the Mercury Seven— America’s first astronauts, charged with the task of being the human faces of a massive collective effort to beat the Soviet Union in a race to space. And, of course, charged with the task of actually manning the rockets that could take them higher than man had ever flown before.

The Soviets Union had their own astronauts, or more accurately, cosmonauts. Their story, especially the most famous among them, Yuri Gargarin, is fascinating, in part, because their story has many parallels to our own American astronaut program, but also because of the differences. Some subtle, some glaring. The differences make their story poignant, something to be understood and appreciated, if only to understand what is true about the human condition.

[LWolf]

Don't think I ever heard this story, always heard the story of Alan Shepard & the other Mercury Seven astronauts, but I haven't heard much about the Cosmonauts, out of Laika.