And the word ‘Hero’ is much over-used imo.

So is the concept of risk, and the idea of danger, especially given that the majority of STW feel that riding a bike without a helmet, or venturing out into the wilds of England without a mobile phone constitutes risky or dangerous behaviour.

You’re normally a little more intelligent than this, so I conclude that this a clumsy attempt at trolling.

molgrips – being heroic

ask if sitting on your own on top of thouands of tons of rocket fuel

Moreover, sitting on top of an ICBM…

No, not a troll.

Hero = struggle against adversity, to achieve a noble aim, no?

EDIT: not that it matters.. I’m going home soon..!

I take your point, but I don’t agree that that definition doesn’t apply to Gagarin.

people have different defintitions of “hero”, like the word “special” might have connotations for you that others might not get.
So the phrase “special little hero” might apply to you in ways that it doesn’t apply to say, normal people.

struggle against adversity

== Being the first man to get into a rocket!

achieve a noble aim

== being the first man to LEAVE OUR PLANET!!

Just for clarity, I shall restate the last bit..

Being the first man in history to leave Earth. The actual Earth. The Earth. Mother Earth. Leave it.

[mind continues to boggle at the courage]

😀

struggle against adversity
== Being the first man to get into a rocket!

What, was the door too tight or something?

Thing is, the enormity of being the first man in space probably trumped any worries about safety.

I refer you back to my earlier post.

And I refer you to mine.

Stalemate, old chap.

My posts were most dramatic and imbued with a wistful sense of the epic nature of space travel, if you refer to them, you will find out I am in fact right and Gagarin was lucky to be able to go because the sheer scale of his balls threatened the mission.

FFS you must be troling. He got into a rocket left the earth and his re-entry method involved crossing his fingers. WTF constitutes brave for your hero compass becaus it seems broken.

The Vostok capsule had limited thruster capability. As such, the reentry path and orientation could not be controlled after the capsule had separated from the engine system. This meant that the capsule had to be protected from reentry heat on all sides, thus explaining the spherical design (as opposed to Project Mercury’s conical design), which allowed for maximum volume while minimizing the external surface. Some control of the capsule reentry orientation was possible by way of positioning of the heavy equipment to offset the vehicle center of gravity, which also maximized the chance of the cosmonaut surviving g-forces while in a horizontal position. Even then, the cosmonaut experienced 8 to 9g.

Stalemate, old chap.

Raspberries.

(-:

EDIT: not that it matters.. I’m going home soon..!

be careful out there
there be dragons!

I’m sure he was very brave in reality. However on face reading, just because he did something cool doesn’t automatically make him heroic. There could be bravery or actual heroism in the details of the story, I dunno.

Here’s another one for you. Does courage necessarily confer hero status?