This week marked the 40th anniversary of the first manned flight into space. The flight by the Russian cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, lasted just 108 minutes but still stands as a milestone in the history of mankind. The "space age", which followed, was fuelled not by the desire to explore new horizons but by the imperatives of a Cold War scenario in which Americans and Russians faced each other with enough nuclear weaponry to guarantee "mutually assured destruction". Nuclear confrontation and the propaganda value of outstanding achievement is what propelled humanity into space, not the need to boldly seek new frontiers. And yet the space-race also gave us some of modern history's most gripping moments as astronauts and cosmonauts faced possible death in flight after flight into the unknown. We watched transfixed as the race to put a man on the moon unfolded live on our television screens. The political landscape has changed greatly in the past 40 years. The Soviet Union is no more and with its departure went the need for a space race. Even before the dissolution of the USSR, the US and the Soviets were striving towards greater co-operation in manned space travel with joint Apollo/Soyuz flights and shared efforts on space station projects. The immense cost of space projects made co-operation necessary. It may also have hastened the demise of the communist system as the Soviet Union drove itself almost to bankruptcy in its efforts to keep pace with advances in American military technology, not least the "Star Wars" programme of the Reagan administration.
Now, the country that stunned the world with Sputnik and Gagarin, and led the race for nearly a decade, is left merely to remember past glories. The space shuttle Buran lies grounded in Moscow's Gorky Park having found a new role as a theme restaurant. Russia's last great triumph, the orbiting space station, Mir, which in its time marked an impressive technological advance, was left in space for almost a decade longer than its planned lifespan. The result was catalogue of accidents and system failures which further dented Russia's image. Mir has finally with, it should be said, impressive technical expertise been brought down in the Pacific and Russia's involvement in the new International Space Station only takes place because of financial backing from the US. This month's showdown between the Americans and the Chinese over the US spy plane and the loss of a Chinese fighter pilot brought back troubling memories of a time we hoped had been left behind. The incident provides a sobering reminder that weapons of mass destruction which were so much a feature of the Cold War remain primed and ready in their remote silos dotted across the US midwest, the Russian steppes and the deserts of China.