When we tell stories about the past, we usually focus on a few key individuals. History books are full of kings whose victories and defeats are an easily digestible shorthand for how entire kingdoms behaved. We read about the tactics of generals who led armies because we cannot really cope with the stories of every soldier and every last skirmish on all the battlefields. We admire engineers who designed great bridges or mighty rockets, yet we know they didn’t personally rivet them together or put fuel in their tanks. Stories of the Space Age fall into this trap. By the mid-1960s, for a brief few years at least, hundreds of thousands of people on both sides of the space race were working in or around the field of rocketry.
Our YURI’S DAY story is dedicated to all of them.