Re:On this day in 1961 in fact (Score 1)

You're comparing apples and oranges. Shepard flew suborbital; Gagarin orbited the earth. It's a huge difference. Getting to altitude is less than half the problem -- once you're at altitude, you still need to get to orbital speed, roughly 25,000 Km/hr. When Shepard was at apogee, his downrange speed was negligible compared to orbital speed.