who's the first astronaut to set a space record?

Answer 1

No question it was Yuri Gugarin first to orbit, first in space.

Answer 2

That all depends on what you mean by a record. In the early days of space flight virtually every other mission set a record of some kind.

Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space, making one orbit of the Earth in Vostok 1. Alan Shepard followed weeks later in Freedom 7, although his was only a suborbital flight. John Glenn was the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth in Friendship 7. Later that year Gherman Titov became the first man to spend a day in space, setting an endurance record with Vostok 2. During his 8-day Gemini 5 flight in 1965 Gordon Cooper claimed the record for the greatest number of hours spent in space by a single person. This was later broken by Frank Borman and Jim Lovell in Gemini 7 in December 1965, who broke all endurance records with a 14-day mission.

Alexei Leonov made the first ever spacewalk in Voskhod 2 in 1965. In December 1966 Buzz Aldrin set a record of five hours of spacewalk activity on Gemini 12. Gemini 12 also made Jim Lovell the man with the most hours in space, and after his Apollo 8 and Apollo 13 flights in 1968 and 1970 respectively he became the most travelled man alive, with more time in space than any other human and a greater distance covered, with 18 days in Earth orbit and two trips to the Moon.

The first ever space rendezvous was made by Wally Schirra and Tom Stafford in Gemini 6, meeting Gemini 7 in orbit. The first docking of two spacecraft was made by Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott in Gemini 8. The first docking of two manned spacecraft was made by Soyuz 4 and 5 in January 1969, and two crew from Soyuz 5 made a spacewalk to cross over to Soyuz 4, which also marked the first time a spacecraft had landed with a different crew from that which it launched with.

Once space stations became a regular feature of the Russian space program, and NASA put up Skylab, endurance records were set and broken constantly.

Answer 3

The first "astro"naut in space was Alan Sheppard. The first one to orbit was Glenn. That's not including the chimps, of course - I guess they weren't considered astronauts...

Answer 4

There was a Soviet astronaut before Gagarin but he was not loyal enough to hold his breath when the life support ran out...

Answer 5

Yuri Gagarin.

Answer 6

if you want to be technical, the guy above me is wrong

yuri gagarin was a cosmonaut (hehe semantics at its best)

i believe john glenn would be the first ASRTOnaut in space... :-D