Vostok 1

In 1957, the first ever satellite was launched. This, aside from being a great technological achievement, it marked the beginnig of a new era of the Cold War - the Space Race. Both belligerents, the US and the USSR rushed to get a human in space as soon as possible. The USSR, however, had a head-start. The R-7 Semyorka ICBM was, despite being a bad weapon, extremely capable as a launcher, much better than the US rockets of the time. By sticking the Luna 3rd stage on top of the core, the system had enough power to lift just shy of 5 tons to LEO. The launcher was ready, only the spacecraft remained - it was a very simple design, with no propulsion aside from one retrorocket and some cold gas thrusters, it had no attitude control once it had separated from the service module, and the reentry module was a simple pressure vessel protected from all sides by a heat-shield. Only four years after the first ever orbital spaceflight by a satellite, in April 1961, Yuri Gagarin simoultaneously became the first human in space and the first human on orbit.