Word: gagarin
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...orbiting spaceship, the earth below may seem a multicolored haven-distant blue oceans and brown-and-green continents flecked with white clouds. But well-trained astronauts will know that a dangerous ordeal-a flaming return through the atmosphere-stands between them and home. Only one man, Major Yuri Gagarin of the U.S.S.R., has made such a descent. Last week in Pravda he described the long dive...
...Moscow time, said Gagarin, he was over Africa, and the spaceship's automatic controls signaled that back in Russia preparations were being made to turn on a braking device, presumably a retrorocket. "This meant," he reported, "that the final stage of the flight had begun-the return to earth, which was perhaps more crucial than ascent into orbit and orbiting itself. I readied myself for it. I faced transition from a condition of weightlessness to new and perhaps even greater overloads. I also faced tremendous heating of the ship's outer surface on entering the denser layers...
...Automation is automation," brooded Gagarin as the critical moment approached, "but I had determined the ship's position and was ready to take control with my own hands. But at 10:25 the braking device was turned on by remote control, and it worked perfectly. The Vostok began to lose speed, and shifted from its orbit into a transitional ellipse. Then it began to enter dense layers of the atmosphere. Its outer surface heated rapidly, and through the curtains that covered the portholes I saw the lurid crimson glow of the flames that raged around the ship...
...Soviet Russia there is surely as complete, or almost as complete, a record of Major Yuri Gagarin's orbital flight around the earth. But so far, the Russians have released only trifles. Major Gagarin's heart speeded up during the flight, just as Shepard's did; he was reportedly in normal condition soon after landing. But little more has been told. Non-Russian space specialists who are interested in the technical details of man's first orbital flight will have to wait until the Soviet government attaches less value to secrecy...
...knew that the elapsed time of the flight was 89 minutes, and could thus figure that the earth rotated on its axis 22½° in this time. Using these figures and constructing the orbit on a transparent globe, Chapin, a trained architect and self-trained geographer, decided that Gagarin had to land in the vicinity of Smelovka. Q.E.D...