Word: spaceship
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...minutes Soviet Cosmonaut Aleksei Arkhipovich Leonov drifted and spun through dreamlike gyrations while he followed the spaceship Voskhod II in its swift, elliptical path around the distant earth. Then, as easily and efficiently as he had emerged from his ship, Leonov climbed back inside. After 15 more orbits, he and his comrade, Colonel Pavel Ivanovich Belyayev, began the long flight home...
Autonomous or Umbilical. Much more interesting than the air lock, though, was Leonov's space suit. One Russian commentator called it "autonomous," which means that it is independent of the spaceship except for a simple tether. The pictures do show cylinders on Leonov's back that probably held oxygen, but the cable attaching him to the spaceship was thick enough to contain a good-sized oxygen tube. It may be an umbilical cord supplying oxygen from the spaceship's tanks, besides carrying wires for communication and telemetering. The tube could also carry away carbon dioxide from Leonov...
...Experiments. Such hero biographies, not unfamiliar in the U.S., help not at all in evaluating the flight of the Voskhod II. The TV pictures of Leonov outside the spaceship might have told much more, but they seemed to have been deliberately thrown out of sharpness, as well as cut. If Leonov experienced any kind of trouble the pictures did not show it, and official announcements about the flight were as formal as if carved in stone. "The ship's systems functioned normally," said a spokesman, "and the two cosmonauts completed all scientific experiments assigned to them...
...ground hard. At the ends of other flights, they seem to have stayed on board, as U.S. astronauts do, while the ships landed beneath bigger and better parachutes. Retrorockets have also been used to check a ship's speed as it nears the ground. The three-man spaceship Voskhod I used this method with great success. Its designers were so sure that the soft landing would work that they gave the crew no parachutes or protective clothing...
Darts to the Left. Within a few minutes, the chamber is revved up again to 10 r.p.m., and the day's tests begin. Playing catch with a tennis ball has become a difficult task requiring great skill and adaptation to the rotation speed. Routine jobs on a spaceship would be no easier. Since the room is moving counterclockwise, the pitcher must aim the ball to the left of the catcher. The dart board presents the same problem. Early in the run, the men readily learned to counteract the spin at low speeds. Now they are being tested again...