Word: vostok
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Triumphant music blared across the land. Russia's radios saluted the morning with the slow, stirring beat of the patriotic song, How Spacious Is My Country. Then came the simple announcement that shattered forever man's ancient isolation on earth: "The world's first spaceship, Vostok [East], with a man on board, has been launched on April 12 in the Soviet Union on a round-the-world orbit...
Radio reports identified the "cosmonaut" as Major Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin, 27. According to the official announcement, the Vostok had blasted off from an unidentified launching pad at exactly 9:07 a.m., Moscow time. Brief bulletins, from time to time, traced its orbital track. Word came that at 9:22 a.m. Gagarin had reported by radio from a point over...
...flight is normal. I am withstanding well the state of weightlessness." At 11:10 a report was broadcast that at 10:25 Gagarin had completed one circuit of the earth and that the spaceship's braking rocket had been fired. This was the perilous point when the Vostok, its nose white-hot from friction with the earth's atmosphere, began its plunge to a landing. All Russia waited nervously-and the government-controlled radio milked every moment for suspense. Not until 12:25 was the proud announcement put on the air: "At 10:55 Cosmonaut Gagarin safely returned...
...mechanics took the diesel off its base and tried to weld the crack. Part way through the job, the welding torch ran out of oxygen. Now Vostok was really in peril. Its only hope was a cylinder of oxygen dropped from an airplane the previous autumn. It had broken loose from its parachute and plunged into deep snow. Efforts to find it were abandoned, but the area where it fell-more than a mile from the station-had been carefully marked...
...Nikolayev was holding a rope, the end of which we knew was attached to the cylinder." After eight more feet of digging, the cylinder itself appeared. It was hurried back to the fast-cooling station and used to weld the base plate. Soon the main diesel was chugging again. Vostok was saved...