Yet towards the close of that fabulous century, the curtain began slowly, inexorably to rise, and Man realised at last that the Earth was only one of many worlds the Sun only one among many stars. For countless generations of men, that tiny, crowded stage-the planet Earth-was the whole of creation, and they the only actors. To us a thousand years later, the whole story of Mankind before the twentieth century seems like the prelude to some great drama, played on the narrow strip of stage before the curtain has risen and revealed the scenery. Yet even these events, each of which changed the world, were soon to be eclipsed. It opened with the conquest of the air, and before it had run half its course had presented civilisation with its supreme challenge-the control of atomic energy. “The twentieth century was, without question, the most momentous hundred years in the history of Mankind. We must learn how to generate the still higher energy particles of the cosmic rays - up to 1,000,000,000 volts, for they will unlock new domains in the nucleus. Needless to say, it is vital that the atomic policy legislation now being considered by the congress recognizes the essential nature of this peacetime job, and that it not only permits but encourages the cooperative research-engineering effort of industrial, government and university laboratories for the task. It is a new and difficult project to reach a satisfactory answer. The development of economic atomic power is not a simple extrapolation of knowledge gained during the bomb work. Many of the proposed applications of atomic power - even for interplanetary rockets - seem to be within the realm of possibility provided the economic factor is ruled out completely, and the doubtful physical and chemical factors are weighted heavily on the optimistic side. ![]() largely used up We must, without further delay restore this surplus in preparation for the important peacetime job for the nucleus - power production. The first man in space was announced by the Soviet newsagency Tass on 12 April 1961, 9:59 a.m. The spaceship with the navigator weighs 4725 kg (10,418.6 lb), excluding the weight of the final stage of the carrier rocket. ![]() The minimum distance from the earth at perigee is 175 km (108.7 miles) and the maximum at apogee is 302 km (187.6 miles), and the angle of inclination of the orbit plane to the equator is 65º 4’. ![]() According to preliminary data, the period of revolution of the satellite spaceship around the earth is 89.1 min. The launching of the multistage space rocket was successful and, after attaining the first escape velocity and the separation of the last stage of the carrier rocket, the spaceship went in to free flight on around-the-earth orbit. The pilot space-navigator of the satellite-spaceship Vostok is a citizen of the U.S.S.R., Flight Major Yuri Gagarin. ![]() The world’s first spaceship, Vostok (East), with a man on board was launched into orbit from the Soviet Union on April 12, 1961.
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