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Soon there will come hour of which was waited for by centuries - Hour of the first departure of the person per interplanetary space.
These three will depart the first.
The spaceship - result of work of tens thousand people, hundreds the enterprises, many academies, institutes, design offices, laboratories.
Each of seeing off sends today to space, in this spaceship, the own small screw.
Carefully and circumspectly the person enters the unknown world.
The first flight is a trial flight.
Today cosmonauts will carry out some hours in space of all flying round the Earth.
It is necessary to check up as the person in space flight will feel.
It is necessary to check up work of all mechanisms and devices.
- Are ready?
- It is ready.
- It is ready.
- I give a signal.
- Well, companions, we begin!
- Before launch remains five minutes.
The person has finished the act - now automatic machines will make the rest.
Automatic machines will switch on engines, automatic machines will operate at first the ship in flight.
- Before launch there was one minute.
- Launch!
The ship speeds up!
Acceleration creates overloads.
Cosmonauts feel growing increase in the weight.
Lead weight has pressed them to stove benches.
Has deprived of mobility.
Overcoming resistance of atmosphere, the ship flies already in two faster an artillery shell.
Fuel in the first stage of the ship has come to an end.
It operated by radio will return to the Earth.
Automatically ship wheels work, gradually transferring it into the set orbit.
Speed continues to increase.
Six kilometres per second!
Hard!
Precisely the Earth has strained all forces to return escaping captives.
The second stage has separated.
The ship by inertia flies all above, coming nearer to the set altitude.
The third time engines switch on.
Speed is possible to circular!
The engine has ceased.
Free flight has begun.
The ship became a heavenly body.
It rushes now round the Earth in vacuum at altitude more than 1000 kilometres.
But what is it?
After all the person flies?
Well certainly. After all weight has disappeared.
What has happened?
From what there has come weightlessness?
We have got used to see that the person, having jumped up, falls on a floor thanks to an attraction of the Earth.
But if simultaneously with the person begins to fall and the cabin, the person cannot catch up with a floor.
It it is necessary to be groundless, becomes weightless.
It also has happened in the ship.
After deenergizing of engines it becomes freely falling body together with cosmonauts being in it.
Possessing huge speed it all time, as though, falls by the Earth, spending about two hours for one turn round a planet.
Difficultly, for the first time having got to weightlessness conditions, to remain sitting on a place.
Many think that weightlessness comes only at considerable distance from the Earth.
It is incorrect.
The state of weightlessness is tested also by pilots in the diving plane, and parachutists at a free-fall jump.
However, weightlessness in these cases proceeds very much not long.
In space every day work has begun - supervision are conducted, communication with the Earth keeps.
- Hallo, the Earth.
I answer: the locator has given altitude.
Over Australia - 1200. Over Europe - 1300. The ellipse corresponds to the calculated. State of health good.
- We pass equator.
- The sun has overheated the right board
- We will turn.
- How meteorites?
- Small - go all time.
Overcast borders are remarkably visible.
- Here whence weather to forecast.
- Now we will come into a shade of the Earth.
- It is time to test a survival suit.
- Not terribly?
- Help to put on.
And here the person leaves for the first time in space.
In the hermetic suit he took with himself in this terrible chasm a slice of a habitual terrestrial climate.
Emptiness.
The slightest traces of atmosphere absent and consequently silence.
Full eternal silence.
And how many dangers trap here the brave cosmonauts, risked to get out from under shelters of terrestrial atmosphere.
Nothing the weakened streams of space beams penetrate a body of the person.
Whether fearless travellers will pay with life?
Meteorites - the smallest heavenly stones, rush in emptiness. As the bullet can pierce with any of them a body of the person through.
To stop his heart.
The Earth remembers the sons.
Communication with cosmonauts does not stop.
Radiogramms from the ship are regularly transmitted.
With approach of darkness he is caught by thousand eyes.
The tiny asterisk rushes on the sky.
And on it flies... the father...
The first returning from the first flight.
Slightly having braked the movement, the ship starts to fall.
It is necessary to plunge into atmosphere gradually not to burn down as a meteorite.
The ship goes down on a spiral.
Only having lowered speed of the ship to speed of the plane it is possible to come in the land.
The next stage of a gain of space has terminated safely.
It is possible to pass to the following.
And here already tens ships go to interplanetary space.
They deliver in space materials and people for construction there, in emptiness, constant extraterrestrial station.
Simultaneously flight round the Moon, the prospecting rocket-automatic machine prepares.
Instead of people in a head part of this rocket is located television transmitters.
Automatically operating movie cameras.
The photoequipment supplied with various optics.
Far in interplanetary space there is a building of extraterrestrial station.
The cargo ships delivered here to an orbit a building material.
Subjects weigh nothing, but their weight and inertia remained.
To move details on space it is possible, but only force of efficiency of special rocket engines.
Welding goes by sun rays.
They here always it is a lot of.
The whole brigades of assemblers work in space, and on the far native Earth millions friends greedy catch each message from this heroic building.
In the meantime the rocket-automatic machine flies over the Moon surface.
Sitting at home to the Earth we see mountains which are there, for 380 thousand kilometres from us.
Stones on which the foot of the person will soon step.
Building of extraterrestrial station is ended.
The huge construction saturated with the most complicated technics, fed with atomic energy rushes round the Earth with circular speed.
Here this terrifying speed is imperceptible.
Not present air which would whistle in ears, either pushes, or carried by by counter subjects.
The external part of station rotates that for the account of centrifugal force to create sensation of gravity and to improve state of health of people.
Let's get acquainted with station more close.
The ring is divided into modules by hermetic doors on a case of breakdown by a meteorite and air leaks.
After all behind walls emptiness.
METEOROLOGY-SERVICE
The station conducts huge work - here a kingdom of meteorologists.
Observing the Earth from outside they see a cloudy cover of all globe.
Watch round-the-clock.
- Hallo, in Pacific ocean there was a big typhoon. Moves on the northwest.
Urgently warn Japanese fishermens.
Typhoon co-ordinates now...
There at extraterrestrial station the big work on service of a native planet is conducted.
Here watch movement of ices in the Arctic seas, behind Sun activity, relay telecasts...
Some tens persons work on stations, here their premises.
The person quickly accustoms with new living conditions and here in a black chasm he has brought a particle of the habitual terrestrial cosiness.
Certainly it would be desirable home, but all here is made that isolations from the Earth was felt less.
Unusual conditions at station give the chance to biologists to make interesting experiments.
- In this compartment establish a "climate #5" and eight-hour days.
And on your hybrid try not to close the sun absolutely.
Dream of physicists - laboratory in space.
- Your work on space beams will make revolution. Withdraw. And now here that. Ask on to test faster my new plastic in the conditions of the lowest temperatures.
- Well. We have received it only the today's spaceship.
At station branches of the most various terrestrial institutes work.
Astronomical observatory.
Muddy atmosphere, and stood now centuries between an inquisitive eye of the astronomer and the Universe...
- You know, I here as if have taken off dirty glasses.
- Look.
- Two photos of Mars taken off by identical telescopes.
- But it is made from the Earth through atmosphere, and it from here.
- What clearness, yes?
- Yes.
The extraterrestrial station - not only research institute, on it is conducted preparation for flying away on the Moon of the first ship with people.
It of the strange form.
But after all its way from here to the Moon lies in vacuum and the streamline shape is not necessary to it.
It is necessary to connect economically and conveniently only among themselves a cabin, tanks with fuel, engines, the chassis.
POINT OF COMMUNICATION WITH EXTRATERRESTRIAL STATION
Soon Launch!
- Before launch there were 5 minutes!
Whether for a long time we saw off the first cosmonauts in flight here, into this circular orbit, then yet not rendered habitable?
And now from here the person will take the following step - flies on the Moon!
The imagination of scientists and artists always goes in advance the validity.
The first people just fly on the Moon, and dreams of brave conquerors of space have already far overtaken their ship.
The mastered Moon.
Hermetic cities, observatories, mining operations - after all there, on the Moon, it will be possible to produce fuel for the ships
The moon becomes base for a gain of all Solar system.
On far heavenly bodies we will find answers to thousand the questions exciting us on the Earth.
Mysterious Mars will expand our knowledge about adoptabilities of all live.
Venus shrouded in clouds will open to us secret of occurrence of life.
Wonderful rings of Saturn will tell about a birth and death of planets.
While it is dreams.
But also they, certainly, become a reality.
There are the a turn life on space island and the first people fly on the Moon.
And in the strongest telescope from the Earth hardly it is possible to watch their ship.
Unquenchable thirst of knowledge conducts them in this sleeping world.
All is dead - neither the blue sky, nor penumbras, neither life, nor a sound.
The silent world.
It was dead asleep billions years
Now it is necessary to wake up -
The person has come!
Pavel Klushantsev. Road to stars. 1957.