Arrival of the cosmonauts

Who would fly the first spaceships? There were no known ground rules and these had to be invented by Korolev and the others. It was decided to recruit an initial group of cosmonauts – the word ‘cosmonaut’ was used to differentiate from the existing term of astronaut. The cosmonauts had to be brave, reliable, physically fit, not panic, capable of mental endurance. ^[6]

Yuri Gagarin emerged as the most determined, energetic and ambitious of all the cosmonauts. Yuri Gagarin was born in 1934 near Smolensk, western Russia. In his youth he learned to be a foundryman and went to several industrial schools. He enlisted in the Saratov flying school in his spare time, went to pilot training school, joining the Soviet Air Force as a fighter pilot in 1956.

Because of his short height he always put a cushion on the seat of his MiG fighter. In 1957 he married а nursing student, Valentina, at his base and then transferred for arduous service in the Arctic. In 1959, on his own initiative, he wrote to his superiors, applying to join a group of cosmonauts ‘if such a group exists’. His application was filed. Gagarin was in time called up, put before a medical board and selected as a cosmonaut on his 26th birthday in March 1960.

…So who would fly the first mission? In May the director of the Cosmonaut Training Centre Evgeni Karpov selected six of the 20 as a training group for the first flight (the Americans did something similar, selecting Shepard, Grissom and Glenn from the seven rivals). The six were Kartashov, Varlamov, Gagain, Titov, Nikolayev and Popovich. When Kartashov and Varlamov were invalided out, they were replaced by Nelyubov and Bykovsky. The six were kept waiting even as the final preparations went ahead.

5 April. [Final assembly of the manned spaceship in the huge 20 m high hangar at the cosmodrome.] Korolev and the State Commission were present and all the cosmonauts were at the launch site. They watched the assembly process from Korolev’s glass office on the second floor inside the building.

The manned spaceship was carried by crane across the assembly hangar and placed gingerly on the third stage. Fasteners were tightened and connectors joined. The nosecone was put in position. The long grey, white and silver rocket lay on its railcar in the hangar, shining under the arc lamps, pointing towards the pad.

12 April. … It was 90 minutes to blastoff. Yuri Gagarin disappeared into the lift. In minutes he had clambered into the Vostok. The hatch was closed. He was on his own.

… The booster rose, gathering speed every second. Eyes followed intently upwards. Gradually it bent over in its climbing, heading into the north-east. Four bright light diamonds were all that could be seen of the engine chambers as Vostok disappeared from sight.

… Eight minutes. Engine cutoff. The rumble and shaking of the booster subsided abruptly. Silence, total silence, enveloped Vostok. Yuri Gagarin had reached orbit, somewhere over eastern Siberia.

Vostok was 181 km high and its orbit was to reach as high as 327 km. As he gazed through the two portholes of his silent spaceship, Gagarin began to take in the vastness of the planet. Later he described it in his own words. They tell it best:

I saw for the first time the spherical shape of the Earth. You can see its curvature when looking to the horizon. It is unique and beautiful. The day side of the Earth was clearly visible. The coasts of continents, islands, big rivers, the surfaces of water were distinguishable. It is possible to see the remarkable colourful change from the light surface of the Earth to the completely black sky in which one can see the stars. The dividing line is very thin, just a belt of film surrounding the Earth’s sphere. It is of a delicate blue colour and the transition from the blue to the dark is very gradual and lovely. When I emerged from the shadow of the Earth, the horizon looked different. There was a bright orange strip along it which again passed into a blue hue and once again into a dense black colour.

Vostok was travelling at 8 km/s. It headed across the vast blue of the Pacific. Mariners had taken months and months to cross it but Gagarin would transit in 20 minutes. Down below, tossed on the waves of the ocean, Soviet tracking ships turned their antennae skywards to hear the signals and telemetry of Vostok and the voice of its occupant. By now, news of the flight was out. At 9.59 а.m., 6.59 a.m. in Britain and 1.59 a.m. in America, Moscow Radio came on air with the historic announcement:

Today, 12 April 1961, the first cosmic ship named Vostok, with a man on board, was orbited around the Earth from the Soviet Union.

He is an airman, Major Yuri Gagarin....

Airports

Also known as: Aerodromes, airfields, landing strips

Definition: An area of land that provides for the taking off, landing, and surface maneuvering of aircraft.

Significance: Although airports mark the beginning and ending points of aircraft flights, they are more than mere runways or grass areas for takeoffs and landings. Airports are facilities that provide for the maintenance and servicing of aircraft, serve as exchange points for passengers and cargo, and host the various navigational aids used by pilots to guide an aircraft in flight.

Nature and Use

An airport is defined by the type of aircraft it serves and by where it is located. Airports range in size from large commercial air carrier airports, such as Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, with more than 30 million passengers per year, to small, privately owned grass landing strips in rural areas with landings of only a few small aircraft each year. In the United States, there are about 15,000 airport landing facilities, only 5,000 of which are open to the public. Even fewer, about 3,000, are served by commercial air carrier service. The other airports are small, general aviation airports in private or public ownership.

Types of Airports

Although airports may be classified in a number of different ways, the broadest categories are general aviation and commercial service airports. General aviation airports are those that do not receive regularly scheduled passenger service but rather have a primary purpose of serving the aviation interests and needs of small or outlying communities. General aviation includes such activities as corporate and business transportation, recreational flying, aircraft instruction and rental, aerial observation, skydiving activities, and other special uses.

Landing Facilities

An airport’s landing facilities generally consist of a runway or landing strip along with related taxiways and parking areas. A runway is a graded or paved area suitable for the taking off or landing of aircraft. Although most runways in developed nations serving small to large commercial aircraft are paved, there are still many airports that are either grass or dirt strips. These types of landing strips usually serve small piston- or turbine-engine aircraft in rural or undeveloped areas of a country or in developing nations.

Runways

In the early days of aviation, dirt and grass runways were the norm. They tended to be wide open field areas that allowed pilots to take off and land in whichever direction the wind was blowing. This is because aircraft weighed relatively little and needed only a short distance to take off. As aircraft and pavement technology developed and the weight of aircraft increased, the need for longer and stronger runway surfaces emerged. The previously open fields were soon developed into graded areas oriented in the direction of the prevailing winds. These graded areas were then paved. If strong winds occasionally blew from a direction different to that of the paved runway, crosswind runways might also be graded and paved. Aircraft are designed to land into the wind. When winds blow from a different direction than the orientation of the primary runway, some aircraft are unable to handle the side forces of the wind when landing or taking off. A secondary crosswind runway built to accommodate the occasional crosswind is then used instead of the primary runway.

Forces of flight

Definition: The so-called four forces—gravity, drag, lift, and thrust—that act upon an airplane in straight and-level unaccelerated flight.

Significance: Weight and drag are forces of nature inherent of any object lifted from the ground and moved through the air. The forces of lift and thrust are artificially caused to overcome the forces of weight and drag and enable an airplane to fly.

Humans’ first attempts to fly, inspired by birds, were limited until humans realized they could not fly like birds. Birds, with their very light weight, great strength, and complex biological design, can use their wings to create both lift and thrust to overcome the natural forces of weight and drag, and to maintain control. Humans, in contrast, had to invent a different approach to meet any success in aviation. The functions of lift and thrust had to be separated. For that, wings and engines were introduced. While wings produce lift, engines produce thrust. Following the first flights made by Orville and Wilbur Wright in December, 1903, the pace of aeronautical development accelerated, and the progress made in overcoming the natural forces in the aviation industry in following decades was dramatic. The understanding of natural forces is thus as important for an airplane’s aerodynamics as the creation of artificial forces to counterbalance these natural forces. The engine and propeller combination is designed to produce thrust to overcome drag. The wing is designed to produce lift to overcome weight, or gravity. In unaccelerated, straight-and-level flight, which is coordinated flight at a constant altitude and heading, lift equals weight and thrust equals drag. Nevertheless, lift and weight will not equal thrust and drag. In everyday vocabulary, the upward forces balance the downward forces, and forward forces balance the rearward forces. This statement is true whether or not the contributions due to weight, drag, lift, and thrust are calculated separately. Any inequality between lift and weight will result in the airplane entering a climb or descent. Any inequality between thrust and drag while maintaining straight-and-level flight will result in acceleration or retardation until the two forces become balanced.

However, there are a couple of paradoxes surrounding this information. The first paradox is that in a low-speed, high power climb, the amount of lift is less than the amount of weight. In this situation, thrust is supporting part of the weight. The second paradox is that in a low-power, high speed descent, the amount of lift is again less than the amount of weight. In this situation, the drag is supporting part of the weight. In light aircraft, the amount of lift ordinarily is approximately ten times the amount of drag. The motion of an aircraft through the air depends on the size of these four forces. The weight of an airplane is determined by the size and material used in the airplane’s construction and on the payload and fuel that the airplane carries.

The lift and drag are aerodynamical forces that depend on the shape and the size of the aircraft, air conditions, and the flight speed and direction relative to the air velocity. The thrust is determined by the size and type of the propulsion system used in the airplane and on the throttle setting selected during the flight.

The relative wind velocity acting on the airplane contributes a certain amount of force, called total aerodynamic force. This force can be resolved into two components perpendicular to each other along the directions of lift and drag. Lift is the component of aerodynamic force directly perpendicular to the relative wind velocity. Drag is the component of aerodynamic force acting parallel to the relative motion of the wind. Weight is the force directed always downward toward the center of the earth. It is equal to the mass of the airplane multiplied by the acceleration due to the gravity, or the strength of the gravitational field. Thrust is the force produced by the engine and is usually more or less parallel to the long axis of the airplane.