Text 4 (b). Cosmonautics

The development of cosmonautics is closely connected with the achievements of pilots and spacemen, aircraft and spacecraft engineers and builders.

Aviation has become the cradle of cosmonautics. And this was not accidental/ At the turn of the 20^th century the Russian scientists Konstantin Tsiolkovsky solved several problems on the theory of reactive movement and substantiated the possibility of manned space flight. His theoretical calculations have been extensively used by scientists in all countries.

In the 1920s several groups of scientists and engineers worked on the problems of rocketry in the Soviet Union. In 1934 a research Institute of reactive Propulsion was organized and all the fundamental works and investigations in rocketry were concentrated in it. It was this institute that trained many outstanding experts in rocketry, including S. Korolyov who subsequently became chief designer of powerful multi-stage rockets.

Today, outer space is not merely an object of study; it is also an enormous laboratory where new materials and design structures are tested under natural conditions. Cosmonautics is becoming more international in nature, mainly for global scientific, engineering and economic reasons.

A vital step towards understanding the Solar System and the Universe is the flight to another celestial body though such an exploration will take generations. Landing on the Moon is just the beginning – not the end – of a new era of discovery of new worlds. Manned flight to Mars seems to be the next logical step.

From the scientific and engineering standpoint, a typical Mars landing mission might begin with the orbiting of the elements for either one or two identical spaceships by newly developed “space shuttles”. These are reusable carriers for transporting men and equipment between the ground and the Earth’s orbit. While the mission could be carried out with a single ship, the use of two would provide an additional safety factor, since each would be large enough to accommodate the astronauts of its sister ship in the event of a major failure. Furthermore, with two ships, additional equipment could be carried. The nominal crew of each ship would be six men.

The spaceship itself would be divided into major three sections: the forward compartment housing the Mars surface exploration module; the main mission module with living quarters, the control area, experimental laboratories, and a radiation shelter in which the crew could live during periods of intense solar activity; and the biological laboratory for receiving and analyzing surface samples from Mars.

The entire spaceship would be continuously rotated. If two ships made the trip simultaneously, they could be docked end-to-end and rotated in the plane of the longitudinal axis.

No doubt, the time will come when people will build and inhabit orbiting stations and reach other planets in order to harness outer space to serve the mankind.