Scrapbook 2: Aug 1962 — Vostok 3 and 4, Cosmos 8, God
MOSCOW, Saturday.
ANOTHER Russian sputnik in space . . . and a fantastic welcome for the “heavenly twins” Nikolayev and Popovich.
IN SPACE is Cosmos 8. It was launched to-day and carries “scientific apparatus for the continuation of research of space.” There was no mention of a man aboard.
ON EARTH hugs, kisses and a sea of flowers as four-and-a-half million people headed by Mr. Kruschev gave a spectacular and fantastic welcome to marathon spacemen Lieutenant-Colonel Popovich and Major Nikolayev.
It was Soviet pageantry at its most spectacular—and human drama at its most intimate.
And it was a moment shared by millions in Britain as they watched the proceedings on their television screens.
But I was there at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport and joined the cheering.
Nikolayev and Popovich boarded an Ilyushin 18 airliner at Voldagrad, 700 miles south-east of the city, on their way to receive a heroes’ welcome.
CRUSHED
Against Barrier
With thousands of Russians—pressed tight against crush barriers set up outside the airport building—I watched as the giant airliner dropped out of a brilliantly sunny sky and screamed along the runway.
As the plane taxied towards the waiting crowd the cheers were deafening.
Mr Kruschev, his face beaming with smiles, waited impatiently for the twin cosmonauts to step from the plane.
It was on the stroke of noon that the door of the airliner swung open to give Moscow its first glimpse of the pair who had made space history.
A HALT
The Salutes
In perfect step they marched together to the flower-decked dais where Mr. Kruschev, Soviet leaders and members of their families were waiting to greet them.
As they reached the top of the steps, to face the Soviet leader they came to a halt and simultaneously threw up smart salutes.
Then came the report—by now almost a tradition with Soviet cosmonauts—to Mr. Kruschev, the Communist Party and the Government: “Mission accomplished successfully. We are ready to carry out any further tasks.”
Suddenly formality was thrown to the winds. First one and then the other was embraced and kissed by Kruschev.
Lt.-Col. Popovich swung his six-year-old daughter Natasha high in his arms and hugged his wife Maria.
The cosmonauts’ mothers, wearing shawls, and the rest of their families stood on the reception platform. Lieutenant-Colonel Popovich hugged his mother Feodosia.
“GOD” JOKES BY COSMONAUTS
TV PROGRAMME
MOSCOW, Thursday.
The Russian cosmonauts Col. Gagarin, Major Titov and Col. Popovich joked about seeing God before televiewers in Moscow tonight. In a programme devoted to their flights in space they replied to a woman of 70 who wrote asking if they had seen God.
Col. Popovich said, amid laughter: “I saw God. I asked him his name. He replied, ‘Andrian Nikolayev.’” This was his “twin” cosmonaut. “I am joking, of course. I really didn’t see any God up there.”
Col. Gagarin said: “The real God, the true God, has very little speed because he travels on only three horses.” Major Titov quoted the poet, Mayakovsky: “The sky was examined from inside and from outside, and no gods were found.’”—Reuter.
At least three Soviet cosmonauts are going to be sent together to land on the moon according to Lieut.-Colonel Yuri Gagarin in a statement released through the Soviet News Service in London today.
Forecasting the way Russia will assault the moon the pioneer spaceman—now commander of Russia’s Cosmonaut Squadron—says that after robot sputniks have explored the lunar face big transport rockets will dump stocks of food, fuel and tools there.
Pre-fabricated parts from which huts can be built—made of lightweight foam metal—are also likely to be sent ahead of men.
“Only a well-prepared team will be able to fulfil the task of making the initial study of this ‘difficult’ planet which is heated to 120 degrees Centigrade in daytime and cooled to minus 150 degrees at night,” adds Gagarin.
“Men will need, of course, special insulated clothing to be able to appear on the surface.”
Maths in orbit
Fresh detail about Russia’s double space flight, also released today, reveals that Major Nikolayev spent nearly a week inside a Vostok space ship on the ground before he was passed fit for the 1,500,000 mile trip. Doctors watched him throughout for signs of a mental breakdown.
To test the effects of weightlessness the cosmonauts had to do complicated mathematics, recognise geometrical figures, tot up horizontal and vertical columns of numbers and enter their answers in a log book while they orbited the world.
Comment from their doctors today on the spacemen’s appetites: “The only thing that makes them eat during a three or four day flight is—nervousness.”
Fuel stations in space
ONE of Russia’s space scientists, Prof. KONSTANTIN EGOROV, said to the Physics Section that the cosmonauts Nikolayev and Popovich could have stayed up “several times as long” as their three and four-day journeys. There were sufficient stores to maintain conditions inside the five-ton spaceships.
He also disclosed that radio contact with the automatic instruments of the spaceships had been maintained during the re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere, when ionisation due to the great heating destroyed radio communications with the American spaceships.
“If we could be sure the takeoff from the moon to the earth would be quite as successful as the spaceships’ trips, then the possibility of mastering the moon is very good,” he said.
Prof. Egorov said the flights had shown “great possibilities for organising interplanetary stations on a large scale, which will serve for refuelling cosmic ships and so on. I think these cosmic flights are one more stage in making man master of cosmic space in flights round the earth and the other planets.”
ROCKET MOTORS
Another of the 20 Russians at the meeting, Prof. S. M. VINOROV, of the Moscow Aviation Institute, has been engaged in producing specially hard materials for rocket motors. He is to lecture to-day to the engineering section.
He said yesterday that the problem of the heat of rocket motors was being tackled by special alloys, such as titanium, and ceramics. His leature will be on “super-strong” forms of pure metals, obtained by producing metals with uniform crystalline structures.