1961-04-22 — Page 11

THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, APRIL 22, 1961.

Extra-terrestrial travel

In

Page

FLIGHT No.

APRIL 12, 1961 SPACESHIP

VOSTOK

As science fiction moves into the realm of reality.

the Hot Seat

WHAT YOU

WOULD HAVE FELT...

with

the cosmonaut!

CHAPMAN PINCHER CONTINUES

IT IS DAWN on the day which has never been out of your mind since you began to train for it more than a year ago. After final modical checks within the last fow hours you have been selected from the team of waiting cosmonauts to make the first journey into orbit.

black sky over the cloud- streaked earth with recognisable coastlines rushing away like hedges race past a train.

Though you feel light-headed you find you can answer the radio and work the Instruments. You discern the South American coast and report it. The time is 7.41 am.

Your immediate hazard collision with a meteorite-for even the smallest fragment could puncture the cabin wall and kill you by sudden decom- pression.

in

Eternity

The 100 minutes you remain orbit secm elemity. You

know that unless the Kround controllers can get you down within the next three hours the earth's rotation will have taken you out of recovery range until the following

day.

But soon after your first orbit, the radio warns you to prepare for re-entry-the most critical moment of your ordeul. You know that if Vostok's forward- pointing rockets slow you down too quickly you could be sub- jected to fatal G-forces or even be burned up like a shooting

star.

You remember that when this manoeuvre was first iried on an unmanned Soviet spaceship the increased fts speed carrying drawn back baring your teeth

In a star. On a spring balance thrusting it into a higher orbit which it could not be the your body would weigh almost from cannot escape

You are Kalf a ton. Your blood Is as recovered.

heavy as molten iron.

rádlo In the confusion of a near

at 2,253, of your signals fire the rockets you feel black-out you think wife Valentina. Like lest-pilots' them slowing you down. The wives everywhere she is used G-forces are alinost welcome.

but this fight is to suspense different,

rockets space chips

In your silvered spacesuit and in and domed helmel you walk

animals. towards the launching pad on But you the remote, rolling plan where fear of the unknown. the colossal missile you are 14 Roing where no human has ever ride to glory or disaster is only been. Have the scientista over- 30 minutes from countdown looked some unexpected hazard? Ten minutes blast off and still counting. You lie back on your couch-the best position to falte the strain of take-off-as your retaining straps.

zeru.

As the lift carries you up the Alrdered gantry plume of excess fuel is hissing from the misalle made up of four rockets fitted nose to tail. Climbing through the hatch of the top the rocket You notice that space-cobit: Inside 1 now bears the name Vostok.

The grip

the

You fuck yourself into plastic couch moulded to your contours as you have done 100 times before in practice.

Your hands go out like clock- work to the necores of krubs and levers as you check over the inter om, every item on which your life and the world's most fabulous mission are to depend.

Temperature dials? Working. Pressure gauges? Working. Air conditioners? Working. Radio? Working. Telemetry? Warking. Escape gear? Working. Twenty minutes to blast off.

Like any

trained pilot you have complete faith in your equipment, tested in a thousand simulated flights on the ground, in up-and-down rocket flights

colleagues tighten the

The missile pumps and gyro- scopes are whirring. The rocket hatches are being battened down. Your fate now resis on more than a million man-made puris, uy one of which wreck the project.

Cau

Tize take-over siren sounds on the launching pad. To take your mind off the tension you con- tinue the verbal checks as thr cockpit clock final seconds.

ticks away the

There is a burst of fame, a tremendous roar, and you feel yourself rising of the ground more slowly than you had ex- pected. This la a moment of utmost danger.

If

the rocket explodes or topples back on the pad your only hope of

the Gurvival is escape-election gear.

But you are too much in the grip of the gathering forces of travlty to worry.

The pulling sensation on your stomach is almost unbearable. Your heart is racing, your skin

Above the deafening roar you sense the spent booster fall away and are comforted by the feel of the second rocket taking over. The noise lessens as successive rockets burn out and fall to carth. Your speed rises to a fantastic 18,000 miles an hour... proof that speed poses no limit for men. provided acceleration is gradual

Quiet

As the last rocket

But when,

Deeper

As Vostok bites deeper into the dense atmosphere the effect of the enormous friction vaporising its outer skin show on the cabin thermometers. Though the oir is hot enough to cook a steak you are saved from grilling by your heat- reflecting cult.

Suddenly there is another small explosion and a sickening cuts out fug.

You realise that you are

the

ing fast, you ponder an irony of being killed in a simple ground-crash after all the hazards you have survived,

all is suddenly quiet. You are descending by parachute. Foll- in orbit more than 100 miles up. Instead of being superheavy all your weight has vanished, can- celled out by the centrifugal force keeping you and the Vostok suspended in space.

But Vostok's resilient chell breaks your fall and you lie on Now, instead of griping Gm ground wondering if you forces, you have to contend with are in Russia,- for an error in space sickness, that unpleasant re-entry could have taken-you feeling of falling down a bottom- hundreds of miles off course, less t-shaft.

Looking through the porthole you seem to be hovering in a

**The lex's good.”

DESTITUTE THREE MANG

Too dazed and exhausted to free yourself you wait until you hear voices and realize they are speaking Russian.

The mental shock from which you are suffering gives way to the tremendous elation which comes to everyone who has just dodged death.

in less than two hours you have graduated from being an obscure Red Air Force major to an immortal figure in world history.

CHESS

By LEONARD BARDEN

One of the standard methods of attack against the popular King's Indian Defence involves White in castling on the queen's side and advancing his king's wing pawns. In this illustration from the Leipzig term tourna- mont, one of Ireland's beat players Koes down 10 An unknown from Ecuador (Zopez . Nash), 1 RQB4, K3: 2 KI—QB3, P-RK13; 3 P-24, P-Q3; 4 P-K1, B-KU; P-E3, Castios; 0 B-153, P=K4; ↑ P-45, K1=1; 8 P-HESS, Kt-B5; • Q-Q2, P-XI4; 10 PxP: 11 Costles. K-83; 12 K30-12. Kt—04: 13 K-K1, K£t(B5)—QU ch; 14 K-Kti. P05; ́ ́ 13 BXKU

17 KL-23, Q-88 (much aounder is 17... Kix£!; 18 1*K* ExKI; 19 P-40, PXE: 20 QXCI. 8-36; 21 BXD Qx# 2* RxE}, K>R; 12 QXY ch. B=02; 21 R~~Kti cb. Resigna.

Roluzioni Na, 8108) X K-BII. threat

De, or

Kts, or 1... EXOKIP: 7 FÜR,

YURI ALEXIEVICH GAGARIN... the Adam of the Space Age

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