Космос
Space
B2 · Upper Intermediate · non-fiction · 10 scenes · Premium story
An upper-intermediate non-fiction piece on the Soviet space programme. A deaf schoolteacher works out the rocket equation in 1903, fifty years before anything exists that could use it; a chief designer runs the whole programme under a name nobody is allowed to print; a satellite is built so that anyone with a radio can hear it for themselves. Corrects two things the official account got wrong (what really happened to Laika and how Gagarin really landed), and stops where the story of the Mir station begins.
Characters
- Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (Константин Циолковский) — The theorist
- Sergei Korolev (Сергей Королёв) — The Chief Designer
- Yuri Gagarin (Юрий Гагарин) — The first man in orbit
- Alexei Leonov (Алексей Леонов) — The first man outside
Vocabulary from this story
- космос — space
- учитель — schoolteacher
- глухой — deaf
- формула — formula
- ракета — rocket
- ступень — stage
- топливо — fuel
- теория — theory
- конструктор — designer
- арест — arrest
- донос — denunciation
- лагерь — camp