Космос
Space
B2 · Upper Intermediate · non-fiction · 10 scenes · Premium story
An upper-intermediate documentary reader 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