Cosmos. Infinite void, cold, and radiation. Man has always gazed at the stars, but only in the 20th century was he able to reach them. And in this race beyond the atmosphere, Russia (then the Soviet Union) was the first, faster, braver. The first satellite, the first man, the first woman, the first spacewalk, the first orbital station. Without Russia, cosmonautics would have been different. On the Day of Russia, we remember this with pride, but without excessive pomposity. Let's go in order. Theoretical foundation: Tsiolkovsky Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky — a Kaluga teacher who in the late 19th — early 20th century derived a formula describing the motion of a rocket in a non-uniform gravitational field. His "Tsiolkovsky's Equation" is still the foundation of cosmonautics. He proposed using multistage rockets, the idea of liquid fuel, considered the possibility of creating orbital stations. Europe and America were fascinated by dirigibles at the time, while Tsiolkovsky already knew that the future was for the rocket. He is called the "father of cosmonautics," and not without reason. Korolev — chief constructor Sergei Pavlovich Korolev — a practitioner who brought Tsiolkovsky's ideas to life in metal. In the 1930s, he created GIRD, but was repressed. He continued to work in the camp. After the war, he headed the Soviet rocket program. Under his leadership, the following were created: R-7 (the first intercontinental ballistic missile, becoming the carrier for satellites), "Sputnik-1," "Vostok" (Gagarin's spacecraft), "Luna-1," "Luna-2," "Luna-3." Korolev was a genius of organization. It was he who made space a reality. First satellite: October 4, 1957 PS-1 (the simplest satellite) weighed 83 kilograms, the size of a ball. But its metallic "bip-bip" changed the world. The West was shocked. The satellite showed that the Soviet Union had a rocket capable of delivering a payload to any point. And it also opened the space era. This day is remembered in Russia, a ... Read more