Question

On April 12, 1961, Major Yuri Gagarin became the first man ever to venture into the
space. He did not know for certain beforehand that he chosen. The Russians had
three possible candidates ready and although Gagarin was first on the list, the choice
was not definitely made until the early morning of April 12.
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All candidates had undergone strenuous training periods. They had wont long
sessions in the pressure chamber and the centrifuger. They had endured violent
extremes of sensation : a peaceful sleep, for instance, suddenly followed by an hour
of ear-shattering noise, recorded on tape and amplified through enormous
loudspeakers in an enclosed room. Perhaps the worst of the ordeals was to be shut in
a darkened room for long, uncertain periods, in solitary confinement and complete
silence. Gagarin himself has described the experience.
"There was no sound, not even the slightest rustle. No movement of the air, nothing.
It was uncanny', unnerving?." He would shut his eyes and imagine himself in a
space-cabin in orbit, looking at the world passing beneath him; or sometimes he
would recite half remembered poetry to himself. Then came parachute training.
Gagarin made forty parachute jumps of gradually increasing difficulty.
One of the most interesting of the training experiments was the method of providing
experience of weightlessness. In the early stages the express lift of the great Moscow
University building was used. From the twenty-eighth floor to the bottom allowed a
drop of 500 feet. At a certain high speed the passenger would find himself suspended
between the floor and the ceiling of the lift without support. This was a convenient
and inexpensive way of reproducing “zero gravity'. Special air brakes prevented the
lift from crashing as it reached the bottom.
On the morning of April 12, Gagarin rose at 5.30. He was zipped into his
complicated space suit, on top of which went a pale blue fibre suit and finally an
orange one. Then an Air Force bus drove him to the launching site in company with
various helpers. The lift took him up 100 feet to the nose of the rocket, and he
entered the cabin (named Vostok) with a wave to those below.
While he sat in the cabin, the technicians swarmed around the rocket on their
prefight tasks. A careful check of all the instrument and safety devices took ninety
minutes. Finally Gagrain was told that all was ready.
“Right – let’s go on up”.
These were his last words before the flight.

(a) On the basis of your reading of the above passage make notes on it, using
headings and sub-headings. Use recognizable abbreviations where necessary
(minimum 4) and a format your consider suitable. Also supply an appropriate
title to its. [3]

(b) Write a summary of the above passage in above 80-100 words.

Answer 1

Answer:

On April 12, 1961, aboard the spacecraft Vostok 1, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin becomes the first human being to travel into space. During the flight, the 27-year-old test pilot and industrial technician also became the first man to orbit the planet, a feat accomplished by his space capsule in 89 minutes.

Explanation: