An A-Z Of Cosmonautics | V. Gor’kov, Yu. Avdeev

 In the year marking the 20th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s flight into space, I was responsiblefor running the “Small Inter- cosmos’’competition. It was given this title because with the So­ viet children taking part in this competition were others from Bulgaria, Hungary, Vietnam, the GDR, Laos, Mongolia and Czechoslovakia. Each o f the competitors had to devise an expe­ riment which in his or her opinion might be carried out in space. These children sent in more than two thousand suggestions and amongst these were some that, in my opinion, most children would be capable o f inventing. Take a few examples. A cat, as we know, is one o f the most agile o f all creatures. But how would

it behave in a state of weightlessness?

Other children suggested taking ants and bees on board a spaceship. These insects have an excellent sense o f orientation when on Earth. The children proposed an investigation as to whe­ ther this sense would be quite so keen if the insects were inside an orbital space station.

There were many suggestions and projects and it would be im­

possible to list them all here. I can say only one thing— that cosmonautics has ceased to be the domain o f adults alone. That is not really surprising. Many schoolchildren know more about outer space now than the first cosmonauts themselves knew whenpreparingfor theirflights.

It was by chance that I began here by mentioning the “Small Intercosmos’’. This competition underlined thefact that child­ ren need good and attractive books for their studies in cosmo­ nautics. An A-Z of Cosmonautics is just such a book.

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