To the Moon and Back chapter sampler

CHAPTER 2

The First Man in Space

Yuri Gagarin looked like a hero should — he was intelligent, fit, and had a smile that lit up a room. He grew up in Russia during World War II, hiding in a bunker from German soldiers in the farming village where his father was a carpenter and his mother a dairy maid. After the war Gagarin became a pilot in the air force, and when Russia launched the first spacecraft, Sputnik , into outer space he dreamt of being the first man to travel beyond Earth. He applied for space- flight training and was accepted. Like other would-be astronauts Yuri had to go through extraordinary training. He was placed in low pressure chambers (to test his endurance at high altitude), exposed to searing heat and freezing cold, subjected to deafening noises, and whirled around at incredibly high speeds. The Russian scientists did not know what

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