Neil Armstrong: A Life of Flight Read Online Free PDF

and rockets just as Americans did at Cape Canaveral. And on October 4, 1957, the Soviets gathered around a large white booster for the first step on the road to arguably one of humankind’s greatest achievements. They were planning the first of many major events needed to set in motion Neil Armstrong’s exciting life in flight whereby he’d become the first to step on a place other than Earth.
    The rocket was called R-7. Neither Neil nor anyone beyond its launchpad were aware that a historically momentous rocket was about to be fired. It would add greatly to the pages of history, and the man orchestrating the stop-and-go countdown was cut from the same bolt of cloth as those like Neil who asked the question, “How high is up?”
    The man’s name was Sergei Korolev and he was near the launchpad inside a steel-walled room. He sat at an old wooden desk, microphone in hand, directing his launch team. He was the chief rocket scientist for the Soviet Union, who, unlike America’s genius in rocketry, Dr. Wernher von Braun, had the blessing and support of his country’s government. His R-7 was four times more powerful than von Braun’s Redstone, and it was about to send a satellite into orbit and open the road to the moon.
    Korolev’s simplicity would tolerate no fancy surroundings. Shortly after arriving in Kazakhstan, he built for himself a small wood-frame house not unlike Neil’s California cabin. The essential difference between Armstrong’s place in the mountains and Korolev’s house was location: instead of 50 miles from Neil’s runways it stood a mere walking distance from the R-7’s launchpad.
    Korolev left nothing to chance. He had worked side by side with mechanics and metalworkers, personally helping fashion and assemble what would be the first artificial satellite of Earth. Korolev created a sphere of aluminum alloys with four spring-loaded whip antennas and two battery-powered radio transmitters that would sing their unmelodious song to the world.
    No science aboard this one. It was a satellite to simply demonstrate such a device could successfully be placed in Earth orbit, and he fitted it within a pointed metal nose cone and watched technicians installing it atop the R-7 booster.
    Once the rocket’s technological glitches had been resolved, events moved rapidly and they left the launchpad for safety behind thick concrete walls. The final countdown went quickly, heard only by the launch team, a handful of experts, and those officials protecting their place in the Soviet hierarchy.
    An unsuspecting world was about to be shocked. The huge launch tower and its work stands were rolled back. The last power umbilicals between the tower and rocket separated, falling and writhing into their places of rest.
    The rocket now stood alone.
    The minutes were gone.
    The final seconds were passing. Korolev’s voice rang out: “Zashiganiye! Tri, Dva, Odin.”
    Enormous flame created a pillow of fire. It lashed and ripped into curving steel, followed concrete channels blowing long unbroken bright-orange flames across the desolate landscape. A continuing thundering roar followed. It rolled over Baikonur as Korolev’s rocket climbed on an unbroken column of fire, delighting all that watched before leaving them and speeding away to reach for where nothing created by man had ever been. Korolev stayed inside. The Russian scientist was far more interested in the readouts from his rocket than seeing the startling, pyrotechnic display R-7 had created. He was not disappointed. The numbers were perfect. Engines cut off on schedule. Stages separated as planned. Then, when the last engine died, protective metal flew away from the satellite. Springs pushed it free in space.
    The satellite became known as Sputnik (fellow traveler). Obeying the laws of celestial mechanics, it immediately began to fall, beckoned invisibly toward the center of Earth. As fast as it fell in its wide, swooping arc, the surface of the planet below curved