ROUND 8: HISTORY - Space Travel
To commemorate in a small way the loss of the Columbia and its crew,
this week we have two rounds on the subject of space travel. Here is
the history round.
1. Who, in April of 1961, became the first person in space?
Yuri Gagarin
2. Gagarin was the first person in space, and Alan Shepard was the
first American in space. John Glenn later became the oldest
person in space, but what "first" did he achieve on his first
spaceflight, in February 1962?
First American in orbit
(Gagarin had been in orbit, but Shepard's flight was suborbital)
3. As you will recall from our round on rocket science five years ago,
the solid-fueled rocket was invented long ago in China, while the
first liquid-fueled rocket was launched in the US by Robert Goddard.
We also told you what year Goddard launched that rocket. Within
7 years, when was it?
1926 (accept 1919-1933)
4. Name the Russian writer who was the first to seriously investigate
"The Exploration of Space with Rocket Devices". That phrase is the
English translation of the title of his first article, published
in 1903.
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
5. Name anyone who walked on the Moon after Armstrong and Aldrin.
Alan Bean (Apollo 12) Edgar Mitchell (14)
Gene Cernan (17) Harrison Schmitt (17)
Pete Conrad (12) Dave Scott (15)
Charlie Duke (16) Alan Shepard (14)
Jim Irwin (15) John Young (16)
6. Name any two people who have traveled as far as the Moon without
landing on it on that trip.
Bill Anders (Apollo 8) Jim Lovell (8 and 13)
Frank Borman (8) Thomas Mattingly (16)
Gene Cernan (10) Stuart Roosa (14)
Michael Collins (11) Tom Stafford (10)
Ron Evans (17) Jack Swigert (13)
Richard Gordon (12) Al Worden (15)
Fred Haise (13) John Young (10)
7. Briefly describe either of these Soviet-built spacecraft: Buran or Salyut.
Buran - a space shuttle (it made only one orbital flight, unmanned)
Salyut - a space station (there was a series of them before Mir)
8. Give the name and number of the American model of rocket that launched
the Apollo flights to the Moon. We are talking about the entire
three-stage "stack", not the individual stages.
Saturn V
(By the way, the three stages were called the
Saturn I-C, Saturn II, and Saturn IV-B!)
9. A Saturn V was also used to launch an American space station in 1973.
Last used in 1974, it fell from orbit 5 years later when delays in
the space shuttle program meant it could not be reboosted. Name it.
Skylab
10. Within 3, in what year did the Soviets launch the space station Mir?
This means the original core section, not any later additions.
1986 (accept 1983 - 1989)