1. The whole world seemed to be black, black nothing ness. The sky was black with bright, shining stars that never twinkled. The sun a white, burning disk, seemed to hang in the black velvet of the surrounding heavens. This was the scene that spread before the eyes of the first astronaut who left his spaceship to walk in outer space. The name of the Russian astronaut who performed this feat was Leonov, and the date of his walk in space was March 18, 1965. Several months later a similar feat was performed by the first American astronaut to walk in space. Both of these "space walkers" had spent months previous to their flight learning how to control their movements under the strange conditions which exist in space. Wearing their thick space suits, they learned to deal with an environment where there is neither weight nor gravity, neither "up" nor "down".

2. We do not realize how much we depend on the earth's gravity until we are deprived of it. Then our feet no longer stay on the ground, we float around in the air, and the slightest touch may send us drifting off in the opposite direction.

3. In the laboratories where astronauts are trained for their journeys, they are subjected to conditions that resemble those of flight. It takes time for them to prepare for the great changes that occur in space. When the spaceship leaves the earth at tremendous speed, the astronauts feel as if they are being crushed against the spaceship floor. Later, when they leave the zone of the earth's gravitation, they are unable to stay in one place. Simple actions, such as eating and drinking, become very difficult to perform. You may get an inkling of what the astronauts have to deal with if you try to drink a glass of water while standing on your head or while just lying down.

4. The beginning of man's conquest of space took place in 1958, seven years before Leonov's trip. The first successful launching of "Sputnik demonstrated that it was indeed possible to send objects far enough out of range of earth's gravity so that they would not fall back to earth. Rather, such objects could be forced to revolve about the earth, just as the moon does. However, while the moon is so far from earth that it takes it a month to revolve around the earth, manmade satellites, which are closer to earth, can make a complete revolution in a few hours.

5. It was three years after the first satellite launching that a spaceship containing a man made a successful flight. The flight lasted less than two hours, but it pointed the way to future developments.

6. Other planets are so far away that spaceships must attain tremendous speeds to reach them in a reasonable time. If spaceships were launched from space or from the moon, the absence of weight would permit the ships to be launched with great speed at reduced pressures. A relatively small explosion would be enough to send a ship off at a very fast rate. And, since there is no atmosphere in space as there is on earth, the spaceship would meet with no resistance. To illustrate this point, remember how strong the wind feels if we are travelling fast in a car; then imagine a car travelling through an area where there is no wind. The windless condition is comparable to the condition in outer space.

7. The first astronaut to walk in space, Leonov, and his companion, Beliaiev, began making preparations for the walk as soon as their spaceship was launched. The spaceship was equipped with a double door, which was fitted with a bellows between the ship and the outside. This made it possible for the astronaut, in his space suit with oxygen supply, to go first from the air-filled ship to the bellows. Then the air was let out of the bellows, and, while the man stepped outside, the air inside the ship remained at normal pressure. If the door had opened directly into space, the air in the ship would have rushed out and been lost when the door opened.

8. Leonov and Beliaiev practiced testing the doors several times after they had begun revolving around the earth. When the time came for Leonov to go out, his companion helped him attach the cable that was to keep him from floating away from the ship. Then Leonov entered the bellows, and the door closed behind him. AS the air was let out of the bellows, he felt his suit swell up because of the air pressure inside. When there was no air left in the bellows, the outer door opened, and Leonov could see, simultaneously, the blackness of space and the blinding light of the sun.

9. If the sky appears blue to us on earth, it is because the earth's atmosphere absorbs a certain number of blue rays of sunlight. Out where there is no air, this phenomenon does not take place. On the earth, our atmosphere diffuses light so that, when the sun is up, light seems to be everywhere. However, in the airless realms of outer space, strong lights, such as the sun, exist side by side with a dark similar to the dark of the blackest night. The absence of air also explains why the stars do not seem to twinkle in space, as they do from the earth.

10. Leonov reported that the earth appeared as a huge, round disk, filling a large part of the sky. He found that the relief of hills and mountains was more easily observed from that distance than from plane flying at a few thousand feet.

11. While Leonov was outside the ship, he kept in touch by telephone with his companion and with the earth. He opened the shutter of the movie camera, which made a record of what he did and saw. When the signal was given for him to return to the ship, he was enjoying the cosmos so much that he was disappointed to have to stop his wandering so soon.