In the text find the definition of the main scientific principle of human flight
Look at the text again and answer the questions.
1. Who believed that air had weight?
2. Who wrote the book “On the Flight of Birds”?
3. What is the fundamental idea of the book “On the Flight of Birds”?
4. What did Leonardo da Vinci record in his book “On the Flight of Birds”?
5. When is the lift of the aircraft greater?
6. When did the first flying machine appear?
7. Who designed the first plane?
Vocabulary Focus
Work in pairs. Give the definitions of the following words and expressions.
Famous person, gas, lifting force, airplane, world record, range, passenger, supersonic plane.
A) In the text find the antonyms for the words in the box.
| danger lose slower the newest impossible irregular moveless impractical |
B) Make up sentences with the words from the box.
Complete the sentences below with suitable words from the text.
1. Later men of science came to conclusion that the higher you went …. air pressure was.
a) the higher b) the more c) the little d) the less
2. Leonardo da Vinci discovered that ….. the flow of the air …… the lift was.
a) the faster, the less b) the faster, the greater c) the greater, the less
3. Supersonic jet planes have replaced …… .
a) helicopters b) piston-engined aircraft c) subsonic aircraft
4. Air force equipment and armaments are being ….. continually.
a) considered b) improved c) displayed d) controlled
Speaking
What are the facts you have learnt from the text? Share ideas with your partner.
Work in pairs. Imagine that one of you is a visitor of a museum of aviation and the other is a museum guide. Make up a dialog. You may need some more information. Conduct an investigation to find out some interesting facts.
Use the following expressions:
Excuse me, do you know …
I could hardly imagine that ….
I didn’t expect that …
That’s a very interesting interesting question …
Writing
Read the following words to form meaningful sentences.
1. speed/Russian/and/are/pilots/records/establishing/range/new/for/world/altitude.
2. air/on/has/bodies/and/presses/weight.
3. in/planes/replace/will/jet/future/spaceplanes/supersonic.
4. the/the/flow/the/of/faster/is/air/the/the/lift/greater.
5. da Vinci/the/principles/flight/of/Leonardo/human/first/recorded/scientific.
UNIT 2
PIONEER OF ROCKET ENGINEERING
Preparing to Read
Quiz Time
1. You are taking part in the TV show How to Become a Millionaire? Choose the correct answer. Be careful with the proper names. Good luck!
1.The International Aviation Saloon MAKS annually takes place in:
| a. Tsiolkovsky | c. Baikonur |
| b. Zhukovsky | d. Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky |
2. The theory of flight was invented by:
| a. Daedalus and Icarus | c. Leonardo da Vinci |
| b. Brothers Wright | d. S.P. Korolyov |
3. The first name and the patronymic of Korolyov are:
| a. Sergey Petrovich | c. Sergey Pavlovich |
| b. Stepan Pavlovich | d. Stephan Pavlovich |
4. Find the city not connected with the biography of Korolyov:
| a. Moscow | c. Zhitomir |
| b. Kuibyshev | d. Vladimir |
5. Korolyov S.P.was awarded with:
| a. The Nobel Prize | c. The Pulitzerovs award |
| b. The honoured membership in Harvard | d. three Orders of Lenin |
6. Korolyov S.P. was buried:
| a. at his home town Zhitomir | c. his ashes are in the Moscow Museum of Cosmonautics |
| b. at Baikonur | d. at the Red Square near the Kremlin Wall |
Read the following International words and try to guess their meaning. Discuss them with your partner. Check the pronunciation of these words in the dictionary.
System, sphere, cosmic, academician, aeromechanical, group, hero, prize, bureau, enthusiast, experimental, talent, rocket, organizer, ideas, spirit, satellite, industry, title.
Reading
Text 1. Read the text and try to guess the meaning of underlined words from the content of the text.
S.P.KOROLYOV
Academician Sergey Korolyov was an outstanding Soviet scientist and designer of space-rocket systems during the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s. The first artificial Earth satellites and spaceships in which man made his first cosmic flights were made under S.P. Korolyov’s guidance.
Korolyov was born on January, the 12th 1907, in the city of Zhitomir into the family of a teacher. From 1927 he worked in the Aircraft industry. In 1930, without leaving his job, he graduated from the aeromechanic department of the Moscow Bauman Higher Technical School and finished a flyer’s school the same year.
After acquaintance with Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and his ideas Korolyov became an enthusiast and one of the founders of space-rocketry engineering.
In 1933 the Group for Studying jet propulsion was organized with his participation, and they made the first experimental rockets. From then on he devoted himself entirely to developing Soviet space-rocketry engineering. Although trained as an aircraft designer, Korolyov's greatest strengths proved to be in design integration, organization and strategic planning.
A victim of Stalin's 1938 Great Purge, he was confined for almost six years, including some months in a Siberian gulag. Following his release, he became a rocket designer and a key figure in the development of the Soviet ICBM program. He was then appointed to lead the Soviet space program, overseeing the early successes of the Sputnik and Vostok projects. By the time he died unexpectedly in 1966, his plans to compete with America to be the first nation to land a man on the Moon had begun to be implemented.
Korolyov reared many leading scientists and engineers who are now working in research and design bureaus in the sphere of space-rocketry engineering.
S.P. Korolyov was a talented research worker, a brilliant organizer and a man of high spiritual qualities. In 1967 our university was named after academician S.P. Korolyov.
Sergey Korolyov’s fruitful work earned him the gratitude of the people and he received high government awards. He was twice awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labour, and received the Lenin Prize, and Orders and Medals of the Soviet Union.
Before his death, he was often referred to only as "Chief Designer", because his pivotal role in the Soviet space program had been held to be a state secret by the Politburo.
Vocabulary Focus