What were the names of the first Soviet male and female
cosmonauts?

Nikolai Kamanin, a prominent aviator and big wig in the Soviet space industry, celebrated New Year’s Eve in 1963 surrounded by family at his home just outside Moscow. He was enjoying an evening with his wife, son and granddaughter. Kamanin missed them tremendously over the past two busy years.

Kamanin recruited the first two cosmonauts, Yuri Gagarin and Gherman Titov, and Gagarin took the mantle of first human in space on April 12, 1961. After that historic flight, Kamanin was still managing the space squad based in Star City, near Moscow. But now he was lobbying for the first female flight, and his dream was about to come true.

“When the first cosmonauts travelled the world to give speeches after their flights, Kamanin was along for the ride. During these trips, he realized that one of the most frequently asked questions by foreign journalists was about sending a woman to space. This inspired Kamanin to proceed with the idea,” says Anton Pervushin, the author of Yuri Gagarin: One Flight and the Whole Life and 108 Minutes that Changed the World.

In 1961, months after Gagarin’s launch, Kamanin began to pitch the idea of a first female flight. He was able to make powerful allies including top-ranking party officials and Mstislav Keldysh, a member of the USSR Academy of Science, considered a top scientist in the field of mathematics and mechanics. Kamanin also sought out support from Sergey Korolev, a leading Soviet rocket engineer regarded as the founding father of practical cosmonautics. Korolev would prove to be a critical voice in realizing Kamanin’s dream.

Explanation:

the earth’s crust is broken into separate pieces called tectonic plates (fig. 7.14). recall that the crust is the solid, rocky, outer shell of the planet. it is composed of two distinctly different types of material: the less-dense continental crust and the more-dense oceanic crust. both types of crust rest atop solid, upper mantle material. the upper mantle, in turn, floats on a denser layer of lower mantle that is much like thick molten tar.

each tectonic plate is free-floating and can move independently. earthquakes and volcanoes are the direct result of the movement of tectonic plates at fault lines. the term fault is used to describe the boundary between tectonic plates. most of the earthquakes and volcanoes around the pacific ocean basin—a pattern known as the “ring of fire”—are due to the movement of tectonic plates in this region. other observable results of short-term plate movement include the gradual widening of the great rift lakes in eastern africa and the rising of the himalayan mountain range. the motion of plates can be described in four general patterns:

collision: when two continental plates are shoved together

subduction: when one plate plunges beneath another (fig. 7.15)

spreading: when two plates are pushed apart (fig. 7.15)

transform faulting: when two plates slide past each other (fig. 7.15)