Word: offing
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Dates: during 1960-1960
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Somewhere in the Russian hinterland last week a giant rocket hurled aloft a five-ton spaceship containing two dogs named Pchelka (Little Bee) and Mushka (Little Fly), a quantity of other unspecified plants and animals, and myriad electronic gadgets for keeping radio tab on the passengers.
It was the third of its kind. The first, launched last May with a dummy astronaut aboard, went out of control and was not recovered. Cosmic Ship II, launched in August with animal passengers, was safely lowered to earth, and Nikita Khrushchev boasted that the launching was "a step to...
Hours later, Tass conceded that Cosmic III had gone astray. When the signal was given for the return of the spaceship satellite to earth, "the spaceship descended along a noncalculated trajectory" and "burned up on entering the dense layers of the atmosphere."
In the usual manner of space publicists, the Russian scientists insisted that, before the burnout, "the planned program" had been accomplished and "the information obtained yielded new data for manned space flight in the near future."
In principle, all the food that Russians eat comes, or should come, from either collective or state-owned farms. But in stubborn practice, an astonishingly high proportion of the Russian diet, especially on its tastier side, is still supplied by private farming. Last week a new Soviet handbook provided statistics...