The daring wish of mankind was, and still is, to look at the earth from a sufficient height to be able to encompass the whole of it at a glance, and to find out what lies in the depths beyond the blue dome of the sky. This interest, this desire to apprehend what surrounds the world, is a mighty and unquench­able thirst, which leads humanity from one step in its development to another, higher one.Today when much arm-chair talk is going on about the Apollo Moon missions, the first exciting events toward mastering outer space seem to have lost their glamor. Indeed the beginning of the space era is to be traced to the launching of the first artificial earth satellite into the orbit. Manned flights in spacecraft started with the historic flight of Yurii Gagarin. Since then tremendous advances have been made, many records broken, and new records established in the space race between the world's two great space giants.This book is devoted to the decade since the day of the historic flight by Yurii Gagarin. The book tells about all the Soviet astronauts, their lives, aspira­tions and exploits. The matter has been presented in a very lucid narrative style and the authors of the book have established intimate rapport with the astronauts. It also presents short bio­ graphical sketches of Russian astronauts.The presence of Gagarin is felt throughout the book because he started the starry hour of humanity's venture into space. His space comrades strive to multiply our successes in understand­ ing and conquering the universe with their efforts and knowledge.Political Literature Press Moscow, 1971Translated from RussianPublished for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration