Cosmodromes on the barren steppes of Kazakhstan trembled with the thunder of departing rockets last week. An unmanned space vehicle named Salyut (Salute) roared off its launch pad and was sent into a near-earth orbit. It was followed four days later by a three-man crew in Soyuz (Union) 10. As many as three additional Soyuz ships were reported poised to join the others in orbit. Ten years after Yuri Gagarin's pioneering flight, the Soviet Union had seemingly begun its most ambitious venture into space: a long-expected attempt to assemble a manned station hi...
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