Rocket
Read the Passage Carefully and answers the following Questions:-
1. Let us charter a rocket to take us to the moon so that we can actually walk on its surface.
2. Our rocket must be shot off at a high speed-6.93 mile a second at least — for if it starts at any lesser speed it will merely fall back to earth, like the shot from an ordinary gun. If it starts with a speed of exactly 6.93 miles a second, it will just get clear of the earth’s gravitational pull2, but after it has got clear, Irwin has no appreciable speed left to carry us on our onward journey. Let us start with a speed of 7 miles a second, then it will still have a speed of 1 mile a second left after it has got clear of the earth’s pull, and we shall reach the moon in a little over two days.
3 We only take a few seconds to pass through the earth’s atmosphere, which is relatively hardly _ thicker than the skin of a plum or a peach. As we pass through this, we gradually leave beneath us all the particles of air, dust, water vapour and so on, which scatter the sun’s light and make the sky look blue. As the number of these particles decreases we see the sky assuming, in turn, the colours — blue, dark blue, dark violet and black-grey. Finally, we leave the earth’s atmosphere beneath us and see the sky become jet black, except for the sun, moon and stars. These look brighter than they did from the earth, and also bluer because none of the blue light has been subtracted from them to make a blue sky. And the stars no longer twinkle at us as they did on earth because there is no atmosphere to disturb the even flow of their light. They seem now to stab our eyes with sharp steely needles of light. If we look back at our earth we shall see about half of its surface shrouded in mists and clouds. But in front, the whole surface of the moon shines out perfectly clear; it has no atmosphere to scatter the sun’s light and no fogs and rains to obscure the illumination of its surface.
4 Naturally, this clearness persists after we have arrived on the moon’s surface, and far exceeds anything we have ever experienced on earth. Our atmosphere is the cause of the soft tones that add so much to a terrestrials landscape — the oranges and reds of sunrise and sunset, the purples and greens of twilight, the blue sky of full day, the purple haze of the distance. Here on the moon, there is no atmosphere to break up the sun’s rays into their different colours and distribute them — the blue to the sky, the red to the dawn, and so on. There are only two colours — sunshine and shadow, white and black; everything in the sunshine is white, everything else is black. We feel as though we were in a cinema studio lighted only by one terrible powerful light — the sun. A valley stays utterly dark until the moment when the sun rises over the surrounding mountains; then the full day comes, with all the suddenness of turning on an electric light.
5 Just because there is no atmosphere on the moon there can be no seas, rivers or water of any kind. We are accustomed to thinking of water as a liquid which does not boil away until it reaches a temperature of 212°. But if ever we picnic high up on a mountain, we find out our mistake. We soon discover that water boils more easily and at a lower temperature there than on the plain below. The reason is that there is less weight of air to keep the molecules of the liquid pressed down, and so prevent them flying off by evaporation. If there were no air-pressure at all, the water would evaporate no matter how low its temperature and this is precisely what would happen on the moon. Clearly then we shall find no water on the moon; we must take drinking water with us, and it will not be well to pour it out and leave it standing; if we do it will have disappeared by the time we want to drink it — its molecules will have danced off, one by one, into space.
6 Knowing that there is neither air nor water on the moon, we shall hardly expect to find there any men or animals, trees or flowers. And in actual fact, the moon has been observed night after night and year after year for centuries, and no one has ever found there any trace of forests, vegetation or life of any kind. No changes are detected beyond the alternations of light and of dark, of heat and of cold, as the sun rises and sets over the arid landscapes. The moon is a dead world, just a vast reflector poised in space, like a great mirror reflecting the sun’s beams down on to us.
Word-Meanings:-
1. Reckoned—considered. 2. Procurement—obtaining, getting. 3. Stagnation—becoming unsuccessful because of inactivity. 4. Charter—hue (an aircraft. etc.) for a particular purpose. 5. Gravitational pull—a force that attracts objects to the centre of the earth. 6 obscure-not, cagily or deafly seen 7. Terrestrial—of the planet earth 8. Haze—thin mist 9. Arid—dry, having no rainfall, 10. Poised—balanced
1.Answer the following questions as briefly as possible:
a) What will happen if we shoot off our rocket at a speed of 6 miles a second? Why?
b) As we move higher towards the moon, what changes shall be seen in the colour of the sky? Why?
c) There is no atmosphere on the moon. How does it make the moon different from our earth?
d) Do you think it would be possible for a man to live on the moon? Why ‘?
e) Why has the moon been compared to mirror?
2. Find phrases from the passage which mean the same as the following :
a) separate into different parts (para 4)
b) learn by enquiry (para 5)
c) evaporated (para 5)
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