30 passengers, one after another, anxiously took a step from the Gorky berth onto the new Raketa-1 (meaning “rocket” in English). According to tickets, this masterpiece designed by the shipbuilder Rostislav Alekseyev and built at Krasnoye Sormovo plant was expected to disembark them in seven hours in Kazan, which as is known from geography is 420 kilometers of the city of Gorky if measured along the Volga. And know what, it disembarked them just there! These 30 passengers did not just go on a business trip, but became participants in a historical event — the word’s first run of the hydrofoil ship. And of the first Russian rocket – space rockets, as is well known, would explore the vast universe in another four years.