Voices of the Soviet Space Program: Cosmonauts, Soldiers, and Engineers Who Took the USSR into Space (Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology) 2014th Edition

Gerovitch's book containing interviews with "cosmonauts, soldiers, and engineers" associated with the Soviet space program is wonderful, well edited, and a valuable addition to the all-too-small collection of reminiscences and memoirs from such people. Nikolay Kamanin's diaries and Boris Chertok's four-volume memoirs have been the main sources from Russia for outsiders interested in such things as formerly secret projects and decisions of the program, but their comments and views have been permitted far too much influence. This book provides a badly needed counterpoint.Gerovitch went out of his way to find others, especially those outside Chertok's Energia corporation. As one of many examples, he found the former soldier who had been in charge of one of the trains that moved captured German V-2 rocket components to the Soviet Union as World War II ended. The interviews were deftly done and full of surprise revelations.One example is what really happened when Soyuz 15 attempted to dock with the military space station Salyut 3. Docking failed, fuel in the Soyuz ran low, the crew had to abort the mission and return to Earth, and they got the blame for the failure. The two cosmonauts received reprimands and never flew into space again. A number of interviewees gave the same rebuttal: the automatic docking system did not work properly in repeated attempts. Ground control dithered over giving permission for the crew to try to dock manually, which would probably have succeeded, and in the end too much fuel had been spent with the automatic attempts. The crew were not at fault.Cosmonaut Vladimir Shatalov described what happened with a longstanding mystery: designer Valentin Glushko's proposal to launch an all-woman crew in the mid–1980s. The de facto head of the Soviet Union, Yury Andropov, raised serious questions about the point of the mission, but seemed to acquiesce that the data were necessary to gather. Members of the Central Committee then raised objections with Glushko's staff based on Andropov's reluctance, which killed any chance of the mission. Women who had been training were sent packing.Tales of pettiness and horrid politics are included. Two interviewees who were Jewish described outrageous anti-Semitism and discrimination against them personally for being Jewish. (Chertok described facing some such incidents in his memoirs as well, though not to the same degree as these people suffered.) Others got rough treatment for different reasons. Mikhail Burdayev, a cosmonaut candidate transferred from one cosmonaut group to another, mentioned seeing his test scores on training exams falsified to make him look bad after his arrival in the new group. He was also denied opportunities to take other tests. The end result: he never went to space. He also alleges with directly saying so that Soyuz ships going to military Salyut stations (Almaz program) had mysterious malfunctions caused by deliberate sabotage in manufacture. Soyuz and Almaz were built by different, competing design bureaus.Those interviewed include luminaries such as Sergey Khrushchev, son of former Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, and Valentina Ponomareva, backup to the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova. Interesting topics include the struggle to make better control displays, the Buran shuttle and Energia booster programs, and psychiatric issues with cosmonauts.Gerovitch's effort deserves five stars, but I have to give it four. Here's why I dropped a star. The value of the book is greatly marred by one thing: its extremely high price of $90 list ($78 through Amazon). Palgrave Macmillan publishes textbooks and the like and has priced this one accordingly—but it's not a calculus text, just an unassuming hardbound book. One of the hot topics with students and, increasingly, the public and lawmakers is the ever increasing cost of books for university courses. Here is a prime example, though it's hard to picture the use of this one in more than a very few courses and, perhaps, some of the military service academies. A few university libraries will probably add it to their collections. Most casual readers, by contrast, are likely to find its cost too high. Unfortunately, such asinine pricing will keep this book out of the hands of the space buffs who would enjoy it the most. Eventually it will be remaindered, then will become scarce, and the price will stay high for the few copies made available by used booksellers. Gerovitch's book deserves a better fate and more rational pricing.