The Soviet Space Program: The Lunar Mission Years: 1959–1976 (The Soviets in Space Series, 2)

I was pretty disappointed by Eugen Reichl's "Saturn V: America's Rocket to the Moon," and considering the negative reviews of Schiffer's book on the early Soviet space program, I hesitated quite a bit before buying this one. The result isn't perfect, but it's a much better book on the whole and an effective jumping off point for further research.For a slim hardcover, this book is quite attractive looking and delivers more than you might expect. It's efficiently written, with no time for politics or personalities, and focuses almost entirely on the Russian's unmanned lunar probes and their abortive manned lunar program. The book is presented in chronological order, with each mission receiving at least a few paragraphs, along with a data table with information such as booster, spacecraft mass, launch date and time, and final fate. While Vostok, Voskhod, and Soyuz are covered in abbreviated detail, there's a remarkable lack of the sort of padding and flavor text which dragged down Reichl's Saturn V volume. Although there are some interesting and occasionally rare photographs, the highlight is definitely Dietmar Rottler's beautiful color illustrations of launch vehicles and spacecraft, ranging from sectional views of the Proton and R7 rockets to detailed external views of the Lunokhod rover and LK lunar lander.This book was originally published in German as "Moskaus Mondprogramm," and the translation and writing style sometimes leaves something to be desired. There are quite a few distracting typos and instances of the main text and data tables contradicting one another. At 159 pages, it'll never replace the works of Boris Chertok or Asif Siddiqi, though I'm sure it was never meant to. For $14, though, I can't complain too much. There's enough interesting material in here for us space geeks, and it inspired me to buy all four volumes of Chertok's memoirs, so see you guys in three months!

This book is a very detailed account of the Russian space program. The diagrams really help to understand the soviet design strategy and how it differed very much from NASA's designs. It was quite easy to understand that without the Soviet political strive and loss of Russian rocket engineers brought down their attempts to land a man first on the moon.

The content of material is extensive. It is a dry type of read however. If you like reading more technical material this is more geared towards you.

I’m old enough to remember the Space Progam and all that it was about. There was a little confusion and, yes, there was a little trepidation because not many people understood what it was all about.

Great well written book

good

Not very detailed and quite dry.

Too technical. Hard reading.

This book is a time saver as you will not need to go through hundreds of pages from NASA files to get the same information. It also provides some details to the projects and programs as well as nice photos. The only issue that I have found is the usage of American units instead of international ones, such as feet and not meter. As this is a book related to science and technology, it should have followed the international meter system or both.

Facile à lire, même pour un anglophone de niveau lycée. Et une mine d'information sur un pan méconnu du programme spatial soviétique.