The Soviet Space Race with Apollo

Excellent story of the Soviet rocket, satellite, and attempted moon landing developments of the 1950s through the 1970s. If you read this book before or after reading Boris Chertok’s 4-volume series Rockets and People (especially Volume 4), then you will probably know all there is to know for an amateur historian of the former Soviet space program. The author Asif Siddiqi bases his story on information released by the opening of the former USSR archives, publications by former members of the old Soviet rocket, guided missile, and satellite programs and declassified CIA and CIA intelligence reports from the 1960s through the 1990s.The book discusses some of the organizational, administrative, and industrial features of the Soviet rocket and space programs of the 1950s through the 1970s and occasionally compares the Soviet activities with the American NASA program. The Soviets were almost continuously behind the American Gemini and Apollo programs throughout the 1960s but few people realized it. American intelligence agencies suspected that to be the case based on satellite photo-reconnaissance of the Soviet rocket launching base at Tyura-Tam and intercepted telemetry reports of the Soviet rocket launchings, but those reports and analyses were not publicized at the time. The US intelligence agencies of the time couldn't know it, but there were also much managerial chaos and incompetence and technical backwardness in the Soviet rocket and space industry, especially after Sergei Korolev died in 1967. This book brings it all out.The Appendices are almost as interesting as the main book, in my opinion:• Table 1 lists the launch dates, the Soviet designations, and orbital characteristics of every launcher and piloted space vehicle during the 1960s and early 1970s;• Table 2 lists all the Soviet cosmonauts of the era, whether they flew or not;• Table 3 lists all the administrative organizations behind the Soviet space program: Special Committees of the USSR Council of Ministers, Departments of the Secretariat of the Communist Party Central Committee, Military-Industrial Committee, and various Ministries such as Defense, Defense Industry, General Machine Building, Aviation, and so forth. The heads, first deputies, and deputies are all listed as well. The overall bureaucracy was simply overwhelming.• Table 4 lists all the contributing enterprise contractors to the space program such as OKBs and NIIs. Their evolution and combination or separation from other enterprises is also described.The book, especially the concluding Chapter 20, discusses the reasons why the Soviets were unable to land men on the moon ahead of the Americans and why they eventually just gave up such a mission entirely. Essentially, their overall industrial and technological backwardness finally caught up with them. Many of the early successes, such as Sputniks 1 through 3 and the early manned space missions, were really political prestige projects so people like Khrushchev and Brezhnev could boast of the superiority of communism over capitalism. There were also a huge number of failures in the form of rocket launching failures, radio and telemetry failures, and satellite communications failures that were never publicized. Soviet manufacturing quality control and ground testing were primitive by NASA standards.In my opinion, more extensive books on the Soviet rocket and space flight story are “Rockets and People, Volume 2 – Creating a Rocket Industry” and Volume 4 – “The Moon Race” by Boris Chertok. The biographical book “Korolev” is also very informative. Those books tell the story of the entire Soviet complex or system that developed and produced the rockets, guided missiles, space capsules, satellites, and lunar and planetary probes.For an additional story of the development of the Soviet anti-aircraft and ABM missile systems, I recommend the book “Intercept 1961 – The Birth of Soviet Missile Defense” by Gruntman (2015). It is an excellent account of the development of those missile systems from the 1940s and 1950s through the 1980s. Similar to Siddiqi’s and Chertok’s books, it’s a detailed history of the entire background to what the Soviets did to accomplish that item. There is also extensive technical discussion of how the Soviets solved the theoretical, research, and engineering problems involved in developing the necessary missiles, tracking and scanning radars, communication systems, and computer systems. There is also much information on what the Americans knew about all this by means of radio and telemetry eavesdropping from secret bases in Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan. The book contains numerous photos from American U-2 overflights from 1956 - 1960 and from the early spy satellites such as Corona and Big Bird. There is also information on related Soviet ICBM and IRBM missile programs and their associated organization leaders such as Yangel and Cholomei.And for a really good book on the magnitude and national economic influence of the Soviet military industrial complex (MIC), I suggest reading the book “The Price of the Past -- Russia’s Struggle with the Legacy of a Militarized Economy” by Gaddy (1996). It describes the history of the Soviet military industry from the 1930s through the eventual collapse of the USSR in the 1980s and 1990s. There is considerable detail on the function of the Military Industrial Committee (VPK) and it's subordinate industrial ministries. The best part of the book is the discussion on how the military industry (which included the space and rocket programs) really accomplished its function and the economic consequences. Essentially, it plundered the civilian economic sector with impunity. Massive forced subsidies and hidden costs were just part of the game. The book provides plenty of statistics on the extent of the MIC in terms of labor, investment, and influence of the MIC on the Soviet economy and the society in general.

You think you have job stress? This book,written from Russian source material by a PhD candidate commisioned by NASA, details the huge difficulties Russian engineers had trying to accomplish what they did in the chaotic and Byzantine world of the Soviet space program. Their technical decisions are well described and their personal issues and rivalries dealt with fairly and objectively. I came away with a deep respect for the achievments of the Russians. Their technology base was thin and weak compared to that of the U.S. and they developed many innovative ways to overcome it. The two most interesting aspects to me were the way in which German missile technology was incorporated and then surpassed to start the Russian program and the coverage of the ill-fated but fascinating N1/L1 Moon program. Do be warned - this is a dense, heavily researched, and highly detailed book - not a light read !

This book contains a lot of very good and new information. The author does not recycle other people's work, but instead makes great use of Soviet sources, so it is a significant contribution to this history. The writing is abysmal. It is choppy and obtuse, so reading it is a chore. The publisher should mandate an extensive rewrite and print a revised edition, because the information in this book needs to be turned into the Smithsonian Channel series. I don't see too many writers for TV making it through a complete reading of this book.

I had been looking for a book like this one for a long time and this one fills the bill. However, you're going to need a magnifying glass to read it- the print is REALLY small. I guess they had to use a small font to keep the book a reasonable size, but it induces more than a little eyestrain if you read it for more than a few minutes at a time.

The previous reviews are thoughtful and accurate descriptions. I am used to reading technical histories and I think the facts are all here. But compared to the best of the genre, this one could have used better editing for a more sensible and engaging story. A better title would have been "A History of Soviet Manned Lunar Programs". I didn't get the feeling that I was reading about a race at all, even though the facts prove that the Soviets believed they were in one.

While probably no-one can claim to know the full true history of the Soviet space programme, Mr. Siddiqi leaves me with a distinct feeling that I got as close as I could possibly get. Very elaborately researched history with ample foot-notes.

It is a really informative book. I was not aware of the fact that it is really the second of a two book set. I now need to order the first book.

Probably as accurate an expose as one can ever achieved. Superbly well researched and presented without favoring one nation or the other.

This is the most authoritative book about soviet space program available in English space literature. Some parts are rash to read but you will find a lot of interesting and precious information. Asif Siddiqi gives a very detailed description of the Soviet space program during the Space Race. The contribution of nearly every personality (engineer, scientist, politician or military) is mentioned.

これは“Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge”（上巻）の続巻（下巻）にあたる書。上巻はセルゲイ・コロリョフの死までを中心に描いたものだが、本書ではその後のソ連宇宙開発が描かれている。米国との「開発レース」で勢いよかった序盤とは異なる、困難続きの中盤戦の様子がありありと描かれ、ある意味「宇宙よりも謎」であった事件や事故の裏舞台などが興味を惹きつける。歴史は人間が作るものだと言うことが、改めて認識される。宇宙ステーションと月ロケット計画を並行して進めていたソ連の混迷ぶりは同書の展開にも顕れており、注意して読まないと途中でわからなくなる。編纂にあたり、著者も苦労したのではないかと伺える。巻末の資料も極めて充実しており、上巻と併せて最高の１冊であるのは間違いない。なお上巻共々、ロケットなどに詳しい“技術書”では無いので、そちらを期待される方には不向かもしれない。

One of the frustrations of watching Apollo in the 60s and 70s was never knowing what the 'other side' were doing. Well, here's the answer and some of it is more than a little surprising.I should start by saying what this book isn't: This is half of a book, not Volume 2. We start at page 517 and proceed to page 1005. Being the second half of the book, it includes the Tables and Appendices (over 100 pages of them) plus the index. The index actually covers the whole book which can be frustrating for those (like me) who only have this half.The book also suffers in places from dreadful English, though the meaning is generally clear. It is also short on illustrations and the quality of those that are included is mediocre (no plates, just black and white photos included with the text).So, having covered the negatives, I can now say that this is a fascinating book. It is apparently comprehensive and tells the story of how the lead in the space race slipped from the Soviets' grasp. Their lunar programme fragmented and, in the end, they just could not match NASA's supreme example and put a man on the moon. Sadly, they then tried to conceal the fact that they had even tried.I was gripped by the in-fighting that gave them two parallel moon programmes (one to orbit, a different one to land) and frustrated as the N1 (the Soviet Saturn V) repeatedly failed its launch tests. As an engineer, I felt the urge to go back and bang heads together to make them focus - they were almost there!I think this says much for the telling of the story. The rest, in the Tables and Appendices, shows the depth of work that has gone into this book; much of it is based on Russian material only made available in the 90s. It is half of the book but, in the end, that matters less than you might expect. This is a must-read for Apollo followers out there.

Der Autor hat ein sehr umfangreiches Werk geschaffen, was die Geschichte der sowjetischen Raumfahrt gut beleuchtet ohne ideologische Scheuklappen.