This, the third volume of Boris Chertok's four-volume memoirs, continues the narrative arc which he began in the first volume. If the first volume covered his apprenticeship as an engineer and the second, the birth of the Soviet postwar missile program, in the third volume, we finally have what might be called the full bloom of the Soviet space program. Here, Chertok describes his impressions of the apex of Soviet achievements in space exploration, from the halcyon days of the launch of Yuri Gagarin into orbit in 1961 to the first piloted Soyuz mission in 1967. Chertok devotes a significant portion of the volume to the early years of Soviet human spaceflight. These include a chapter on the Vostok and Voskhod programs, which left an indelible mark on early years of the space race, a lengthy meditation on the origins and early missions of the Soyuz program, and a gripping account of one of the most tragic episodes of the Soviet space program: the flight and death of cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov during the very first piloted Soyuz flight in 1967. Additional chapters cover robotic programs such as the Molniya communications satellite system, the Zenit spy satellite program, and the Luna series of probes that culminated in the world s first survivable landing of a probe on the surface of the Moon. Chertok also devotes several chapters to the development of early generations of Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and missile defense systems; his narrative here skillfully combines technical, political, personal, and strategic concerns, highlighting how these considerations were often difficult to separate into neat categories. In particular, we learn about the Soviet drive to develop a workable solid propellant ICBM and the subsequent arguments over the development of second general ICBMs in the late 1960s, a fight so acrimonious that contemporaries called it the little civil war. Chertok s chapter on the Cuban Missile Crisis provides a radically unique perspective on the crisis, from the point of view of those who would have been responsible for unleashing nuclear Armageddon in 1962 had Kennedy and Khrushchev not been able to agree on a stalemate. Two further chapters cover the untimely deaths of the most important luminaries of the era: Sergey Korolev and Yuriy Gagarin. Each of these chapters is a tour de force, as Chertok uses a vast array of published accounts to enrich his own personal recollections of the episodes. Finally, historians of Soviet science will find much of interest in the concluding chapter focused on the relationship between the space program and the Soviet Academy of Sciences. This chapter represents one of the most insightful descriptions of the formation of a Soviet aerospace elite during the post-World War II era.


    Zugriff

    Zugriff über TIB

    Verfügbarkeit in meiner Bibliothek prüfen


    Exportieren, teilen und zitieren



    Titel :

    Rockets and People, Volume 3


    Beteiligte:
    Y. B. Chertok (Autor:in) / A. Siddiqi (Autor:in)

    Erscheinungsdatum :

    2009


    Format / Umfang :

    832 pages


    Medientyp :

    Report


    Format :

    Keine Angabe


    Sprache :

    Englisch




    Rockets and People, Volume 4

    B. E. Chertok / A. A. Siddiqi | NTIS | 2011


    Rockets and People, Volume 1

    B. E. Chertok | NTIS | 2005


    Rockets and people

    USA, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, History Office | SLUB


    Rockets and people

    Čertok, Boris E. | SLUB | 2009


    Rockets and people

    Čertok, Boris E. | SLUB