The Kremlin and the Cosmos

Résumé du livre

This is the first book by a Westerner to trace the development of the Russian space program from its beginnings in the late nineteenth century through the enormous success of Sputnik to the crucial decision--secretly arrived at and skillfully concealed--not to continue in the race to place a man on the moon in the 1960's.Nicholas Daniloff, who spent four years as a reporter in Moscow, shows that the roots of Soviet space achievement run deep. The theoretical foundation was laid around the turn of the century by the self-taught scientist Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky, who inspired a whole generation of pioneers in the 1930's. These same pioneers became the top scientists and administrators of the space program in the 1950's and the 1960's.The author has drawn on public and private sources, including information provided by defectors to the West, to give us the most complete account thus far of the secret Soviet space apparatus: the motivation and status and anonymity of the men who have provided its leadership; the balance between scientific research, weapons development, and propaganda considerations; the cost both in rubles and in lives of gaining an exploitable early lead over the Americans; and the probable future course of the program-including the real likelihood of Soviet initiatives toward joint Russian-American cooperation in space exploration.