Customer Reviews

Rocket And Space Corporation Energia: Apogee Books Space Series 17

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Unlike the NASA Mission Reports published by Apogee Books and edited by Robert Godwin which are loaded with many technical reports, other documents and crew debriefs, this latest entry about the Russian space program contains very little text, but is instead loaded with numerous photographs, technical drawings, cut-away-views, and artist sketches. Also, in contrast to the other Apogee Books publications, this book does not focus on a single aspect of space flight, but on the history of the Russian space program and specifically the Energia Corporation. While some may feel that this book is just another collection of space pictures, it is not. The photographs presented here tell the history of the Russian space program and have been chosen such that they present a great deal of general technical information. If you are interested the history of the Russian space program or the race to land a man on the moon, you can't go wrong purchasing this book.

The book opens with several small sections of text. One section is from the two editors of the book (the English and Russian) and the other section presents a brief history of the Energia Corporation. After this brief introduction, the remainder of the book presents the history of the Russian space program from its earliest days to the present. The picture section begins with the Russian space program after World War II and the use captured German hardware to begin the development of their ballistic missiles. It is quite easy to see that the Russian launch vehicles are direct descendants of the German launch vehicles. The book then moves on to the first artificial satellite, Sputnik, and the manned spaceflight program, which enabled the Russians to put the first person, Yuri Gargarin, into space. After this group of photographs, there are others that cover, planetary exploration, the development of the Soyuz capsule and its derivatives, the Soviet lunar landing program, the Russian space shuttle, Buran and of course to the Mir space station.

I found the sections of the Russian lunar landing program extremely interesting. While its easy to see the parallels between the US and Russian efforts, they developed some noticeable and unique methods to get a cosmonaut to the Moon. Additionally, the parts on the development of the Soyuz family of space vehicles and on the Buran space shuttle were equally engrossing. One interesting facet of the Russian space program that I gleaned from this book is that in the past 55 years the Russians have had only four different leaders.

This book was originally published in Russian by the Energia Corporation and translated into English. Furthermore, the photographs are not some faded Xeroxed pictures, but are high quality prints. I also feel that many of these pictures have never been released to the West or possibly never released at all.

As an avid fan of the Godwin/NASA Mission Reports Series, I was somewhat disappointed with this book. I had eagerly looked forward to an in-depth, detail-laden, fact-packed look at RSC Energia, but was dismayed to find that the book only contains approximately 20 pages of text (including the introduction by Godwin). The remaining pages are filled with photos, that are only occasionally placed in chronological order. In addition, what little text there is is very uncritical and reads like a propaganda page, neglecting any mention of the political history of RSC Energia, the impact of the loss of the "moon race" on the organization, the checkered political career or Sergei P. Korolev (who was once interned in a prison in Siberia for political crimes), or the profound social impact the space program had on the average russian citizen. Even more frustrating, despite what Godwin says in the introduction, a great many of the photographs in this book have been previously published in the west, albeit mostly online.

Overall, the book is worth purchasing for those who wish to obtain some high-quality images of Soviet/Russian space hardware, but does little to enhance the understanding of the Soviet/Russian space program. The excellent biography of Korolev by James Harford did a nice job of detailing Korolev's life, but left out many details about the entire space program that this book could have filled in.

This is a great book with many excellent colour and black and white photos of the Soviet space program, from it's infancy up to the Mir Space station. Korolev was the Soviet chief of spaceflight and master planner back in the 1960's when the Soviets were trying to beat us to the moon, he was truly a visionary man and a credit to the Russians. The volume here begins with a few pages of text and then continues with page after page of an amazing photo history of the Soviet space program, very well done. What I especially found interesting was the photographs of their giant Saturn 5 class N booster, designed to take cosmonauts to the lunar surface, it was an awesome moon-rocket, a shame really that it was not successful. Everything in Soviet manned space is covered here, there are even pictures and drawings of the never used manned lunar lander. This is a gem of a book, and very reasonably priced.

Interesting book, but try to find the original Russian edition if you are interested in early Soviet space technology. The Russian version is in a larger format and has much higher quality prints of the photos.

This short (128 pages) history of the Soviet Space Program has the best collection of pictures of the early Soviet spaceflight I have ever found. From the early experiments with captured V-2s to the International Space Station, this book has pictures, drawings, and cut-away diagrams of Soviet and Russian space hardware. The hardware developed for the failed Soviet lunar program is also shown.

This book is also a tribute to Sergey Korolov, Wernher Von Braun's Soviet peer, who was unknown due to Soviet secrecy and died due to a boched surgery.

As mentioned in another review, unlike the NASA MISSION REPORTS this is "merely" the translation of a Russian brochure dealing with the Soviet/Russian Space programme. As such a different standard has to be set in terms of expectations.

In my lowly opinion, despite the obvious lack of detail on Russian space missions except for a select few this brochure offers a glimpse into one of the other major spacefaring powers and how they approach spaceflight, that we even now only rarely get to see.

To my thinking this translation provides a perfect introduction to the Russian space programme and should encourage people who are interested to find out more about the Russian space missions.
If we are lucky perhaps we will see Russian Mission Reports in the future.