Customer Reviews

Selling Peace: Inside the Soviet Conspiracy that Transformed the U.S. Space Program (Apogee Books Space Series)

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Fascinating and often humorous tale, written by a friend, of the landmark effort to truly commercialize the Russian space program, and NASA's misguided efforts to thwart it. It was ultimately unsuccessful in most ways, but the market principles will live on in future ventures. Interesting to imagine an alternative universe where this venture succeeded. Also provides a rare look inside Russian political power culture at the highest levels circa 1990-2002, and a unique snapshot of one of the most strident "new space" advocates.

Over the past several years I have enjoyed several space policy books. Jeffrey Manber's book, "Selling Peace: Inside the Soviet Conspiracy That Transformed the U.S. Space Program" is a special book that should be included in any space policy academic environment. Manber provides a colorful history to the development of the initial steps to the commercialization of the Soviet-to-Russian space program that the public has come to know today. From a historic insight alone --- this book is quite worthy.

Nonetheless, there is much more to Manber's work.

Selling Space provides a meaningful foundation to understanding some of the essential policy issues now before the United States Congress and the White House. Manber provides an outlook on the development of the the American policy development that leads us to the debate about growth of commercial space launch by Orbital Sciences Corporation and SpaceX as opposed to having a government-sponsored launch such as Ares-I. To more fully understand the decisions before us, this is a must read book.

Finally, Manber's book provides a case study for the United States to think about how to form a commercial relationship for space with the Chinese. In the Epilogue, the author begins to make a passing reference to his 2008 travels to China to discuss space policy. I can only hope that there is a next book in regard to commercial space launch with China. Someone certainly needs to be brainstorming in this direction. The Chinese are going to be human orbital spaceflight with growing frequency.

If you are interested in space history and space policy in the future, then this book must be added to your must read list. It is worthy.

Jeff Manber, on The Space Show on December 15, 2009, is now into an equally interesting business opportunity: NanoRacks in association with Kentucky Space.