Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge

by Siddiqi, Asif A.

• ISBN13: 9780813026275
• ISBN10: 081302627X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-02-01
• Publisher: Univ Pr of Florida

Summary

First published by NASA in 2000 as Challenge to Apollo, these two volumes are the first comprehensive history of the Soviet-manned space programs covering a period of thirty years, from the end of World War II, when the Soviets captured German rocket technology, to the collapse of their moon program in the mid-1970s. The spectacular Soviet successes of Sputnik--the first Earth satellite (1957)--and Yuri Gagarin--the first man in space (1961)--shocked U.S. leaders and prompted President John F. Kennedy to set the goal of landing a man on the moon before the end of the 1960s. The moon race culminated with the historic landing of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon in 1969 (coincidentally the first Soviet unmanned moon probe crashed on its surface while the American astronauts were at Tranquility Base). The epic story of the Soviet space program remained shrouded in secrecy until the unprecedented opening of top secret documents. Based almost entirely on these Russian-language sources and numerous interviews with veterans, Siddiqi's book breaks through the

Author Biography

Asif Siddiqi is a Ph.D. candidate in history at Carnegie Mellon University

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
Preface	xiii
Glossary	xvii
Presage	1	(22)
First Steps	23	(46)
Stalin and the Rocket	69	(50)
Sputnik	119	(52)
Designing the First Spaceship	171	(34)
Organizing for the Space Program	205	(38)
Gagarin	243	(56)
Looking to the Future	299	(52)
Space Politics	351	(58)
``There Are More Things in Heaven and Earth ...''	409	(52)
Three Steps to the Moon	461	(56)
Bibliographic Essay	517	(10)
Index	527