The Russian space bluff;

by Leonid Vladimirov

English, Russian (translation)

Genres: History, Space

Hardcover

Published January 1, 1971

Reviews

[Ushan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Leonid Vladimirov was a department head at a Soviet equivalent of Popular Mechanics magazine, where he introduced his readers to the glory of Soviet science and technology. In 1966, he defected to Great Britain, and since he had no other skills, he began to introduce his readers to the disgrace of Soviet science and technology, in particular space exploration. Imagine The Right Stuff written not by Tom Wolfe, but by Michael Moore! The R-7 rocket family ("Vostok", "Voskhod", "Soyuz" and so on) is the most mass-produced and the most reliable rocket in the history of space exploration; according to astronautix.com, by the year 2000 it had been launched over 1628 times, and 97.5% of the launches were successful. Nevertheless, Vladimirov calls this rocket "a very complicated, expensive and inconvenient solution" and spends many pages on its demerits. This rocket's engine has 4 main combustion chambers and 2-4 more for steering, all fed by the same fuel pumps; the first two stages have 5 such engines. Vladimirov confuses combustion chambers and engines: "[Sergei Korolyov decided] to fit twenty engines into the first stage and hope that twenty Lilliputians, as in Swift's satire, would lift a giant." Vladimirov claims that Korolyov did it in 1959, although Sputnik 1 flew on this rocket in 1957. Some claims in this book are plain nonsense. The first Soviet atomic bomb was exploded in 1949; Bruno Pontecorvo immigrated to the Soviet Union in 1950; how can it be true that "The Soviet atomic bomb is, to a large degree, nuclear physicist Bruno Pontecorvo, who was snatched from the West" especially given that Pontecorvo was an elementary particle physicist, not a nuclear physicist? Mikhail Yangel was not a German rocket scientist; the author must have mixed him up with Helmut Gröttrup.

[Victor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Leonid certainly drives the point home. Funny enough, I had a short disagreement with someone just before reading this book and it was hard wired in this person that the USSR was beating us at the time and not, as it were, about to fall apart.

[Vignesh M · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's remarkable how the rocket engineers of Soviet union achieved a lot of things in a toxic claustrophobic environment of Soviet government.

[David Leemon]

When I read this book in 1980, I found it fascinating. Then here on Goodreads I saw a review saying that the claims in this book are ridiculous if you know the details of Russian science history post World War II, which of course I did not when I was 13, which age I was in 1980. So now I am too disappointed to decide how many stars to give this book. Is it fiction, or non-fiction? Can I believe any book I read that takes place in Asia? I need a vodka.