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By the way, James Oberg wrote two other excellent books: Red Star In Orbit and Soviet Space Disasters. Unlike the U.S., the USSR classified all hard information on their space program as state secrets, and because of the propaganda value, made failures and embarrassments disappear. As well, eastern Europeans tend to be very socially conservative, despite western cold-war rhetoric about "commie free-love." We couldn't get any information out of the Soviets about their space toilets, for example, or one cosmonaut's urinary tract infection. A lot of hard work and lives dropped down the memory hole. One hushed-up 1961 incident, if made public, could have saved the lives of the Apollo 1 (launch test) astronauts 6 years later.
Oberg's books show clumsy photo-retouching efforts. Oberg approached the subject out of curiosity and with respect, and now that the secrecy is pretty much over, the books are still fascinating.
One last secret, though: There's one manned launch attempt, possibly around May Day 1960, that is still only a rumor. I read of it in Robert A. Heinlein's USSR travelogue "Pravda Means Truth," from Expanded Universe.
Yep, I worked at NASA- Johnson Space Center 10 years; hence my Operation Green Cheese stunt. It's still rocket science, as ESA found out yesterday with their Ariane 5 failure. |
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