Secrets of the Russian Space Program

This post is a review of the book The Secrets of Soviet Cosmonauts by Maria Rosa Menzio (2022). The book gives insights into the Russian space program, starting from the launch of the Sputnik in 1957 that stunned the world, to the International Space Station. Many of the details, especially of the launch failures, had been classified for a long time.

The main content of the book is centered around the following themes:

1. Motivation: The book describes the main progenitors of the Russian space program: Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev, aviation trainer Nikolai Kaminin (he was the one who selected Gagarin, and later pushed for a female cosmonaut), and aircraft designer Sergei Kovolev (forced by Stalin to live under an assumed name).

   
   

2. Cosmodromes: There is discussion of the original Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Later launch sites include, Yasny, Morskoj Start [the only floating cosmodrome in the world (Musk has expressed his envy of it)] and Vostochny.

3. Animals: At first the Russian program considered sending animals to space. Dogs were picked because monkeys misbehave. Laika (the name translates from Russian as "Little Barker") was the first living being sent into space, a month after the Sputnik (the book explains why she was female and what her reactions to the training were). Dogs Belka and Strelka were the first to be brought back alive from outer space, in 1960. Two turtles were sent into lunar orbit in 1968.

   
   

4. Gagarin: The book gives the background of Gagarin and of his long and rigorous selection process; his five closest competitors (Titov, Volynov, Rafikov, Bondarenko and Nelyubov) are described. Gagarin became the first human being to go to space in 1961. He died in an aircrash (about which there are various conspiracy theories described in the book) at the young age of 34.

   
   

5. Women: The next aim after getting a man into space was to send a woman. Interestingly, the communist system resulted in some equality for women - about 50% of engineering graduates in those years were female. Russia raced to send a woman into space, believing mistakenly that the US was close behind (they were 20 years behind).

   
   

   The book describes the finalists [Yorkina, Ponomareva, Solovyeva, Kuznetsova, Morozycheva, Popovich (called Madame MiG for her accomplishments as a test pilot), Savitskaya and Tereshkova]. Tereshkova's timeline is provided in great detail.

   
   

6. Spacewalk: Alexei Leonov made the first spacewalk in 1964 (when I was young I enjoyed his book The Sun's Wind about the Soyuz-Apollo project; they docked in 1975).

   
   

   Afterword:

   
   

   The US landed on the moon in 1969. Russia is planning to land on the moon by 2030.

The book has many details about the Soviet Union of the time. It gives interesting

information about the Soviet space program as well Russian society. The English is

colloquial and I found that made the reading fun. The technicalities are treated at a very

accessible level.

Overall an informative and enjoyable read!