The Rebirth of the Russian Space Program by Brian Harvey

The Rebirth of the Russian Space Program by Brian Harvey

The rebirth of the Russian space program marks an important event: 50 years since the first Sputnik was launched on 4th October 1957. At that time, few could have imagined the dramatic events that lay head. The Soviet Union achieved all the great firsts in cosmonautics--the first satellite in orbit, the first animal in orbit, the first laboratory in orbit, the first probe to the Moon, the first probe to photograph its far side, the first soft landing on the moon, the first man in space, the first woman in space, the first spacewalk. Except one, the first human landing on the Moon. In 1964, the Soviet Union decided to contest the decision of the United States to put the first person on the Moon. The Soviet Union engaged in that race far too late, with divided organization, and made a gallant but doomed challenge to Apollo. Undaunted, the Soviet Union rebuilt its space program around orbiting stations, building the first one, Salyut, and then the first permanent home in space, Mir. The Soviet Union still achieved many more firsts: the first lunar rover, the first soft landing on Venus, the first soft landing on Mars, the first recovery of samples from the Moon by automatic spacecraft.

Brian Harvey is a writer and broadcaster on spaceflight, with his first articles dating back to the early 1970s. He has written for Spaceflight, Orbit, Astronomy & Space, Hibernia, Quest, Astronomy Now and the Irish Independent. He has broadcast on the BBC World Service and contributed to television programs in Denmark (closed life support systems) and Australia (Japanese space program). His first book was Race into Space (Ellis Horwood,1988), a history of the Soviet space program. This was followed by other books for Praxis on the Russian space program, including the most recent Russian Space Probes, coauthored by Olga Zakutnyaya.
Harvey has written three histories of the Chinese space program, with one currently awaiting publication, and has also written histories of the European, Japanese and Indian space programs. He contributed a chapter to Dominic Phelan's Space Sleuths book, and most recently, a chapter on the Cosmos 5 mission was published in the Yuri Galperin 80 years memorial volume by the Academy of Sciences in Moscow.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780387713540
ISBN 10	0387713549
Title	The Rebirth of the Russian Space Program
Author	Brian Harvey
Series	Springer Praxis Books
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Springer-Verlag New York Inc.
Year published	2007-05-10
Number of pages	358
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.