[FPSPACE] New Russian space history book

[DwayneDay]

Mr. Keel posted this review of a new book in Russian to another forum.  I obtained his permission to repost it here.

It is a Russian-language book about the history of the Soviet space program, as well as the US space program, from a military perspective.


DDAY


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From: "William C. Keel" <keel at bildad.astr.ua.edu>
Newsgroups: sci.space.history
Subject: Snippets in space history from recent Russian book
Date: Wed, Aug 11, 2004, 5:16 PM

A few weeks back I posted a couple of snippets from this newish Russian
volume on space history, and now it's time for a more complete book
report (as I've developed my cosmonautics vocabulary more extensivley
beyond what was common to astrophysics). The title is _Bitva za Zvezdy -
Kosmicheskoe Protivostoyanie_, or "Battle for the Stars - Opposition in
Space"
(I'd go for the less exact "Space Race"). This is from Izdatelsvto AST,
Moscow
(2003), part of their "military history library", written by Anton
Pervushin.
Another subtitle shows up after the title page - "Alternatives and
Potentialities", which gives a hint that he is at least as interested
in projects which never came to fruition as the major successes. This is
vol. 2 of a set of 2. The first one deals with rocket systems in the
pre-space age, by which he means before Gagarin.

I'll note a few things from various chapters that struck me as newish,
in some cases apparently not in astronautix.com yet. The chapter numbering
is continuous with vol. 1.

Chapter 6. He said, "Let's go!"
 Gagarin and his era

Chapter 7. Mesospheric war
 From jets to cruise missiles and rockets, Korea and after.
 The first "Buran" was a cruise missile. I'd never heard of the
 Super Hustler piloted piggyback system for a B-58. I thought the
 D-21 was scary...
 Myasischev's supersonic bombers, of which the M-50 actually flew.
 Tupolev's projects, leading up to the T-4 Sotka.

Chapter 8. American winged vehicles

Chapter 9. Space planes of the Soviet Union
    Ty-130 or Zvezda
    Tsybin's Lopotok lifting body with folding winglets, compared to X-20
    Myasischev's VKA-23 (M-48), looked even more like an X-20
    Spiral
    Article 105.11 (Lapot'), with jet analog
    led to actually contructed BOR, -4 seen being fished out of Indian Ocean
        -5 was a 1450-kg Buran analog, flown on a 2000-km test hop toward
Lake
        Balkhash from Kapustin Yar (as I guess they still called it).
        Aerodynamics of re-entry with final parachute landing.
        BOR-5s were launched 5 times from 6 June 1984 - 27 July 1988
        (BOR-5 is listed in astronautix.com)

Chapter 10. Race to the Moon
 von Braun (the "rocket baron") features, including his memo
 responding to JFK's questions abou the feasibility of various space
 options. Pervushin links poliitical and technical developments
 (especially in USA), as well as military and NASA work rather more
 tightly into single threds than I would.
 
 It's telling these days that he begins this chapter by presenting
 the arguments that the Apollo landings really happened, pointing
 out that no Russian library of any size wikll be lacking the
 requisite information. He goes on to detail the proposed Soviet
 landing missions, to the detail level of when the lunar vehicle has to
 putch up so its radar won't mistake the falling crasher stage for
 the lunar surface. He ends up with Chelomei's giant booster proposal.
 
 He also devotes a couple of pages to the perennial question of how
 the USSR lost the race to the Moon, blaming the asymmetry in
 economic resources, irrational decisions from the top, and undue
 competition for internal resources. In a very odd aside, he opines
 that the USSR would have been much more successful if, rather than
 Khruschev, power in the post-Stalin era had gone to Lavrenti
 Beria, on the theory that bad decisions arose from being swayed
 by ideology and emotional appeal, while Beria was above all cold and
 calculating. (If there were an emoticon for "shivering up and down
 the spine" it would go here).
 
Chapter 11. Lunar bases
 That guy Korolev - already thinking about lunar bases using in situ
 resources, while getting the first man into orbit and adapting the
 capsule for reconnaissance use...

Chapter 12. On the way to Mars
 Several Soviet concepts from the late 1960s that all have the same
 feel as the NASA Apollo-adaptation plans (as in the report republished
 by Apogee in Mars vol. II).

Chapter 13. Satellite interceptors
 Nukes in space - lists Soviet K1-5 tests, and the project for
 a nuclear warhead exploded on the Moon so everyone would know
 they reached it. Only passing mention of Argus.

 Khruschev's global rocket and how his bluffs cost dearly
 USSR's satellite inteceptors, history of interceptor tests (including
 one after ABM treaty out of military inertia).
 Pictures of Polyot-1 and "satellite interceptor"

 Shows the counterpart to the F-15/ASAT combination, Mig-31D with
 underslung ASAT (tail 071/072, "Article 07") which used an R-33
 rocket on central pylon. Issues with radar system, added two-sided
 winglets to improve stability. First flight of 072 from Zhukovsky,
 1987, by Aviard Fastovets. The planes are now in Kazakhstan,
 uncertain situation with missiles but not closed out.

14. Buran versus the Space Shuttle
 Perhaps as one might expect for a book in a military-history series,
 he emphasizes the military aspects of the design and politics
 of the STS system (although to an extent that I though went on the
 far side of misdirection). Follows its various incarnations in design,
 short shrift to actual shuttle flights.
 Buran - history included a long skinny lifting body, until politics
 plus crossrange (the USSR being without without a worldwide network
 of actual bases and additional emergency landing sites) plus politics
 won out. Buran had an internal phased array for cleaner communications
 in whatever orientation, used cryogenic fuel cells (a first, and their
 first foray into fuel cells IIRC). They planned at least 3 orbiters,
 four unpiloted tests flights upgrading along the way, specific
 guidance stuff for first unpiloted flights was back in payload bay.
 Plan then had four two-cosmonaut flights, with installation of
 ejection seats, including Mir docking and Kristall retrieval
 with explicit Spacelab analog and probably RMS.

Chapter 15. Successors to Buran
 A whole litany of projects usually wrapped up with "and there was no
 more money", in a few cases "and it wouldn't have actually worked"
 Depressingly like the whole chapters in Chronicles listing kings
 of whom it is written "reigned, and then he died".
 
Chapter 16. Successors to the Shuttle
        Much like successors to Buran...

Chapter 17. Orbital cities
 He traces the idea back to Tsiolkovskii (surprise!), and devotes
 almost all the space to projects, some quite grandiose, that were
 never built. The Almaz series does get 12 pages with diagrams.
 Skif-DM (Polyus) is described here rather than in the next
 chapter, with some very fast spin about research measurements
 supposed to be made during ascent.

Chapter 18. "Star Wars"
 The Terra-3 laser complex at Sary Shagan reported as having
 in fact illuminated Challenger, 10 Oct 1983, at minimum power.
 Followup program on Il-76MD, 60-tonne laser apparatus, which replaced
     the usual weather radar bulge. Optical elements retracted into
 fuselage on top, between wings and tail. Analogous modifications
 made to an A-50 and Tu-142 (antisubmarine versiojn of Tu-95 Bear),
 otherwise still secret. The Il-76MD (or A-60) was itself retired in
 1990.
 The USSR maintained an active antimissile program in 1970s including
 energy weapons, EM launchers. Most builders closed it off after it
 appeared unpromising; could not even on paper meet the goal of
 annihilating the US nuclear capability within the requisite 20-25
 minutes

Chapter 19. The problems of power
 Traces a parallel (to NERVA, more or less) nuclear rocket development
 in USSR with Big Names such as Kurchatov, Keldysh, later Korolev,
 Myshin.
 Gets to solar sails, photon rockets, flavors of ion rockets.
 Propulsive use of "local resources" - magnetic field, ionization of
 upper atmosphere, recombination catalysts (now that sounds like a
 particularly Russian - the phyiscs is so clever and complicated that
 there _must_ be a use for it).

Chapter 20. Space artillery - not quite only Gerald Bull

Chapter 21. Into space on a lift
 Quotes almost two pages from Fountains of Paradise at the outset.
   Trace idea to Yuri Artsutanov in 1960, although (surprise!)
 Tsiolkovskii mentioned it.
 Rotating, asynchronous elevator systems.
 Tethers and magnetic field for thrust or power.
 The text suggests the author has real enthusiasm for these.
 Yunitskii's all-planetary transport system - think Ringworld Jr...

Chapter 22. Interstellar expeditions
 Wherein we learn to recognize "Geoffrey Landis" in Cyrillic.

Chapter 23. Untamed planet
 That is, Mars. History of Mars probes plus Mars Direct and
 Energiya's current viewgraph/PowerPoint engineering for
 human expeditions.

One common phrase might as well enter the astronautics lexicon:
"ostal'sya na bumage" - it remained on paper. A common epitaph for
space projects.

I thought there was an interesting anecdote about the results of confusion
in call signs between the ASAT Mig-31 and a chase plane, but can't find
it at the moment. No index...

Bill Keel