[FPSPACE] Boris Chertok's Rockets and People, Vol. III: Hot Days of the Cold War

[Sergey V. Andreev]

On Friday 07 August 2009 07:29 pm, Asif Siddiqi wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I worked very hard on the following so it's a pleasure to see that
> it's finally out. For information on how to get a copy, see below.
>
> Asif Siddiqi
>
> ---------
>
>
> NASA History Office release:
>
> Rockets and People: Hot Days of the Cold War (Volume III)
>
> by Boris Chertok
> Dr. Asif Siddiqi, Series Editor
> (Washington, D.C.: NASA SP-2009-4110), pp. 796 + xxiii, hardcover.
>
> Much has been written in the West on the history of the Soviet space
> program but few Westerners have read direct first-hand accounts of the
> men and women who were behind the many Russian accomplishments in
> exploring space. The memoirs of Academician Boris Chertok, who worked
> under the legendary Sergey Korolev, translated from the original
> Russian, fill that gap. In Volume 1 of Rockets and People, Chertok
> described his early life as an aeronautical engineer and his
> adventures as a member of the Soviet team that searched postwar,
> occupied Germany for the remnants of the Nazi rocket program. Volume 2
> takes up the story with the development of the world’s first
> intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and ends with the launch of
> Sputnik and the early moon probes.
>
> In Volume 3, Chertok recollects the great successes of, and continues
> the fascinating narrative of the Soviet space program in the 1960s,
> arguably the peak of the effort. Chertok devotes a significant portion
> of the volume to the early years of Soviet human spaceflight from 1961
> to 1967, including the launch of the world’s first space voyager Yuri
> Gagarin and gripping accounts of two of the most tragic episodes of
> the Soviet space program, the death of Korolev and the flight and
> death of cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov during the very first piloted
> Soyuz flight in 1967. Furthermore, Chertok provides a radically unique
> perspective on the Cuban Missile Crisis, from the point of view of
> those who would have been responsible for unleashing nuclear
> Armageddon in 1962 had Kennedy and Khrushchev not been able to agree
> on a stalemate. He concludes focusing on the relationship between the
> space program and the Soviet Academy of Sciences, which would serve as
> great interest to historians of Soviet science.
>
> How to order: Please contact the NASA Center for AeroSpace
> Information, 7121 Standard Drive Hanover, MD 21076, 301-621-0390,
> help at sti.nasa.gov , Online Order Form. The price code is EA5 (Within U.S.
> $25.00 plus $2.00 shipping and handling: Outside U.S. $50.00 plus $17.00
> S&H).
>
> This book also may be purchased from the NASA Information Center, NASA
> Headquarters, 300 E Street SW, Room 1H23, Washington, DC 20546-0001,
> 202-358-0000 or the Government Printing Office (866-512-1800 or
> ContactCenter at gpo.gov ).


hi!

Very sad that this book is aquired as something like bible of soviet space 
history.
It's of course interesting source but memoires only. Moreover there are  
evidences that they are not writen directly by Chertok.
As memoires this book is not based on documents and miss a lot of significant 
events and people.
There are at least two books of same character but much more truthfull:
memoires of Moszhorin and memmoires of Appazov.
The most sad thing that real key persons haven't left any memoires- they were 
too  busy.



Sergey V. Andreev