[FPSPACE] Short review of book just published on Russian space plane projects

[Peter Pesavento]

Greetings everyone.

 

Just today I received a copy of a superlative book on the history of
aspirations to have space planes.

 

Its title is "Kosmicheskiye Kryliya"  (Roughly translated as "Cosmic Wings"
or "Space Wings"-that's my own take) by co-authors Vadim Lukashevich and
Igor Afanasyev.

 

While it begins with rocket planes (Russian, German, etc), and does include
very decent coverage of US efforts (including Prime and Asset, DynaSoar,
etc.), the bulk of the book (and its greatest strength) is on Russian
projects.  Many of these have not been covered in English-language
publications.  I think perhaps that a significant amount of the information
contained in this book has not appeared in any publication.  And I might
also say most of these Soviet/Russian projects have not ever been covered in
the detail that Lukashevich and Afanasyev have done so in this book.

 

The printing and graphics are top notch. High quality content paper was used
also. The cutaway diagrams are also superb. (I hope that the binding will
hold up through multiple openings of the book.)  While much is in
black-and-white, much also is in color.  Additionally, reproductions of
pages from actual engineering work documents, as well as actual film stills
in extended sequences, add to what I term is the book's "high exoticness"
level.

 

I think also the willingness of the authors to "dig deep" contributes to the
high-quality level of the volume, something that is not usually found or
seen (this is my opinion) in publications on space history coming out of
Russia.  This book can be compared more-than-favorably to most books
published in the West on the same topic.  

 

I think I should say here that the level of Soviet aerospace engineering
development (in regards to the programs shown in this volume) indicate that,
even if the number of vehicles tested may have been few in number in
comparison to some of the programs that were non-Russian, the engineering
was on par with their contemporaries elsewhere.  (And it also means that
there remains archives chock-full of data and photographs hitherto
unreleased inside Russia today-and not merely on aerospace planes and
shuttles.)

 

Just some things to point out as I perused the volume (all in the space of
about 35 minutes):

 

Page 122:  an actual photo of the MP-2 (M-12) on top of its R-12 launcher.
First time I have ever seen such a photograph.  

 

Page 284:  back in 1978, in the volume "Our Gagarin," there was a photo of a
group of the first cosmonauts looking at an apparent wind-tunnel model of a
space shuttle.  This photo is real, and the authors show another photo from
the sequence, previously unpublished.  The "Our Gagarin" photo however was
indeed doctored-but not due to the shuttle model.  They had airbrushed
Gherman Titov out of the photo.  The picture sequence on this page shows
Titov back where he belongs.

 

Pages 360-402: one of the unique aspects of this book is its coverage of the
Cosmos 1374-1445 effort.  It uses not only Russian photographs of the
recoveries, but also reconnaissance photographs taken by the Royal
Australian Air Force.  So one gets to see materials from both participating
sides in the recording of the happenings.  [I should add here that my own
contributed materials appear in this book, most obviously on pages 367-370
inclusive.]

 

Pages 403-416:  Lukashevich and Afanasyev include a chapter about the
"Uragan" space plane notion, and you can read what their views are on this
subject.

 

There are also mentions of paper projects such as rocket-launched Sukhoi
aircraft (Lozino Lozinskiy collective), and a T-4 aircraft-borne aerospace
project (launched from its dorsal side).  The authors also include a
glossary of aerospace terms, including diagrams (such as what an "angle of
attack" is).

 

The authors have attempted to keep the book as current as possible (it
includes coverage of the HL-20 and 42, and X-38), and there is not a doubt
that this book's contents contribute substantively, substantially to--and
push forward by several magnitudes-the attempt to corral materials on the
history of winged spacecraft.

 

I will leave my commentaries here.

 

Yes, I think everyone should make an effort to get a copy of this book.

 

 

 

 

 

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