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

[Bart Hendrickx]

I can only echo Peter Pesavento's comments on this absolutely amazing book
by Vadim Lukashevich and Igor Afanasyev, which I think is the best space
history book ever published in Russia. About half the book is devoted to
Spiral, which is covered in unprecedented detail, with most of the
information based on primary documents and interviews with programme
participants. The authors are planning to publish two more volumes, one on
Buran and the other on Soviet and international spaceplane projects from the
post-1960s era.  By the way, Vadim Lukashevich runs the excellent Buran
website  <http://www.buran.ru> www.buran.ru  

Here's some more information on the book from the website, including the
table of contents (all in Russian) :

 <http://www.buran.ru/htm/space_wings.htm>
http://www.buran.ru/htm/space_wings.htm

People outside Russia can obtain the book via the on-line bookshop
Podarini.ru 

 <http://www.podarini.ru/index.php?productID=230>
www.podarini.ru/index.php?productID=230  , tel. +7(916) 224-78-64

Cost is $65 (shipping not included).

 

Peter Pesavento wrote :

 

>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from the sequence, previously unpublished.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.

 

The wind tunnel module in the picture bears an uncanny resemblance to the
Space Shuttle Orbiter and Buran, which made many wonder if it was fake. The
authors now reveal that the wind tunnel model is not that of a shuttle
vehicle, but of a hypothetical hypersonic aircraft or a cruise missile with
a long fuselage. It's just the angle from which the picture was taken that
makes it look very similar to the Shuttle or Buran. The model can still be
seen today in the Gagarin memorial room at the Zhukovskiy Air Force Academy.

 

 

>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.

 

Their view being that Uragan (the Zenit-launched spaceplane that many in the
West believed was being developed in parallel to Buran) was a figment of the
imagination of Western analysts. 

 

Bart Hendrickx

 

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