Korolev: How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive to Beat America to the Moon

I think I have read this before and even visited the town in the man's name. I really terrific book on the space race.

Some fascinating insights into Korolev and the cosmonauts but a bit too much on the internecine machinations of the engineering crowd in the USSR made it a bit dull and repetitive. There wasnt much about the really interesting stuff regarding how he handled the politicians and got resources. It just tended to say "Sergei Pavlovich got the money somehow...". There might be better Korolev biographys around but it you cant find any and are interested in the subject then read this.

I found this biography of Korolev to be very well researched and equally well written. It does a lot to put one of the least known, but most important scientists of the 20th century into perspective. The book has a few flaws though. It is very, very detailed on technical information, but is somewhat lacking in more personal details about Korolev's life. This small flaw makes to book a little less interesting, but also could have been unavoidable for the author. Undoubtedly Korolev, having lived under Stalin's rule and having spent time in the Soviet prison camp system, knew how to keep personal opinions to himself. Therefore, there just might not be much "personal information" available about Korolev for a historian to dig up. The book does bring out Korolev's excellent scientific and administrative abilities - the two keys to his sucess as a scientist and the early dramatic sucess of the Soviet space program. The book also shows why the Soviet space program faltered following Korolev's death. If you're interested in the history of space exploration or the Soviet Union, I highly recommend this book.

This book, written by an American aeronautical specialist who to his credit learnt the language and travelled to Russia to be able delve into his study, is ultimately a frustrating disappointment. Unfortunately and maybe as a victim of being researched within the ten years of the collapse of the Soviet Union the author is a bit of a cold warrior. If you don’t find this evident from his early and massively simplistic excuse for von Braun’s Nazism, it becomes more and more apparent as the achievements wrack up. Whatever the Soviets did appeared to be on a wing and a prayer, with no lack of subterfuge whilst it’s clear that America is simply great. Interviews with former Soviet engineers appear to be mean spirited, although I think this is more to do with the authors (who is not a natural story teller) attempts at writing in a literary manner. However, his after the fact or internal monologue(?) disagreements with his subjects appear to be condescending and especially cowardly as he doesn’t appear to air these views during their conversations. As the book goes on the pro USA whataboutery got to the point that I’d audibly grown. It honestly got to the point I’d be cheering any Soviet triumph. In the end the book became a chore but being interested in the subject I persevered and have three gripes/points of order. The author visited the Kremlin wall to view Korolevs plaque. He makes great play of having to bribe a guard to do this. OK Around the time he would have visited a country still reeling from economic collapse and making this bribe may well have been the case. So let’s consider this as sign that the book has become dated. However, for visitors today I can personally attest that if you are lucky enough to be able to go to Red Square you can view the plaques of Korolev and Gagarin free of charge. At one point the author recounts Apollo 8 broadcasting a Christmas Day message as “Score one for God, debit one for Communistic atheism”. Quite frankly a pathetic statement. One can only assume that the author was in a particular cold war frenzy at the time. Although what must he have made of America subsequently importing Soviet, Energia, based rocket engines we can only guess. Maybe he spun himself into orbit? Even allowing for all of this the greatest failure of the book - in terms of narrative - is a massive open goal that occurs at the end. If you’re prepared to accept its jaundiced view the book is worth reading especially if you’re interested in technical detail (which from a lay perspective I couldn’t fault). Therefore, I won’t give it away here, but the authors lack of story telling ability (and maybe his inability to remain objective) becomes massively obvious. In my opinion a far superior and entertaining book on the space race would be Sputnik!

A must for those following rocketry and wants to know the history of the development of rocket science during the space war. Korolev story is genuinely the one which will make one to read about him more.

Buon libro, completo ma le pagine con le foto sono di bassa qualità e b/n. Inoltre mancano dettagli sui progetti. Un peccato.

I regret never having picked up this book before. This is far more than a bio of an unknown space pioneer. It is a clear history of the early space efforts in general, American failures placed in line against confirmable Soviet failures. Indeed they had their training fatalities as we did. Early rocket tests blew up on the launch pad as did ours (though our engineers had the sense to stand back from the pad). Korolev's genius was as a manager, conceiving designs, selling them to party bosses (not really that different from selling them to U.S. Congress) and realizing many of them on a shoestring budget with sometimes unsophisticated materiel (e.g. the Soviet system initially eschewed the use of computers and calculations were often made in laborious longhand). Ultimately they could not match us in the area of fine control. They could have sent a man to the moon as early as 1966, but bringing him back was another matter. They could not see the P.R. value of a one-way trip (a fact which is the takeoff point for a great post-Soviet work,satirizing the Cosmonaut program, "Omon Ra" by Viktor Pelevin). But how many people recall that Gemini 8 & 9 nearly ended in fatal disasters? This book offers a concise review of the dueling programs, free of ideology.

A well-written book from a leading American expert on the subject!

Techno-biographie du père du programme spatial soviétique, qui avait fait trembler l'Occident: le Spoutnik, Gagarine, la marche dans l'espace, les fusées balistiques, c'est lui ! Pas rancunier le gars, après avoir fait 7 ans de goulag offerts par Staline. Passionnante biographie ou comment faire beaucoup avec une technologie rustique dérivée des V2 allemands.