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 memoir of Academician Boris
Chertok, translated from the original Russian, fills 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. In Volume 2, Chertok takes up
the story after his return to the Soviet Union in 1946, when Stalin
ordered the foundation of the postwar missile program at an old
artillery factory northeast of Moscow. Chertok gives an
unprecedented view into the early days of the Soviet missile
program. With a keen talent for combining technical and human
interests, Chertok writes of the origins and creation of the
Baykonur Cosmodrome in a remote desert region of Kazakhstan. He
devotes a substantial portion of Volume 2 to describing the launch
of the first Sputnik satellite and the early lunar and
interplanetary probes designed under legendary Chief Designer
Sergey Korolev in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He ends with a
detailed description of the famous R-16 catastrophe known as the
"Nedelin disaster," which killed scores of engineers during
preparations for a missile launch in 1960.
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