Russia in Space: the Failed Frontier?
Brian Harvey
330 pages, including index
published in 2001

Like a lot of science fiction fans, I used to be a proper little spacegeek, reading about space, following the news about the American, European and Soviet plans to conquer space --remember the wild plans of the 1980ties-- and dreamt of one day travelling to space myself. However, in the 19090ties space became dull, unadventurous and my interest waned. Still, myu interest proved to be only dormant and not yet dead when I spotted this book walking through the aeronautica/astronautica section of the Amsterdam library last week.

Russia in Space, with as subtitle The Failed Frontier is mainly a detailed overview of the state of the Russian post-Soviet space program. It starts off with a capsule history of the Soviet space program until 1991, then looks at various parts of the post-1991 Russian space program. First the manned space programs and the various international projects are treated, then the civilian, scientific and military discussed, followed by the program's infrastructure: ground stations, design bureaux, rockets and rocket engines. The book ends by discussing the commercial succes of various Russian space programs and a short chapter on whether or not one could call the space program failed or not.

To western eyes, the Russian space program often looked as ridiculous as the Soviet space program had looked impressive. There was the Mir space station, barely held together with spit and bailing wire, the way the Russians had to raise money by auctioning off historical spacecraft and sending celebrities into space, as well as the general air of delapidation and improvisation that hung around the entire program, compared to the sleek NASA programs.

However, to look at it that way is unfair. Say what you like, the Russians managed to keep Mir aloft far beyond its planned lifespan, from 1986 up until march of 2001. The US never manged to do so. In fact, the core of the International Space Station is still Russian, consisting of what was supposed to become Mir 2. Thanks to Mir and the earlier Salyut spacestations the USSR and later Russia also logged the most hours in space, routinely having crew aboard a spacestation for months at a time --several cosmonauts stayed aboard Mir for well over a year. More than that, the Russians managed to transform their spaceprogram from one depending entirely on government money into a commercial succes. Even more impressive, during the 1990ties they managed to keep improving their main rockets, even introducing several new rockets.

So no, not a failed program at all, but a quietly impressive program, even if not as glamourous as the US space program is.