Soviet and Russian Lunar Exploration

The other side of the race:
Once again a "Harvey book" which fulfills the expectations one has come to expect when looking at the by-line. This time the theme is the stamina and heroics you had to exhibit in Soviet Russia when planning and trying to win the race to the Moon. We all know that the Soviets started out by winning the initial laps but finally lost the finals in the Race, here we get to know why. We re-live the tragedies of the main protagonists, who not only had to master a demanding complex of technology, but also had to appease and cajole a not very understanding but very capricious bureaucracy in order to further their aims. Their case was not helped by the internal dissensions and jockeying for position. Well, the US administrations and Congress did show it's inconsistency of purpose, but at any rate, they allowed NASA to win before withdrawing the support. The difficulties to be faced in the Soviet Union was of quite an other order of magnitude. S.P.Koroljov, N. Tichonravov and the other enthusiasts had their successes, but ultimately they had to concede failure and defeat. That was not, however because of lack of trying. The background vas elucidated for the historians a decade ago by A Siddiqi, now Brian Harvey tells the story to us, an audience of interested laymen. As usually the style is clear, the exposition masterful. Even as most of us readers know the outcome, the drama unfolds with breathless suspense. I myself have lived through those years as an active observer, and still did not put down the book until arriving at the last page.

Soviet lunar program revealed:
More than thirty years after University of Manchester astronomy professor Zdenek Kopal wrote, "In contrast to the American soft-landers, on which the design of experiments as well as their preliminary results have been fully published, much less is known on the instrumentation of the \oSoviet\c soft-landing Lunas - and still less about their results," we finally have Soviet and Russian Lunar Exploration by Brian Harvey. This book supplies some of the long-absent information for which Kopal and many others yearned. After reading it, one will certainly have a much more thorough understanding and appreciation of the Soviet lunar program's flyby spacecraft, soft-landers, orbiters, rovers, sample return missions, their planned manned lunar missions, and the personalities behind them. To reach that point, however, this reviewer had to endure a few of author Harvey's biased comments, scattered throughout the book, which almost caused him to doubt that it was Neil Armstrong who first placed his boot print on the lunar surface and not Alexei Leonov. Harvey attempts to counteract the U.S. dominance present in most books about lunar exploration with his comments and asides. While one can understand his desire to defend Soviet performance, this reviewer believes that he occasionally overcompensates to the point of being annoying, and, in one instant ... ludicrous. The reader can decide for himself or herself the validity of the author's statement, "The Soviet Union ... came close to perfecting a giant moon rocket, the N-1," especially after reading later in the book that four N-1s were launched over a 3-1/2 year period and each experienced a failure that destroyed the three-stage vehicle before it even reached second stage ignition. At least the N-1 launch escape system worked properly! The only other gripe this reviewer had was with the inconsistency of the photo quality included with the text. Some are muddy, others are highly pixilated, and at least two had moiré patterns, while some are razor sharp. It would have been a real plus if the author could have included clear, sharp photos of the lunar panoramas taken by Soviet soft-landers, rovers, and sample-return missions. None-the-less, author Brian Harvey has done a yeoman's job of assembling material about a series of essentially secret programs run by a foreign country whose government was not known for being forthcoming with detailed information about successes, let alone failures. The bottom line is that this is a valuable book for anyone who is interested in a comprehensive review of Soviet lunar exploration. And if the reader believes that he or she might know a lot about the Soviet space program (as did this reviewer) before reading the book, they will be surprised how little they actually knew after finishing it. Perhaps the greatest asset of this book is that it crystallizes how close the U.S. and Soviet Union were in the "race to the moon," and yet how far apart they were.