The Encyclopedia of Soviet Spacecraft

Perhaps the best collection of images of Soviet Space hardware I've ever seen. Many of the photos seem to have been taken in a museum. Best of all are the up close, detailed images of probes and spacecraft.Drawbacks: Published in the late 80's, it's a bit dated. Its frequent use of the "older" nomenclature for boosters and spacecraft make it hard at times to compare with today's name for the same item. For example, the Soyuz booster is today said to be based on the R-7 rocket, while in this volume it's called "A-1." However, the fault is entirely that of the Soviet Government, who were forever changing the names of design bureaus, launch centers and spacecraft.

This book was used as research source for a book I was writing.

did not order this

This was probably a fairly good book on the Soviet spacecraft / satellites back in 1987 when it was published. Today (2019) it is at best an interesting history of what was known at the time about the subject. The book gives only basic information on the various earth satellites and other spacecraft launched to Mars and Venus: orbiting data, date of launch, apogee and perigee, inclination, period, weight, estimated or guessed functions. On the more positive side, it offers many excellent photos, probably taken from Soviet (current Russian?) aerospace museums. If this is what you are looking for, then it’s an ok book for information up to the mid-1980s.Appendix II gives some information on the Soviet launching rockets. It uses western / US designations for the rockets, not the now known Soviet designations.In my opinion, more extensive books on the Soviet rocket and space flight story are “Rockets and People, Volume 2 – Creating a Rocket Industry” and Volume 4 – “The Moon Race” by Boris Chertok. If you read those books, then you have no need for this book.The biographical book “Korolev” is also very informative. Chapters 15 and 17 discuss the reasons why the Soviets were unable to land men on the moon ahead of the Americans and why they eventually just gave up such a mission entirely. Essentially, their overall industrial and technological backwardness finally caught up with them. Many of the early successes, such as Sputniks 1 through 3 and the early manned space missions, were really political prestige projects so people like Khrushchev could boast of the superiority of communism over capitalism. There were also a huge number of failures in the form of rocket launching failures, radio and telemetry failures, and satellite communications failures that were never publicized.The book “The Soviet Space Race with Apollo” by Asif A. Siddiqi (2003) is also excellent. The author Asif Siddiqi bases his story on information released by the opening of the former USSR archives, publications by former members of the old Soviet rocket, guided missile, and satellite programs and declassified CIA and CIA intelligence reports from the 1960s through the 1990s. The Appendices are almost as interesting as the main book, in my opinion:• Table 1 lists the launch dates, the Soviet designations, and orbital characteristics of every launcher and piloted space vehicle during the 1960s and early 1970s;• Table 2 lists all the Soviet cosmonauts of the era, whether they flew or not;• Table 3 lists all the administrative organizations behind the Soviet space program: Special Committees of the USSR Council of Ministers, Departments of the Secretariat of the Communist Party Central Committee, Military-Industrial Committee, and various Ministries such as Defense, Defense Industry, General Machine Building, Aviation, and so forth. The heads, first deputies, and deputies are all listed as well. The overall bureaucracy was simply overwhelming.• Table 4 lists all the contributing enterprise contractors to the space program such as OKBs and NIIs. Their evolution and combination or separation from other enterprises is also described.The above books tell the story of the entire Soviet technological complex or system that developed and produced the rockets, guided missiles, space capsules, satellites, and lunar and planetary probes. They provide much more current information and data on the former Soviet spacecraft system than does ”Encyclopedia of Soviet Spacecraft.”For a really good book on the magnitude and national economic influence of the Soviet military industrial complex (MIC), I suggest reading the book “The Price of the Past -- Russia’s Struggle with the Legacy of a Militarized Economy” by Gaddy (1996). It describes the history of the Soviet military industry from the 1930s through the eventual collapse of the USSR in the 1980s and 1990s. There is considerable detail on the function of the Military Industrial Committee (VPK) and it's subordinate industrial ministries. The best part of the book is the discussion on how the military industry (which included the space and rocket programs) really accomplished its function and the economic consequences. Essentially, it plundered the civilian economic sector with impunity. Massive forced subsidies and hidden costs were just part of the game. The book provides plenty of statistics on the extent of the MIC in terms of labor, investment, and influence of the MIC on the Soviet economy and the society in general