Class: Nonfiction
Reviewed by: Douglas G. Adler
Title: The Incorrect Stuff: How the Soviet House Program Crashed and Burned
Writer: John Strausbaugh
Format: Hardcover/Kindle
Pages: 262
Writer: Public Affairs
Date: June 2024
Retail worth: $30.00/$18.99
ISBN: 978-1541703346
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In 1979, famed writer Tom Wolfe printed The Proper Stuff. This seminal work pulled again the curtain on the American Mercury Program of the Nineteen Sixties and gave readers a glance into the minds of our first astronauts, the tradition of army pilots, the stress NASA directors confronted, and the wishes of the U.S. Authorities on the peak of the Chilly Warfare to win the House Race towards the Soviet Union. To say that The Proper Stuff was deeply influential could be an understatement, and Wolfe’s incisive, biting, witty, and at occasions irreverent tackle the entire affair each thrilled readers worldwide and altered journalism eternally.
John Strausbaugh’s new ebook, The Incorrect Stuff, tries to place the shoe on the opposite foot: this time the topic of the ebook is the fledgling Soviet area program. Because the title suggests, the ebook is extraordinarily unfavorable in tone and hostile to your entire Soviet area effort, from high to backside. The ebook portrays the Soviets as bumblers and fools, veering from disaster to catastrophe. Soviet area successes (together with the primary manned spaceflight, the primary flight of a feminine Cosmonaut, and different missions) are handled as fortunate breaks or shut calls, and nothing extra. Whereas some could discover this enjoyable or amusing, it has little foundation in actuality. The Soviet area program was a monumental endeavor that, just like the U.S. area program, demanded the service of the nation’s high engineers, producers, pilots, and many others. Many books, together with Colin Burgess’s excellent Soviets in House, James Harford’s Korolev, William Burrough’s This New Ocean, and different works all painting the Soviet effort in a way more life like method and exhibit what a large and severe effort it was. Even Bryan Burrough’s Dragonfly, which is very crucial of the Russians and particulars various life-threatening misadventures aboard the Mir House Station, doesn’t painting the Russians as clods the best way that Strausbaugh does.
The ebook has a sneering and snide tone all through that’s largely unjustified. Occasions are portrayed within the worst doable gentle, and the Soviets come throughout as little higher than the Keystone Cops. To be truthful, the Soviets had greater than their share of mishaps, and Strausbaugh has loads of materials to cowl. The dying of Vladimir Komarov aboard the disastrous Soyuz 1 mission, Alexi Leonov’s close to dying expertise throughout the first-ever spacewalk throughout the Voskhod 2 mission, the Nedelin catastrophe (whereby a prototype intercontinental ballistic missile exploded on the pad, killing a complete engineering design crew), the failed N-1 Moon rocket launches, are all truthful sport for dialogue and evaluation. The issue is that one might simply as simply write an identical ebook, with an identical tone, concerning the U.S. area program. The lack of the Mercury capsule throughout Gus Grissom’s Liberty Bell 7 flight, the Apollo 1 fireplace that claimed the lives of three U.S. astronauts, Gene Cernan and Dick Gordon’s deeply troubled spacewalks on Gemini 9A and Gemini 11, respectively, in addition to the Challenger and Columbia disasters may very well be described in the identical method and it will be simply as unfair and disingenuous. Manned spaceflight is a severe and harmful enterprise, and even sixty years later we’re nonetheless studying new issues about how you can do it safely.
Strausbaugh describes the Apollo-Soyuz Check Mission (ASTP), whereby an American Apollo Command and Service module docked with a Soviet Soyuz craft in Earth orbit. As a part of this system, American Astronauts educated in Russia on the Baikonur Cosmodrome and Soviet Cosmonauts educated on the Kennedy and Johnson House Facilities within the USA. Strausbaugh emphasizes that the Soviets had been amazed on the abundance of products and expertise within the USA, whereas the Individuals had been shocked at how bare-bones life within the Soviet Union was and the way crummy most of the Soviet amenities had been. What Strausbaugh doesn’t point out was how American astronauts noticed some knowledge in how the Soyuz operated regardless of how completely different it was from NASA expertise. Going additional, throughout the Shuttle-Mir period years later, NASA found simply how deep the Russian expertise with area station operations was and the way a lot they may (and did) be taught from their new companions in area. These particulars considerably undermine the narrative Strausbaugh gives and, had they been included, would have proven issues in a extra sincere gentle.
Tom Wolfe was in a position to get away along with his unconventional writing model in The Proper Stuff as a result of it was clear to the reader that, and the tip of the day, he admired and revered NASA, the astronauts, and their mission. Strausbaugh has no such admiration for the Soviet program and the individuals who constructed it, and it limits his perspective, his insights, and his writing considerably. Working below a brutal communist regime, and below excessive duress to rack up a string of historic area “firsts,” the Soviets pulled off one spectacular area mission after the following for years, kickstarting the American program within the course of.
Total, The Incorrect Stuff is a deeply unserious work. You’ll be able to learn it, and you’ll even take pleasure in it, however past that it’s best to take it with a grain of salt. You’ll be able to say a whole lot of unhealthy issues concerning the Russians, their authorities, and their early area program throughout the Chilly Warfare, however you can’t say that they had been dumb.
© 2024 Douglas G. Adler
