A too breezy, "satellite" view of the Space Race

books:

	• Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the Hidden Rivalries that Ignited the Space Age Matthew Brzezinski Times Books, 2007 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 13 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Authenticity and "Truthiness"

A fast-paced treatment of the Soviet Union's launch of the first artificial Earth satellite and the American response, but the narrative bogs down frequently as the author stops to fill in background information in the course of a scene. The author also drops technical minutiae into the narrative to maintain interest and add authenticity. Unfortunately, Brzezinski is not that well-grounded in aerospace technology or terminology, and inserts enough clangers that the result is less an air of authenticity than of "truthiness."

Where this weakness particularly struck me was Chapter 6, "Pictures in Black and White," the opening of which describes the launch of a CIA U-2 mission to photograph the launch complex at Tyuratam.

* Brzezinski apparently has read that the U-2 had "bicycle landing gear," i.e., only two landing gear, located along the fuselage centerline. That becomes "The landing gear... appeared to consist of a lone bicycle wheel."

* Describes the CIA pilot as wearing an orange full-pressure suit, a garment that was not developed until years later. (The pilot would have been wearing a partial-pressure suit, like the David Clark MC-3.)

* Confuses Bell Aircraft with Bell Labs -- and further confuses the Bell Aircraft X-16 project with the "Americanization" of British Canberra bombers by Martin Aircraft.

* Describes the U-2 as having a wingspan "three times" its 60-foot fuselage length. For the early-model U-2's being discussed the fuselage length was a little over 49 feet, the wingspan 80 feet. I was starting to wonder if Brzezinski had ever seen a photo of a U-2.

* Describes attempts by MiG-21 fighters to intercept the first U-2 flight over the Soviet Union in July 1956. Quite a trick, considering that the first experimental prototype of the delta-winged MiG-21 only flew in June 1956 and production airplanes didn't enter service until 1959.

The author's overall aim is to place the launch of the first Earth satellites -- Sputniks 1 and 2, and the American Explorer and Vanguard -- in context, not only of technical accomplishments but also of the political maneuvering in both the United States and the Soviet Union that made a fairly straightforward engineering achievement into a watershed in world politics. That's an ambitious and laudable goal, and Brzezinski does (I think) an excellent job sketching the political pressures bearing on both Khrushchev and Eisenhower in late 1957.

I have to wonder, though, if all the connections made are valid. Omissions in participants' backgrounds can make inferences look more plausible than they really are, and there are some omissions in the book.

An oversight that struck me (though with no great effect on Brzenski's overall narrative) has to do with Wernher von Braun's career in the United States. Brzezinski's narrative for von Braun between the end of World War 2 and the launch of Sputnik is roughly: 1) von Braun cools his heels in Texas for two years, 2) von Braun works in obscurity at the Redstone Arsenal for the U.S. Army's Ballistic Missile Agency, 3) von Braun is approached by Walt Disney to advise on and appear in Disney's 1955 - 1957 "Man in Space" TV specials and becomes famous.

Missing from that storyline, though, is the event that made von Braun a public figure in the first place (though his Disney TV appearances certainly boosted his prominence to a whole new level): The 1952 - 1954 "Collier's Magazine" series of eight articles on space travel, a landmark in the introduction of space to the American public consciousness.

Before the rise of TV, the glossy magazines were a far greater influence on public opinion than they are today and "Collier's" was one of the Big Four, with a peak circulation of four million readers. The articles, some co-authored by von Braun and Cornelius Ryan, laid out plans for Earth satellites, manned rocket ferries, a space station, and an expedition to the Moon carried out by a fleet of huge spacecraft. The magazine's large-format, glossy pages carried detailed color illustrations and cutaways by artists like Chesley Bonestell and Fred Freeman. Supported by "Collier's" publicity efforts for the series, von Braun was interviewed on national television for the first time. Disney's Ward Kimball didn't just happen on Wernher von Braun out in the wilds of Alabama when he started pre-production on "Man in Space." Von Braun was already famous -- and the obvious "go-to" guy about manned space flight.

A Wernher von Braun CV that doesn't include "Collier's" is a little like a bio of John Kennedy that doesn't mention PT-109.

"Red Moon Rising" is colorful and entertaining. I just have some reservations about it as history.

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A too breezy, "satellite" view of the Space Race

I was entertained by this rather surface coverage of the space race. But those interested in an author willing to drill down below the cinematic high points should read Walter McDougall's Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age" (amazingly not cited by this author as a source!)

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Fascinating, but only half the story!

The book was published to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the launching of Sputnik. What makes it so particularly fascinating is that the author has dug deep into now-released Soviet records and can tell both sides of the story--the American and the Soviet. The author paints a picture that shows that the Americans deliberately kept Wernher von Braun and his 100 or so German cohorts locked away for five years or so without really letting them do anything, and thus the Americans were five years behind where they could have been. I'm not sure this is quite convincing, but if not, it's barely short of convincing. In the event, it was the failure of an American-led civilian group that allowed the Army and von Braun to launch the first American satellite. But the thing that kept me from rating this five stars is that the book stops with the launching of the American satellite. I would very much have liked to see the book continue until the launching of first the Soviet cosmonaut and second the American astronaut, since all the same players were involved. Is this book worth purchasing and reading? You bet! It's full of tidbits that haven't hit the public stage before. And it doesn't cannonize von Braun, either--painting him as clearly in cahoots with those who managed the slave labor to get the V2s in the air, and later turned the driving force behind the American space effort.

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We Never Saw It Coming

A very well written account of the politicos and rocket scientists from the end of WWII to the late 1950s. The detail comes to life as if it were a novel!

"Sputnik was a technological Pearl Harbor."

Focusing on the period between 1956 and 1958, Matthew Brzezinski recreates the Cold War atmosphere which began in the aftermath of World War II and culminated with the Russian launching of Sputnik in October, 1957 . Both the United States and the Soviet Union, in their rush to occupy their post-war sectors of Germany, had wanted to acquire as much German technology as possible--rockets, missiles, and, of course, the German scientists who made it all possible. The US had all the advantages--finding a secret missile lab (hidden in a mountain with a concentration camp in front of it), removing dozens of advanced rockets and missiles to the US, and enticing key scientists to emigrate to the United States. Still, it was the Soviet Union, with far fewer spoils of war and much less developed missile programs, which succeeded in orbiting the first satellite.

Brzezinski's extensive research, detailed character analyses of the key players and their subordinates, and vivid recreations of the economic and political realities of both countries increase the tension in the lead-up to Sputnik. Sociological details about the U-2 development, the Little Rock demonstrations, the civil rights movement, and the political infighting in the Eisenhower administration are balanced by analyses of the USSR's problems with rebellious Poland and Hungary, coups and countercoups which oust and then reinstall Krushchev, and the Russian army's fight against missiles in favor of manpower and conventional materiel.

The roles of Sergei Korolev, chief architect of the Russian rocket program, and of Werner Von Braun and his fellow German émigrés, who guided the American program, are carefully delineated, and the struggles of both groups of scientists to convince the politicians in charge of budgets that their programs were crucial show the conflicts between innovative scientific research and political expediency. When the Soviets launched a second rocket containing a dog a month later, Russia's beeping beacons in the sky secured its position at the top of the technology pyramid, at least in the public consciousness, with consequent implications regarding military superiority. It was another three months before the US succeeded in launching its own first rocket.

With vibrant descriptions, specific details, and lively background information about the "players" in this drama, Brzezinski recreates the climate in the White House and the Kremlin, alternating the focus and providing contrasting portraits of the chief protagonists--President Eisenhower and Nikita Krushchev, First Secretary of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. The alternating chapters allow the reader to feel as if s/he is watching both hands in a high stakes global poker match, with the key players practicing the bluff on an international scale--failed intelligence was as much a factor then as it has been in recent years. As exciting to read as the best fiction, this well-researched and compelling story will educate a new generation to the drama associated with the beginnings of satellite and missile technology. n Mary Whipple

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Biography - Brzezinski, Matthew (1965-): An article from: Contemporary Authors Online

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

For the fiftieth anniversary of Sputnik, the behind-the-scenes story of the fierce battles on earth that launched the superpowers into space The spy planes were driving Nikita Khrushchev mad. Whenever America wanted to peer inside the Soviet Union, it launched a U-2, which flew too high to be shot down. But Sergei Korolev, Russia?s chief rocket designer, had a riposte: an artificial satellite that would orbit the earth and cross American skies at will. On October 4, 1957, the launch of Korolev?s satellite, Sputnik, stunned the world.
In Red Moon Rising, Matthew Brzezinski takes us inside the Kremlin, the White House, secret military facilities, and the halls of Congress to bring to life the Russians and Americans who feared and distrusted their compatriots as much as their superpower rivals. Drawing on original interviews and new documentary sources from both sides of the Cold War divide, he shows how Khrushchev and Dwight Eisenhower were buffeted by crises of their own creation, leaving the door open to ambitious politicians and scientists to squabble over the heavens and the earth. It is a story rich in the paranoia of the time, with combatants that included two future presidents, survivors of the gulag, corporate chieftains, rehabilitated Nazis, and a general who won the day by refusing to follow orders.
Sputnik set in motion events that led not only to the moon landing but also to cell phones, federally guaranteed student loans, and the wireless Internet. Red Moon Rising recounts the true story of the birth of the space age in dramatic detail, bringing it to life as never before.

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