EDITORIAL INFORMATION

The Moon Race. Probably the most exciting human adventure of all times, and at the same time the worst narrated one. A competition that the history books have covered only in a partial way due to extraordinary events: the political, economical, military and prestige implications that this enterprise meant for the two competitors and which one of them couldn't overcome and acknowledge.

Whoever can even imagine a race, even if it is a technological one, where there only is one opponent? Certainly, the one staged on the Moon for more than a decade was no exception, although the written information which has been available up to now appeared to imply otherwise.

From the thorough detail in the American descriptions of the Apollo program, historians often had to deal with an utter ignorance about Soviet manned activities during that time. Only when propaganda circumstances were beneficial, did the western world share the communist successes.

Luckily, things have changed in a radical way lately. The USSR has disappeared and the Secret of State that lay on the Soviet Moon Program, then immersed in utter failure, has begun to become known. For the first time ever has it been possible to rebuild the basic outlines of this program. Names, missions, failures and successes are now intertwined with a greater coherence, thus uncovering in all that the motivations which differ in a substantial way from those we can read about in any enciclopaedia.

(Extracted from the press release).

GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS

-Prólogo.

-El Inicio del Programa Espacial.

-Y Ahora la Luna.

-Aprovechando la Ventaja.

-Motores, Cohetes y Naves Espaciales.

-La Hora de las Apuestas.

-En el Fragor de la Competición.

-Ecos de Infortunio.

-Cuando el Sueño se Desvanece.

-Epílogo.

-Bibliografía.

OUR REVIEW

Written by one of the science writers in charge of The Science Book Board, we have one of the very few instances of the popularizing of the history of astronautics written in Spain. Although the technical characteristics of the book are modest, this is not true of its contents. These deal with nothing less than the history of the Soviet manned space program, a chapter in the conquest of our natural satellite which up to now had only been partially dealt with in some specialized articles and, more or less at the same time, in a wonderful book written for the English-speaking market by expert Nicholas L. Johnson.

It is true that even now new aspects in this program are being uncovered, and that its ultimate history is still unwritten. However, in Alas Rojas we can already state that there not only was a Soviet manned program to the Moon, but also that there were up to three parallel projects which were initiated so as to reach this goal: The circumlunar program L-1 (Zond), which almost came to overtake the Americans on December 1968, the moon landing one L-3 (with its giant rocket N-1), and the cancelled one LK-1, later partly transferred from the project which would shape the Almaz space stations (Salyut).

The currently popular ship Soyuz was designed by Sergei Korolev for the flight to the Moon. This is the only memory, together with the Proton rocket, of an era the USSR wanted to forget as quickly as possible. The competition among people, political intrigues, the whims of the leaders of the nation, as well as the inadequate technological and economic level occasioned by the system prevented the victory of the USSR in the Moon race. Even so, the Soviets held a plan which would succeed the American ones when they abandoned the satellite, by the early 70's. An idea which would vanish into nothingness by mid decade, thanks to a takeover in the management of the space program, while the government ordered the immersion of the manned dream into a Secret of State that has endured up till our days.

For all the Spanish-speaking aficionadoes who have no access to other specialized texts or who don't know any English, Alas Rojas is a unique opportunity to understand what exactly happened during this fascinating era.