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EDITORIAL INFORMATION

In The Mir Space Station, David Harland reviews the beginnings of the Russian space station programme, and the highly successful flights of Salyut 6 and 7, and presents a comprehensive review on the long struggle (which has cost four cosmonauts their lives) to construct and operate Mir from an engineering perspective. Harland  attempts to put it into the context of what is yet to come.

(Extracted from the press release).

GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS

-Table of Contents.

-Author's Preface.

-Acnowledgements.

-Notes.

-List of Illustrations and Tables.

-PART 1: SALYUT.

-1. Into the Unknown.
-2. Initial Engineering Development.
-3. Routine Operations.
-4. A Step Towards Permanent Occupancy.

-PART 2: MIR.

-5. A Base Block for Modular Construction.
-6. An Astrophysics Laboratory.
-7. A Microgravity Laboratory for Hire.
-8. Expansion or Abandonment?
-9. Shuttle-Mir.
-10. Fully Booked.

-PART 3: INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION.

-11. Origins.
-12. Competition.
-13. Unification.
-14. ISS.

-PART 4: CONCLUSIONS.

-15. The Learning Curve.

-Glossary.

-Bibliography.

-Index.

OUR REVIEW

We surely have here the almost definite book on the history of the Russian space station Mir. And we say almost because the program continued to be active in the moment of its publication.

Nevertheless, the level of detail and the amount of information included in this book surpasses everything seen so far. Given the scarcity of works devoted to the Soviet/Russian astronautics, this is specially important, as it makes a most valuable stream of difficult to find data available to us, gathered into a single volume.

Harland has taken his work in a methodical way, as the first 100 pages of the book are devoted to the technological predecessors of the Mir (Salyut and Soyuz programs), and then describes the inside and out characteristics of the famous complex, as well as the successive manned visits that have developed its operative history.

The author has time to tell us the dramatic episode of the crash of a Progress spacecraft with the Spektr module and the initial efforts to restart as much as possible the power generation in the station.

The participation of the Americans in the Mir scientific program and the slow transition towards the future international station ISS are other interesting themes proposed by Harland, not to mention the wealthy glossary of terms and bibliography.