EDITORIAL INFORMATION

We are very pleased to announce the publication of Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Race to the Moon, 1945-1974, a pathbreaking study by Asif A. Siddiqi. This book is the first comprehensive history, totaling more than 1,000 pages, to appear on the Soviet human space flight program since the opening of the archives in the early 1990s. As a result, it benefits from exceptionally strong primary source materials, as well as perspective on an important challenge that helped to define the U.S. space effort until the 1980s. Going beyond this basic facts, however, Siddiqi has created a gripping narrative that weaves together three broad interpretive themes. The first theme concerns the institutional framework of the Soviet space program and the constituencies that sometimes teamed together and sometimes fought with each other: the engineers, the artillery officers, the defense industrialists, and the Communist Party leaders. These political dynamics lead to the second theme: the Soviet effort to put a man on the Moon before the United States. After Sputnik triumphs, Soviet military officers quickly lost interest in civilian space activities and felt that such efforts hurt the funding potential for military rocketry. Ironically, the "Cold War, having given birth to the Soviet space program, would seriously threaten its very existence." The third theme of Challenge to Apollo covers the Soviets' methods of technological innovation. Siddiqi challenges the Western conventional wisdom that the Soviets always tended toward incremental, rather than revolutionary, innovation.

Taking advantage of the opened Soviet archives in the 1990s, Siddiqi has written a ground-breaking book that fleshes out our understanding of key Soviet players such as Sergey Korolev, Vladimir Chelomey, Valentin Glushko, and Vasiliy Mishin, as well as the Soviet politial leaders Josef Stalin, Nikita Krushchev, and Leonid Brezhnev. Challenge to Apollo also sets the record straight on well-known, but often misunderstood, Soviet programs such as the Sputnik satellites, the N1 rockets, and the R-7 and R-5 missiles. It also discusses several Soviet space programs that have been virtually unknown to Westerners.

(Extracted from the press release.)

GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS

-Table of Contents.

-Acknowledgments.

-Preface.

-Glossary

-1. Presage.

-2. First Steps.

-3. Stalin and the Rocket.

-4. Sputnik.

-5. Designing the First Spaceship.

-6. Organizing for the Space Program.

-7. Gagarin.

-8. Looking to the Future.

-9. Space Politics.

-10. "There Are More Things in Heaven and Earth..."

-11. Three Steps to the Moon.

-12. A New Beginning.

-13. Tragedy.

-14. Getting Back on Track.

-15. Final Lap to the Moon.

-16. Options.

-17. Dreams Unfulfilled.

-18. Ashes to Ashes.

-19. Tomowwow Never Knows.

-20. Coda.

-Bibliographic Essay.

-Tables:

-IA. Orbital Launch Attempts in the Soviet Piloted Space Program, 1960-74.
-IB. Mission Parameters for Selected Orbital Flights.
-IC. Nonorbital Launch Attempts Supporting the Soviet Piloted Space Program.
-II. Cosmonaut Selection Groups, 1960-74.
-III. Administrative Organizations in the Soviet Missile and Space Programs.
-IV. Major Contractor Organizations in the Soviet Space Program, 1945-74.
-V. Space Launch Vehicle Designations.
-VI. Details of Launch Vehicles Used in the Soviet Piloted Space Program, 1957-74.
-VII. Designations for Piloted Space Vehicles.
-VIII. Automated Launches Related to the Soviet Piloted Space Program, 1957-76.
-IX. Governmental Decrees in the Soviet Missile and Space Programs, 1945-76.

-Appendices.

-A. Soviet Piloted Space Projects, 1945-74.
-B. Dramatis Personae, 1945-74.

-Index.

-The NASA History Series.