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EDITORIAL INFORMATION

Much has been written in the West on the history of the Soviet space program, but few Westerners have read direct first-hand accounts of the men and women who were behind the many Russian accomplishments in exploring space. The memoir of academician Boris Chertok, translated from the original Russian, fills that gap.

Chertok began his career as an electrician in 1930 at an aviation factory near Moscow. Thirty years later, he was deputy to the founding figure of the Soviet space program, the mysterious "Chief Designer" Sergey Korolev. Chertok's 60-year-long career and the many successes and failures of the Soviet space program constitute the core of his memoirs, Rockets and People. In these writings, spread over four volumes (volumes three through four are forthcoming), academician Chertok not only describes and remembers, but also elicits and extracts profound insights from an epic story about a society's quest to explore the cosmos.

This book was edited by Asif Siddiqi, a historian of Russian space exploration, and General Tom Stafford contributed a foreword touching upon his significant work with the Russians on the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. Overall, this book is an engaging read while also contributing much new material to the literature about the Soviet space program.

(Extracted from the press release).

GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS

-Contents.
-Series Introduction by Asif A. Siddiqi
-Introduction to Volume II
-A Few Notes about Transliteration and Translation
-List of Abbreviations
-1. Three New Technologies, Three State Committees
-2. The Return
-3. From Usedom Island to Gorodomlya Island
-4. Institute No. 88 and Director Gonor
-5. The Alliance with Science
-6. Department U
-7. Face to Face with the R-1 Missile
-8. The R-1 Missile Goes Into Service
-9. Managers and Colleagues
-10. NII-885 and Other Institutes
-11. Air Defense Missiles
-12. Flying by the Stars
-13. Missiles of the Cold War’s First Decade
-14. On the First Missile Submarine
-15. Prologue to Nuclear Strategy
-16. The Seven Problems of the R-7 Missile
-17. The Birth of a Firing Range
-18. 15 May 1957
-19. No Time for a Breather
-20. Mysterious Illness
-21. Breakthrough into Space
-22. Flight-Development Tests Continue
-23. The R-7 Goes into Service
-24. From Tyuratam to the Hawaiian Islands and Beyond
-25. Lunar Assault
-26. Back at RNII
-27. The Great Merger
-28. First School of Control in Space
-29. Ye-2 Flies to the Moon and We Fly to Koshka
-30. The Beginning of the 1960s
-31 “Onward to Mars...and Venus”
-32. Catastrophes
-Index.