Rockets and People by Boris Chertok (4 volumes)

Rockets and People by Boris Chertok (4 volumes)

Volume 1 of the memoirs of academician Borris Chertok, translated from the original Russian. Describes his early years as an engineer and ends with the mission to Germany after the end of World War II when the Soviets captured Nazi missile technology and expertise

In Volume 2, Chertok takes up the story after his return to the Soviet Union in 1946, when Stalin ordered the foundation of the postwar missile program at an old artillery factory northeast of Moscow. Chertok gives an unprecedented view into the early days of the Soviet missile program. With a keen talent for combining technical and human interests, Chertok writes of the origins and creation of the Baykonur Cosmodrome in a remote desert region of Kazakhstan.

He devotes a substantial portion of Volume 2 to describing the launch of the first Sputnik satellite and the early lunar and interplanetary probes designed under legendary Chief Designer Sergey Korolev in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He ends with a detailed description of the famous R-16 catastrophe known as the “Nedelin disaster,” which killed scores of engineers during preparations for a missile launch in 1960.

Volume 3 covers the history of the Soviet space program from 1961 to 1967.

Volume 4 1967 - 1988