The Soviet Space Program: First Steps: 1941-1953

This concise history is the first book in a new series on the Soviet space program and features many rare photographs, diagrams, and charts. When Soviet rocket experts examined the first Nazi V-2s in early 1945, they immediately realized that their own technology was years behind what the Germans had developed. The dropping of the two American atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 made the path forward clear: the development of a Soviet atomic bomb, and a suitable missile to...