Project Apollo Annotated Bibliography
CHAPTER 2
THE SPACE RACE
Breuer, William B. Race to the Moon: America's Duel with the
Soviets. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993. This book, written by
a journalist who has made a career out of writing World War II
adventures, is neither about the race to the Moon nor the U.S.
rivalry with the U.S.S.R. The majority of it is, instead, about
the World War II efforts of the German rocket team under Wernher
von Braun at Peenemnde, their wartime exploits, their surrender
to American forces in 1945, and their post-war activities in the
U.S. Only 6 of 24 chapters actually deal with Project Apollo,
and none of the book goes beyond the popular literature on either
the Germans or Apollo.
Bulkeley, Rip. The Sputniks Crisis and Early United States
Space Policy: A Critique of the Historiography of Space. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1991. This is an important discussion
of early efforts to develop civil space policy in the aftermath
of the Sputnik crisis of 1957. Not explicitly concerned with Project
Apollo, it does contain much information relative to the rivalry
between the United State and the Soviet Union and how it was affected
by the launching of the Sputnik 1 scientific satellite. It also
discusses the debate that took place within the Eisenhower administration
over whether or not to begin an aggressive lunar landing program,
the program that ultimately became Apollo. Eisenhower always opposed
the idea of an aggressive lunar landing program, for as he said
at a meeting in February 1958 "he would rather have a good
Redstone than be able to hit the moon, for we didn't have any
enemies on the moon."
Caiden, Martin. War for the Moon. New York: E.P. Dutton
and Co., 1959. This presents a strong case for the U.S. to rush
to the Moon, framed in the context of the Cold War rivalry with
the Soviet Union, written at the time that the first lunar probes
were being launched.
Clark, Philip S. The Soviet Manned Space Program. New York:
Crown Pub., Orion Books, 1988. This is a general historical work
on the Soviet space effort, emphasizing the Cold War rivalries
with the United States and how they related to several programs,
especially the race to the Moon.
_____. "Chelomei's Alternative Manned Lunar Program."
Quest: The History of Spaceflight Magazine. 1 (Winter 1992):
31-34. Vladimir Chelomei was one of the leading spacecraft designers
in the Soviet Union in the 1960s. As one of the leading rivals
to Sergei Korolev's efforts in space, Chelomei's design bureau
offered several different proposals for a lunar landing program
to beat the Americans. He was unsuccessful in obtaining approval
for these programs, but that fact that they existed indicates
that the Soviet leadership could not agree on a method of racing
the Americans to the Moon. This article describes the plans proposed
by Chelomei.
_____. "The Soviet Manned Circumlunar Program." Quest:
The History of Spaceflight Magazine. 1 (Winter 1992): 17-20.
This is a solid article based on post-Cold War documentation that
describes the Soviet effort to send a piloted spacecraft around
the Moon before the Americans did so. Heavily illustrated, and
with tables showing major events in the program.
Cox, Donald W. America's Explorers of Space; Including a Special
Report on Project Apollo. Maplewood, NJ: Hammond, 1969. This
is a short, 96-page, illustrated history of the rivalry between
the Soviet Union and the United States to the Moon. It is a revision
of the 1962 publication by the same author (see below), the new
edition being issued to capitalize on the success of Apollo 11.
_____. The Space Race: From Sputnik to Apollo, and Beyond.
Philadelphia: Chilton Books, 1962. This is a short and rather
simplistic account by a journalist of the major points of the
international rivalry between the United States and the Soviet
Union on the use of space for prestige purposes. It discusses
in elementary fashion the Sputnik crisis and the Gagarin 1961
orbital mission before describing the Kennedy decision to enter
the Moon race and NASA's early efforts to accomplish it through
Project Apollo.
Daniloff, Nicholas. The Kremlin and the Cosmos. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1972. A journalistic account of the Soviet space
program with some discussion of the race to the Moon.
Divine, Robert A. The Sputnik Challenge. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1993. This book, while not dealing with Project
Apollo explicitly, is concerned with Eisenhower's reaction to
the Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957. It contains
insights into an ill-formed "alternative" space program
promoted by the Eisenhower White House that emphasized a modest
effort using satellites for exploration and practical applications
rather than the aggressive and expensive piloted space flight
program desired by space promoters and NASA leaders.
Doel, Ronald E. "Evaluating Soviet Lunar Science in Cold
War America." Osi- ris. 7 (1992): 238-64. An excellent
discussion of the efforts of the U.S. scientific and governmental
establishment to ascertain what research the Soviets were doing
relative to the Moon, along with an analysis of Soviet lunar science's
findings.
Dupas, Alain. La lutte pour l'espace (The Battle for
Space). Paris: Seuil, 1977. This French-language book contains
a discussion of the U.S./U.S.S.R. rivalry in space and the lunar
programs that resulted from it.
Glennan, T. Keith. The Birth of NASA: The Diary of T. Keith
Glennan. Edited by J.D. Hunley. Washington, DC: NASA SP-4106,
1993. This diary of Eisenhower's NASA administrator contains a
detailed account of the discussions that took place prior to 1961
on the viability and desirability of undertaking an aggressive
lunar landing program as a means of demonstrating national superiority
over the Soviet Union. As administrator Glennan sponsored studies
on the possibility of Project Apollo, but he always shied away
from an aggressive stance on the effort. Funding for studies of
the proposal were included in the NASA budgets for fiscal years
1961 and 1962 by Glennan, but he was unwilling to move beyond
that stage until fundamental work on other space activities had
been completed. After leaving office, Glennan watched the Apollo
project closely and while admitting that he was excited by the
lunar landing in 1969, he recognized that it was the capstone
of a project he believed had been ill-advised and costly. An introduction
to the diary by Roger D. Launius shows how Glennan's background
prepared him for his duties as NASA's first administrator.
Harvey, Brian. "Promise Unfulfilled: The Soviet Unmanned
Moon Programme, 1969-1988." Journal of the British Interplanetary
Society. 43 (1990): 395-98. A solid discussion of the later
efforts of the Soviet Union to explore the Moon with robotic probes
using information made available in the post-Cold War era.
_____. Race into Space: The Soviet Space Programme. Chichester,
England: Ellis Horwood Ltd., 1988. This is a solid history of
the development of the Soviet space program through the mid-1980s.
It has several chapters on the lunar program, describing what
information was available before the official Russian announcement
of the race in 1989.
Jastrow, Robert, and Newell, Homer E. "The Space Program
and the National Interest." Foreign Affairs. 50 (April
1972): 532-44. This article is not specifically related to Apollo,
but it presents an argument in an important forum about the nature
of the space program and comments on the lunar landing program
in relation to it. The authors contend that the American space
program sprang principally from considerations of national security
and international prestige. That motivated most of its efforts
toward Apollo in the 1960s and has informed them since that time.
Johnson, Nicholas L. "Apollo and Zond--Race around the Moon."
Spaceflight. 20 (December 1978): 403-412. This retrospective
article written ten years after Apollo 8 compares what was known
then about Apollo with information about the Soviet lunar program,
called Zond. The author notes the incredible parallelism of events
in the two programs, including the Apollo 204 and Soyuz 1 disasters
in early 1967, and concludes that the United States and the Soviet
Union were in a race to send humans around the Moon in 1968, despite
Soviet claims to the contrary.
_____. The Soviet Reach for the Moon: The L-1 and L-3 Manned
Lunar Program and the Story of the N-1 (Moon Rocket). Washington,
DC: Cosmos Books, 1994. This is a heavily-illustrated volume containing
a wealth of information about the history of the Soviet Union's
efforts to race the United States to the Moon in the 1960s. It
incorporates much of the recently available information on the
Soviet lunar program and describes how the USSR's very real efforts
to reach the Moon failed.
Killian, James R., Jr. Sputnik, Scientists, and Eisenhower:
A Memoir of the First Special Assistant to the President for Science
and Technology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977. In the wake
of the Soviet orbiting of Sputnik in 1957, President Dwight D.
Eisenhower appointed a science advisor to his White House staff,
James R. Killian from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Killian's memoir describes in detail the debates over what course
to take with the civil space program and whether or not to enter
a Moon race with the Soviet Union.
Kistiakowsky, George B. A Scientist in the White House.
Introduction by Charles S. Maier. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1976. This is the edited diary of George B. Kistiakowsky,
the second science advisor to President Eisenhower. Taking office
in July 1959, he had previously served on James Killian's advisory
committee and was well aware of the efforts to best the Soviet
Union in space. This diary is revealing about the efforts to keep
the space program small and of the pressure brought to bear on
the administration to race to the Moon.
Koelle, Heinz-Hermann. "Lunar Development, Past and Future:
Part 1-Apollo was a Race." Spaceflight. 35 (February
1993): 48-51. Discusses the development of the concept of sending
humans to the Moon and describes the U.S. effort with Project
Apollo. Places it in the context of the Cold War, and then continues
with a discussion of the possibility of going back to the Moon
at the end of the twentieth century.
Landis, Rob R. "The N-1 and the Soviet Manned Lunar Landing
Program." Quest: The History of Spaceflight Magazine.
1 (Winter 1992): 21-30. The N-1 launcher was to have been the
super-rocket that would have taken Soviet cosmonauts to the Moon
in the 1960s. Although it was officially denied until 1989, since
then there have been several discussions of the development of
the N-1. This article reviews the project, its configuration for
circumlunar flight, the lunar lander it was to carry, and the
unsuccessful test program of the launch vehicle.
Lebedev, Daniel A. "The N1-L3 Programme." Spaceflight.
34 (September 1992): 288-90. This is a useful discussion of the
development of the lunar landing booster, spacecraft, and lander
under development by the Soviet Union in the 1960s. It is based
on sources that came out of Russia with the end of the Cold War.
Lebedev, L.; Lyk'yanov, B.; and Romanov, A. Sons of the Blue
Planet. New Delhi: Amerind Pub. Co., 1973. Translated from
the Russian and published for the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration and the National Science Foundation. This book
is a basic history of the Soviet space program through the 1960s.
It is silent on the possibility of a lunar landing program.
Leskov, Sergei. "How We Didn't Get to the Moon." Izvestiya.
18 August 1989, pp. 130-135. Translated by David Doughan. This
is an important official statement from Russian officials on the
details of the previously secret Soviet race to the Moon conducted
in the 1960s. It describes the work of Sergei Korolev and other
designers to build the N-1 booster, the difficulties with the
program, and its cancellation after the U.S. success with Apollo
11.
Logsdon, John M., and Dupas, Alain. "Was the Race to the
Moon Real?" Scientific American. 270 (June 1994):
36-43. One of the better discussions, although not written with
scholarly apparatus, of the race between the United States and
the Soviet Union to the Moon in the 1960s. The answer to the question
in the title, the authors contend, is a resounding yes. Using
recently available Soviet documents, they find that the Soviets
made several secret attempts to develop hardware for a lunar landing
that would beat the U.S. to the Moon. That they were unsuccessful
in doing so resulted from "personal rivalries, shifting political
alliances and bureau- cratic inefficiencies." These "bred
failure and delays within the Soviet lunar-landing program."
The Americans were successful, on the other hand, because they
enjoyed "consistently strong political and public support."
McDougall, Walter A. ...The Heavens and the Earth: A Political
History of the Space Age. New York: Basic Books, 1985. This
Pulitzer Prize-winning book analyzes the space race to the Moon
in the 1960s. The author, then teaching at the University of California,
Berkeley, argues that Apollo prompted the space program to become
identified almost exclusively with high-profile, expensive, human
space flight projects. This was because Apollo became a race against
the Soviet Union for recognition as the world leader in science
and technology, and by extension in other fields as well. McDougall
juxtaposes the American effort of Apollo with the Soviet space
program and the dreams of such designers as Sergei P. Korolev
to land a Soviet cosmonaut on the Moon. The author recognizes
Apollo as a significant engineering achievement but concludes
that it was also enormously costly both in terms of resources
and the direction to be taken in state support of science and
technology.
_____. "Technocracy and Statecraft in the Space Age: Toward
the History of a Saltation." American Historical Review.
87 (1982): 1010-40. This well-written article in the premier historical
journal of the United States places the space race in the context,
initially, of World War II and then the Cold War. The author argues
that because of "Apollo, the space program came to stress
engineering over science, competition over cooperation, civilian
over military management, and prestige over practical applications."
He calls Apollo a "magnificent achievement" but notes
that by "1963-64 left-liberal critics denounced" it
"as wasteful given problems of racism and poverty."
Much more an assessment of the effect of space upon American society
than a history of developments in space, this wide-ranging essay
concludes that the space race transformed the state into a "promoter
of technological progress." Implicit in the analysis is the
author's doubt that this was beneficial.
Mallove, Eugene F. "Once Upon a Moon Race." Ad Astra.
February 1990, pp. 14-18. This is a straightforward piece of reporting
about six U.S. university professors who visited Russia and viewed
what was left of the hardware developed for the Soviet lunar program.
The article emphasizes the importance of the race between the
U.S. and the Soviet Union in the 1960s.
Mishin, Vasali. "The Moon Programme That Faltered."
Spaceflight. 33 (March 1991): 2-3. This short article is
most important because it represents an essentially official Russian
statement, by one of the key members of the S.P. Korolev-led design
bureau that was working on a lunar landing program. It describes
the efforts to beat the U.S. to the Moon and admits that the plan
failed and was therefore denied for more than twenty years.
_____. "The Role of Academician S.P. Korolev in the Development
of Space Rocket Vehicles for the Lunar Exploration with the Help
of Manned Spaceships." IAA-91-674 paper, delivered at the
42d Congress of the International Astronautical Federation, Montreal,
Canada, 5-11 October 1991. Copy available in NASA Historical Reference
Collection, NASA History Office, NASA Headquarters, Washington,
DC. This paper, written by one of the senior assistants of Sergei
Korolev in the 1960s, presents a detailed examination of the work
of Korolev's design bureau on Soviet hardware for use in a lunar
exploration program.
Newkirk, Dennis. "More Data on the Soviet Manned Lunar Program."
Quest: The History of Spaceflight Magazine. 2 (Summer 1993):
32-35. This is a heavily- illustrated article on details of the
Soviet N-1 "Moon Rocket" built in the late 1960s.
Oberg, James E. "The Moon Race (and the Coverup) in Hindsight."
Spaceflight. 35 (February 1993): 46-47. Since the Russians
admitted only twenty years after the fact that they were indeed
involved in a serious race to the Moon with the United States,
Oberg has collected several statements from leaders in the West
who believed the Soviet Union's claims at the time that it was
not involved in a lunar program. In the process, he comments that
bad guesses, Soviet lies, and naive assumptions led them to accept
Soviet denials. There are quotations from several major newspapers,
politicians such as Senator J. William Fulbright, journalists
such as Walter Cronkite and John Nobel Wilford, and academics
like William Schauer and Richard Hutton.
_____. Red Star in Orbit. New York: Random House, 1981.
Written by one of the premier Soviet space watchers, this history
of the Soviet space program is among the best published in English
prior to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989. Based on mostly
western sources, it describes what was then known of the Soviet
Union's efforts to land a cosmonaut on the Moon before the U.S.
Apollo landing in 1969.
_____. "Russia Meant to Win the 'Moon Race.'" Spaceflight.
17 (May 1975): 163-171, 200. An early argument, based on semi-official
Soviet statements, that the Soviet Union did try to reach the
Moon before the United States.
_____. "Yes, There was a Moon Race." Air Force Magazine.
73 (April 1990): 92- 97. This article examines recently revealed
evidence confirming that the Soviet Union did seek to reach the
Moon before the United States during the 1960s. A Soviet uncrewed
lunar probe crashed on the Moon's surface shortly before the landing
by the U.S. during Apollo 11. The article discusses this event
and numerous other details of schedules for lunar exploration,
Soviet lunar boosters and landers, the technical problems the
Soviets faced, continuous changes in their goals, and much else,
showing clearly the extent of the competition with the U.S. program.
Petrov, G.I. Editor. Conquest of Outer Space in the USSR.
New Delhi: Amerind Pub. Co., 1973. Translated from the Russian
and published for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
and the National Science Foundation. This book is a collection
of official announcements issued by Tass and material published
in the Soviet press from October 1967 to 1970. It is silent on
the possibility of a lunar landing program.
Riabchikov, Evgeny. Russians in Space. Garden City, NY:
Doubleday and Co., 1971. Translated by Guy Daniels. This is a
translation of a Novosti Press, Moscow, publication that recounts
the history of the Soviet space program as it was publicly acknowledged
by the Soviet leadership. There is virtually no discussion of
a lunar landing program by the Soviets, it not being an officially-acknowledged
program at the time, but there is considerable description of
the development of rockets and the activities of cosmonauts in
space.
Shklovskii, Iosif. Five Billion Vodka Bottles to the Moon;
Tales of a Soviet Scien- tist. New York: W.W. Norton and Co.,
1991. An enlightening memoir of Soviet space science during the
Cold War era. Written with charm and wit.
Smolder, Peter. Soviets in Space. New York: Taplinger Pub.
Co., 1971. Based on Russian-language technical information and
western sources, this journalistic account of the Soviet space
program describes the broad base of activities by the Soviet Union
in space through the 1960s. The author concentrates on the activities
of the cosmonauts but does not discuss at length the possibility
of a lunar landing program. He does, however, discuss the American
reaction to Soviet space successes in announcing the Apollo program.
Stoiko, Michael. Soviet Rocketry: Past, Present, and Future.
New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970. The author, an expert
on rocket technology, provides in this book a popular discussion
of Soviet space technology, and by implication the development
of the Russian space program. Beginning with Sputnik 1, Stoiko
traces the development of the various major boosters used in the
Soviet space program, as well as the spacecraft development and
the launch facilities built.
Stroup, T.L., and Allen, R.D. "Early Lunar Base Concepts:
The Lockheed Experience, Part 1." Paper IAA-92-0190, Presented
at the 43rd Congress of the International Astronautical Federation.
Washington, DC, 1992. This is an interesting analysis of plans
developed at Lockheed in the 1960s for the permanent colonization
of the Moon. One of the uses advanced for such colonization was
to support Cold War efforts against the Soviet Union.
Vick, Charles P., and DeMeis, Richard. "The Soviet Race to
the Moon." Aerospace America. November 1990, pp. 22-25.
Another of the popular discussions of the Soviet lunar landing
program that uses post-Cold War information to describe the details
of the unsuccessful Soviet effort to beat the Americans to the
Moon in the 1960s.
Vladimirov, Leonid. The Russian Space Bluff: The Inside Story
of the Soviet Drive to the Moon. New York: Dial Press, 1973.
Translated by David Floyd. In the aftermath of the American success
with Apollo 11 to land astronauts on the Moon, this book describes
how far behind the Soviet Union truly was in the development of
space technology. The author, a Soviet defector who was both a
journalist and a student of engineering, contends that the Soviet
Union was involved in a secret effort to beat the Americans to
the Moon and would have used the success as another means of demonstrating
the superiority of the communist system over the capitalism of
the West. They had done so with Sputnik in 1957 and the Gagarin
flight in 1961-- both of which had been secret efforts announced
only after they had been successful--and they would have done
so again. But the author contends that the Soviet scientific and
industrial complex was insufficient to best the Americans and
when Apollo 11 was completed, the Soviets quietly dropped their
plans for a lunar landing program.
Young, Hugo; Silcock, Bryan; and Dunn, Peter. "From the Bay
of Pigs to the Sea of Tranquility: Why We Went to the Moon."
The Washington Monthly. April 1970, pp. 28-58. This is
a lengthy article castigating the entire space program for wasting
billions of dollars on Project Apollo so that contractors could
acquire greater wealth, government bureaucrats could enhance "turf,"
and Congressmen could have more "pork barrel" opportunities.
Young, Steven. "Soviet Union was Far Behind in 1960's Moon
Race." Space- flight. 32 (January 1990): 2-3. This
is a linear discussion of the development of the Soviet lunar
spacecraft emphasizing the difficulties of the program.
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