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drbobguy
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« Reply #211 on: 04/27/2011 06:59 AM » |
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Can anyone recommend a good book on how German technology and technicians impacted the space programs? In particular the USSR but I wonder if a true historical account exists. I was curious how much Soviet success in design, metallurgy & fabrication can be attributed to German (and later East German) help? Is there any good reading out there on this? Thanks.
The best source on the Soviet side, if you can read German, is Stalins V-2: Technologietransfer der deutschen Fernlenkwaffentech-nik in die USSR und der Aufbau der sowjetischen Raketenindustrie 1945 bis 1959 by Matthias Uhl (Bernhard and Graefe, 2001), 309 pages. Asif Siddiqis works are great as well, but not as comprehensive in the immediate postwar years (but his coverage of the Soviet side to the space race is the best there is in any language).
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JosephB
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« Reply #212 on: 05/01/2011 02:06 AM » |
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Can anyone recommend a good book on how German technology and technicians impacted the space programs? In particular the USSR but I wonder if a true historical account exists. I was curious how much Soviet success in design, metallurgy & fabrication can be attributed to German (and later East German) help? Is there any good reading out there on this? Thanks.
The best source on the Soviet side, if you can read German, is Stalins V-2: Technologietransfer der deutschen Fernlenkwaffentech-nik in die USSR und der Aufbau der sowjetischen Raketenindustrie 1945 bis 1959 by Matthias Uhl (Bernhard and Graefe, 2001), 309 pages.
Asif Siddiqis works are great as well, but not as comprehensive in the immediate postwar years (but his coverage of the Soviet side to the space race is the best there is in any language).
Thanks for the tip! I'll see what my library can get its hands on.
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spaceman3
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« Reply #213 on: 05/01/2011 02:34 PM » |
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Can anyone recommend a good book on how German technology and technicians impacted the space programs? In particular the USSR but I wonder if a true historical account exists. I was curious how much Soviet success in design, metallurgy & fabrication can be attributed to German (and later East German) help? Is there any good reading out there on this? Thanks.
The best source on the Soviet side, if you can read German, is Stalins V-2: Technologietransfer der deutschen Fernlenkwaffentech-nik in die USSR und der Aufbau der sowjetischen Raketenindustrie 1945 bis 1959 by Matthias Uhl (Bernhard and Graefe, 2001), 309 pages.
Asif Siddiqis works are great as well, but not as comprehensive in the immediate postwar years (but his coverage of the Soviet side to the space race is the best there is in any language).
Thanks for the tip! I'll see what my library can get its hands on.
I wrote a couple of articles, one on Russians in Germany and the other on Germans in Russia. They both complement each other. I used many of the same sources that Uhl uses (from Russian) archives but our focus is a little bit different. I was more interested in institutional and engineering culture. Am attaching both articles. More of my articles here: http://faculty.fordham.edu/siddiqi/Popular_Articles.htmlhttp://faculty.fordham.edu/siddiqi/Articles.htmlAsif
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spaceman3
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« Reply #214 on: 05/01/2011 02:35 PM » |
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Ooops. One of the attachments was wrong.
Attached is the correct one.
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JosephB
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« Reply #215 on: 05/01/2011 05:20 PM » |
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That's fantastic Asif. Thank you very much!
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Skylab
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« Reply #216 on: 05/02/2011 08:44 PM » |
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Yeah, great articles Asif, thank you!
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robertross
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« Reply #218 on: 05/07/2011 10:00 PM » |
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Well, I just finished "Project Vanguard - The NASA History" by Constance McLaughlin Green & Milton Lomask.
I bought it at the CCAFS on my "Then & Now Tour" for STS-133.
Quite the difficult read for the most part, I must say. Lots of historical facts, but at times it seemed to stall out and I had to put it down for a breather. Pretty decent ending though. They were trying to set the record straight on the Sputnik race and the IGY. Many improvements and advancements came out of this project which I wanted to know more about.
Anyone else read ti and have other thoughts to add?
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Launchpad911
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« Reply #219 on: 05/10/2011 02:00 AM » |
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I am in the middle of reading "We Seven" by the Mercury astronauts. I find it interesting because it was from the perspective of the 1960's and it is not a new book rehashing old tales.
The descriptions of the Mercury spacecraft by the astronauts is good. I didn't know that every spacecraft was slightly different from the others such as in insturment panel layout. Apparently, each astonaut had his own preferences.
Reading Gus Grissom's honest description of his problems on his flight was open and some what painful to read. I did not know until I read his chapter that there were some last minute changes to his hatch.
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Blackstar
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« Reply #220 on: 05/10/2011 02:05 AM » |
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Well, I just finished "Project Vanguard - The NASA History" by Constance McLaughlin Green & Milton Lomask.
Worth noting that you were reading a re-issue of a book that originally was published in 1969. http://www.amazon.com/Project-Vanguard-Constance-McLaughlin-Green/dp/0486467554A few years ago NASA signed a deal with Dover Press to republish a number of titles that had long been out of print. I think this was a fantastic idea, but I have recently been told that GPO has dropped the hammer and doesn't want this kind of stuff to happen again. I don't know if that is true, but the end result is that out-of-print titles will not get republished if this edict sticks. By the way, I think the best takeaway message from the history of the Vanguard program is that they got their cost estimates wrong. Way wrong. Shows that this has been the case since the beginning.
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kking
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« Reply #221 on: 05/10/2011 10:30 AM » |
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I got the vanguard book. Its great. John F. Kennedy And The Race To The Moon By John Logston has been shipped. Thats the next book I'm going to read. Another good book I recommend is Lunar Impact History of Project Ranger.
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Blackstar
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« Reply #222 on: 05/10/2011 12:40 PM » |
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robertross
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« Reply #223 on: 05/10/2011 03:31 PM » |
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Well, I just finished "Project Vanguard - The NASA History" by Constance McLaughlin Green & Milton Lomask.
Worth noting that you were reading a re-issue of a book that originally was published in 1969.
http://www.amazon.com/Project-Vanguard-Constance-McLaughlin-Green/dp/0486467554
A few years ago NASA signed a deal with Dover Press to republish a number of titles that had long been out of print. I think this was a fantastic idea, but I have recently been told that GPO has dropped the hammer and doesn't want this kind of stuff to happen again. I don't know if that is true, but the end result is that out-of-print titles will not get republished if this edict sticks.
Yes, it is a re-print. And looking at that, I obviously paid more than the Amazon price - oh well. Good to know details though - I shall look at/for the re-prints. By the way, I think the best takeaway message from the history of the Vanguard program is that they got their cost estimates wrong. Way wrong. Shows that this has been the case since the beginning.
Yeah, though to be fair to them, they were all into the cutting-edge, and one can really only estimate for that kind of stuff, which as you say still holds today: nothing much has changed. It's actually a (reasonably) good study of how mucked up things can get with competing interests, shared responsibilities/facilities, and narrow margins. Some good lessons in there, of which some were taken to heart, and others not so much.
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Blackstar
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« Reply #224 on: 05/10/2011 03:37 PM » |
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1-Yeah, though to be fair to them, they were all into the cutting-edge, and one can really only estimate for that kind of stuff, which as you say still holds today: nothing much has changed.
2-It's actually a (reasonably) good study of how mucked up things can get with competing interests, shared responsibilities/facilities, and narrow margins. Some good lessons in there, of which some were taken to heart, and others not so much.
1-Absolutely. They were doing something that had never been done before, so it was impossible to produce a realistic estimate. The better question is why, over 50 years later, we're still pretty bad at cost estimating. (There are a lot of reasons behind that, some of them political and bureaucratic. I won't go into any of that here.) 2-Absolutely again. I think that a lot of stuff gets lost with the Sputnik/Vanguard/Explorer story because we want to reduce it to sound bites. Vanguard was not a bad program. And it was trying to do more than simply launch a beeping ball into space. But it gets reduced to being the loser in the space race and all the context is lost.
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