I had this news some days ago and I didn't put it here so I do now:The catapult which was used to test the ejectables seats of Buran was moved some weeks ago from Zhukovski air base (near Moscow).
<yawn> Pardon me for sounding cynical, but a new book on Almaz? Riiiiight. Seriously, who buys that Russian rubbish? I'm SURE it'll be choc-full of color pics of these stations being prepared/launced and in orbit? I don't think...
There is only ONE good book in the Soviet space program IMHO: Phil Clark's excellent "The Soviet Manned Space Program", now much in need of an update.
... I just finished one book on Soyuz ("Soyuz: A Universal Spacecraft" by Hall and Shayler) and another on Mir ("The Story of Space Station Mir" by Harland)
1-I haven't actually bought "Challenge to Apollo', true. I wasn't expecting anything new! Perhaps you can correect me on this?2-The aforementioned book on Energia/Buran makes compulsive reading, emphasis on the 'reading'. The pics aren't new - I've seen them all on the www.buran.ru site, and even more disappointingly, they're all b&w. I went so far as to teach myself enough Russian to read their publications, and have several - again, enough to convince me that they're not worth the money, so no more of this 'unfamiliar with the subject matter' chat...
Quote from: pargoo on 03/11/2009 03:06 am2-I'm sorry, but your comments make it difficult to conclude that you are familiar with the literature. There has been a tremendous amount of new material on the Soviet space program that has been released, starting in the mid-1990s. You refuse to acknowledge that, or make odd comments that books are no good unless they're filled with pictures. A blanket statement that there's been no good info, followed by a comment that there's a lot of info, but it's on the web, and the pictures are black and white, is contradictory.Very true; a case in point is the book "Apollo - The Behind-The-ScenesStory of One of Humankind's Greatest Achievements" by Charles Murray &Catherine Bly Cox. I ordered this book several years ago thinking it was going to have a lot of pictures of the Saturn - V/Apollo spacecraft, etc.,but instead it has NO pictures whatsoever (except a really nice Saturn - V liftoff photo on the cover). Instead, the book offers very compelling and dramatic insights by those who were behind the scenes (controllers,engineers, scientists, etc) that, once you start reading, it's hard to putit down.
2-I'm sorry, but your comments make it difficult to conclude that you are familiar with the literature. There has been a tremendous amount of new material on the Soviet space program that has been released, starting in the mid-1990s. You refuse to acknowledge that, or make odd comments that books are no good unless they're filled with pictures. A blanket statement that there's been no good info, followed by a comment that there's a lot of info, but it's on the web, and the pictures are black and white, is contradictory.
I thought that Varfolomeyev wrote about ten articles on the subject, but I'd have to go through old issues to see.
I got the impression that there should have been more,but for some reason the series ended prematurely.