The Soviet space program--"a litany of... oddball make-do workarounds"--is revealed with all its bluffs and secrets in historian John Strausbaugh's highly entertaining The Wrong Stuff.
In the heady days of the space race, the Soviet Union scored early points (and propaganda) with the launch of the first satellite, Sputnik, in October 1957 and the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, in April 1961. According to Strausbaugh, however, the Soviet space success had more to do with luck and pluck than technological expertise or prowess. "The Iron Curtain hid a lot that was tumbledown and bargain basement," he says, and for every victory of the program, countless explosive failures were swept under the Soviet rug. Strausbaugh ranges breezily over the building of the Cosmodrome (the Soviets' "flea-bitten Canaveral"), cosmonaut training, unfortunate "dogsmonaut" experiments, and the low-tech, slapdash nature of the program that rarely fixed its frequent technical difficulties--which almost killed Gagarin during his reentry to Earth (only publicly reported in 1991). With a straight face, Strausbaugh recounts how early cosmonauts wore wool leisure suits in lieu of pressurized space suits so they could fit into their capsules. He also sorts through different accounts of cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov's demise aboard Soyuz 1 on its first flight in 1967, a futile exercise in "rage and frustration."
The Wrong Stuff is the right choice for readers fascinated by space and the human absurdities that propel us there. --Peggy Kurkowski, book reviewer and copywriter in Denver