Books: The Wrong Stuff - How The Soviet Space Program Crashed And Burned

 (Drivebycuriosity) - In October 1957 the world got baffled - the Soviets shot a satellite into earth orbit, the Sputnik. This was the first man made object in outer space and suddenly the Soviet Union was ahead of the Americans. The British magazine "The Economist" predicted that the first human to set foot on the Moon “is almost certain to be a Russian.”  

How could the Soviets, devastated by WW II, Stalin`s terror and decades of Marxist mismanagement, suddenly overtake the US? The launch of the Sputnik and following Soviet satellites were the begin of a decades long space race between the world´s superpowers.

John Strausbaugh describes in his book "The Wrong Stuff" how the Soviets did it and how their space program "crashed and burned" ( amazon). The title mirrors Tom Wolfe´s book "The Right Stuff" about the competing American space project.

Yes, the Soviets were still dirt poor, but Stalin`s successor Nikita Khrushchev did not care; he wanted to beat the Americans, what ever this his subjects may cost. The Sputnik - and following Soviet space rockets - gave the new leader of the USSR opportunity after opportunity to troll the Americans about their inferior and tardy space program. It had become a kind of drug to Khrushchev, and he was addicted to it.  

What the USSR lacked in technological knowledge and financial power, it compensated for with brute force and the skill of improvisation, but with a high price. Strausburgh`s book is a record of spectacular and catastrophic launch explosions and other catastrophes. 

 

Corruption, Inefficiency & cynical Laziness

The author reminds the readers of the fact that economic activity was centrally planned in Moscow, and that the central government was overseeing everything from rockets to rolling pins, steel mills to shoes. The immense, multilayered Soviet bureaucracy created to carry out these plans was, like most bureaucracies only more so, a breeding ground for corruption, inefficiency, and cynical laziness. Departments and agencies spread like blight in a field of potatoes, with often overlapping responsibilities, duplicated labor, and waste of limited resources.agencies spread like blight in a field of potatoes, with often overlapping responsibilities, duplicated labor, and waste of limited resources. 

The bureaucrats in charge were “mid- and high-level prima donnas, suspicious and wary as foxes who suspected virtually everyone and trusted almost no one.” 

Compared to the US astronauts the cosmonauts were the real buckaroos. As Soviet citizens, they had grown up poor in a poor land, used to making do in threadbare circumstances. They had survived the cataclysm of the Great Patriotic War, and the horrors of Stalin before and after that. They’d been left standing when millions and millions of fellow citizens’ lives were sacrificed all around them. And they drank vodka like water.

Soviet rockets had to be so big and strong just to get themselves and their payloads off the pad. As an American scientist put it later, they “brute-forced everything. Multiple engines meant more possible glitches and problems.

I learned not only about the space race, Strausbaugh depicts the power fight inside the Soviet leadership and the cold war politics - including the Cuba crises - with a lot of humor and sarcastic. And the "Wrong Stuff" is fun to read.