Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the Hidden Rivalries that Ignited the Space Age

On October 4 1957, at the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union secretly launched Sputnik, the Earth’s first ever artificial moon. No bigger than a basketball, this tiny satellite was powered by a car battery. Yet for all its simplicity, Sputnik transformed science fiction into reality, passing over the stunned American continent once every 101 minutes and propelling the USSR from backward totalitarian regime to cutting-edge superpower and pioneer of the Space Age. The United States, desperate to catch up, trailed the Soviets into the space race the following year, with a controversial space programme masterminded by former Nazi rocket scientists. Red Moon Rising tells for the first time the full story of this real-life historical thriller and its colourful cast of characters. There is Sergei Korolev, Russian rocket designer and literally toothless survivor of Stalin’s purges, whose identity remained secret until his death in 1966; Mihail Tikhonravov, a chain-smoking, hard...

Author: Brzezinski Matthew

ISBN: 9780805081473

Year of publication: 2007

Genre: History, Technical science, Politics

Number of pages: 400

Reading time: 6 h. 40 min.

Formats: FB2, EPUB, PDF

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