Russian - Soviet Spaceflight and the Mir Space Station

by World Spaceflight News

Release Date: 22 March, 2000

Edition: CD-ROM

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Good source of documents on the Soviet space progam.

This CD is a collection of government and NASA documents about the Soviet Space Program, Mir, and the Shuttle-Mir flights, many which were long out of print, in Adobe PDF format. Especially valuable are the complete series of Congressional Research Service reports on the Soviet Space Programs. These out-of-print reports alone run to almost 2000 pages. These reports were at the time the best source in English on Russian space activities and are still valuable, though post-cold war revelations have added much new material that was simply conjecture at the time. Still, these reports are excellent, especially the most recent one. Also included is the Mir Hardware History, a recent and detailed analysis of the development and history of Soviet space stations, especially of Mir. It is one of the most highly regarded documents in English on this topic. The Mir station training manual, produced for shuttle-Mir astronauts, is a detailed look at the station and all of its systems. There is also the official Shuttle-Mir project report, which focuses on how the Mir and shuttle programs interfaced and the accomplishments of this project. Although it tends to gloss over problems such as fires in the spacecraft and collisions that endangered the entire crew, it presents the alternate point of view to books such as "Dragonfly" which tended to trash the Shuttle-Mir program as a waste of money and a needless danger for our astronauts. Additionally, there is both the Soviet and U.S. press kits for the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz flights and the official NASA history of the ASTP program, "The Partnership". Unfortunately, this document lacks the photos in the out-of-print original! Overall, however, a great resource for those interested in the Soviet space program, with the caveat that many of the older documents misread important aspects of Soviet space history, which was highly classified in those days. One hopes that World Spaceflight News will translate the definitive Russian histories of the Korolev design bureau and the Buran shuttle project some day, as these are currently the best sources on Soviet space history but are only available in Russian.