A concise history of spaceflight, from military rocketry through Sputnik, Apollo, robots in space, space culture, and human spaceflight today. Spaceflight is one of the greatest human achievements of the twentieth century. The Soviets launched Sputnik, the first satellite, in 1957; less than twelve years later, the American Apollo astronauts landed on the Moon. In this volume of the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Michael Neufeld offers a concise...

"In this ground-breaking work, the doors to the Yu. Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre (TsPK) in Russia are opened, and its facilities and its role in space flight history explained in detail for the first time to western readers. Known as Star City, the Centre is unique in the history of human space exploration but, until now, has remained essentially a closed location." "With full assistance from those who organise and run the facility, and using...

"A beautifully illustrated history of the Soviet Union's leading role in the space race. In this deeply researched chronology, Colin Burgess describes the then Soviet Union's extraordinary success in the pioneering years of space exploration. Within a decade, the Soviets not only launched the world's first satellite, Sputnik, in 1957, but they also were the first to send an animal and a human being into Earth orbit. In the years that followed, their...