Overview
- Addresses an often overlooked chapter that sheds light on how Cold War coalitions influenced spaceflight history
- Based on archival research from participating countries, including the People’s Republic of Bulgaria (PRB), the Hungarian People’s Republic (HPR), the German Democratic Republic (GDR), Cuba, the Mongolian People’s Republic (MPR), the Polish People’s Republic (PPR), the Socialist Republic of Romania, Czechoslovakia and the USSR
- Contains complete details of all manned Interkosmos missions with he participation of "guest cosmonauts"
Part of the book series: Springer Praxis Books (PRAXIS)
Part of the book sub series: Space Exploration (SPACEE)
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Table of contents (18 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
This book focuses on the Interkosmos program, which was formed in 1967, marking a fundamentally new era of cooperation by socialist countries, led by the Soviet Union, in the study and exploration of space. The chapters shed light on the space program that was at that time a prime outlet for the Soviet Union's aims at becoming a world power.
Interkosmos was a highly publicized Russian space program that rapidly became a significant propaganda tool for the Soviet Union in the waning years of communism. Billed as an international “research-cosmonaut” imperative, it was also a high-profile means of displaying solidarity with the nine participating Eastern bloc countries. Those countries contributed pilots who were trained in Moscow for week-long “guest” missions on orbiting Salyut stations. They did a little subsidiary science and were permitted only the most basic mechanical maneuvers.
In this enthralling new book, and following extensive international research, the authors fully explore the background, accomplishments and political legacy of the Interkosmos program. Through personal and often highly revealing interviews with many of the participants they relate the very human story behind this extraordinary but controversial space venture..
Authors and Affiliations
About the authors
Bert Vis has been following the manned space program since the first Apollo flight in 1968. In 1991 he was invited to visit the Yuriy Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center (GCTC) in Russia for the first time at the invitation of one of the unflown cosmonauts. Since then, he has visited the GCTC once or twice per year and attended two launches at the Baykoinur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan (in 1997 and 2011). Over the years, he has interviewed more than 100 cosmonauts, many of whom never had been interviewed before and some never were after that. Vis is the co-author of two previous books with Springer Praxis, "Russia's Cosmonauts" and "Energiya-Buran".
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Interkosmos
Book Subtitle: The Eastern Bloc's Early Space Program
Authors: Colin Burgess, Bert Vis
Series Title: Springer Praxis Books
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24163-0
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Physics and Astronomy, Physics and Astronomy (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-24161-6Published: 28 November 2015
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-24163-0Published: 19 November 2015
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIII, 321
Number of Illustrations: 110 b/w illustrations, 147 illustrations in colour
Topics: Popular Science in Astronomy, Aerospace Technology and Astronautics, Space Sciences (including Extraterrestrial Physics, Space Exploration and Astronautics), History of Science