RUSSIA'S ROCKETS AND MISSILES by Parry, A. reviewed by Frederick I. Ordway III

From The Space Library

RUSSIA'S ROCKETS AND MISSILES

by Parry, A.

Garden City (New York), 1960: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 382 pages, $4.95

This book is by a scholar brought up in the Soviet Union and now residing and teaching in the United States. Having access to Russian language sources of information, he provides as comprehensive a treatment as possible of the current state of affairs in missile and rocket technology within the Soviet Union. The book commences with an attempt to answer the question "How wide the rocket gap?" Comparisons are made of US and Soviet space science and space technology achievements and assessments are made of the space carrier vehicle potential of the Soviets. The myths and facts of Russian technical genius are covered in two chapters. Something of the history of Russian rocketry and space flight thinking (principally that of Tsiolkovsky) is given in succeeding chapters. Other material covered in this book are the German role in Russian rocketry, Soviet surface-to-surface missile artillery, Soviet submarine-launched missiles, Sputniks (their characteristics and results obtained from their establishment in orbit), manned space flight preparations in the Soviet Union, the "Luniks," and advanced space thinking and planning.

Extracted from the 1962 Publication Annotated Bibliography of Space Science and Technology with an Astronomical Supplement - A History of Astronautical Book Literature 1931 - 1961. by Frederick I. Ordway III