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chertok cover full

12/21/04

1:51 PM

Page 1

Rockets
People
and

Volume I

Rockets and People
Volume I
Much has been written in the West on the history
of the Soviet space program but few Westerners
have read direct first-hand accounts of the men
and women who were behind the many Russian
accomplishments in exploring space.The memoirs
of Academician Boris Chertok,translated from the
original Russian, fills that gap.
Chertok began his career as an electrician in 1930
at an aviation factory near Moscow.Twenty-seven
years later, he became deputy to the founding figure
of the Soviet space program, the mysterious “Chief
Designer” Sergey Korolev. Chertok’s sixty-year-long
career and the many successes and failures of the
Soviet space program constitute the coreof his
memoirs, Rockets and People. In these writings, spread
over four volumes, Academician Chertok not only
describes and remembers, but also elicits and extracts
profound insights from an epic story about a society’s
quest to explore the cosmos.
In Volume 1, Chertok describes his early years as
an engineer and ends with the mission to Germany
after the end of World War II when theSoviets
captured Nazi missile technology and expertise.
Volume 2 takes up the story with the development
of the world’s first intercontinental ballistic missile
(ICBM) and ends with the launch of Sputnik and
the early Moon probes. In Volume 3, Chertok recollects the great successes of the Soviet space program
in the 1960s including the launch of the world’s first
space voyager Yuriy Gagarin aswell as many events
connected with the Cold War. Finally, in Volume 4,
Chertok meditates at length on the massive Soviet
lunar project designed to beat the Americans to the
Moon in the 1960s, ending with his remembrances
of the Energiya-Buran project.
Cover photo
Standing (from right to left): Major B. Chertok, Major Musatov, Colonel
N. Pilyugin, and officers of the Seventy-fifth Guards’Division—
Bleicherode, Germany, 1945. From the author’s archives.

A
-4110

Boris E. Chertok

chertok cover full

12/21/04

1:51 PM

Page 1

Rockets
People
and

Volume I

Rockets and People
Volume I
Much has been written in the West on the history
of the Soviet space program but few Westerners
have read direct first-hand accounts of the men
and women who were behind themany Russian
accomplishments in exploring space.The memoirs
of Academician Boris Chertok, translated from the
original Russian, fills that gap.
Chertok began his career as an electrician in 1930
at an aviation factory near Moscow.Twenty-seven
years later, he became deputy to the founding figure
of the Soviet space program, the mysterious “Chief
Designer” Sergey Korolev. Chertok’ssixty-year-long
career and the many successes and failures of the
Soviet space program constitute the core of his
memoirs, Rockets and People. In these writings, spread
over four volumes, Academician Chertok not only
describes and remembers, but also elicits and extracts
profound insights from an epic story about a society’s
quest to explore the cosmos.
In Volume 1, Chertok describes his early yearsas
an engineer and ends with the mission to Germany
after the end of World War II when the Soviets
captured Nazi missile technology and expertise.
Volume 2 takes up the story with the development
of the world’s first intercontinental ballistic missile
(ICBM) and ends with the launch of Sputnik and
the early Moon probes. In Volume 3, Chertok recollects the great successes of the Soviet spaceprogram
in the 1960s including the launch of the world’s first
space voyager Yuriy Gagarin as well as many events
connected with the Cold War. Finally, in Volume 4,
Chertok meditates at length on the massive Soviet
lunar project designed to beat the Americans to the
Moon in the 1960s, ending with his remembrances
of the Energiya-Buran project.
Cover photo
Standing (from right to left):...