Interkosmos: The Eastern Bloc's Early Space Program
About this ebook
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..
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About the author
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".
