In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Journal of Cold War Studies 5.3 (2003) 137-139



[Access article in PDF]
James Oberg, Star-Crossed Orbits: Inside the U.S.-Russian Space Alliance.New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002. 355 pp. $27.95.

The space race was one of the most memorable aspects of the Cold War. The United States and the Soviet Union each went to great lengths to establish its space program as the world's best. Conversely, when the leaders of the two countries looked for ways to ease tension, they often settled on forms of space cooperation, such as the Soyuz-Apollo linkup. The space program thus became one of the most salient features of both the competitive and the cooperative dimensions of the Cold War.

Much has changed since the Cold War ended. In April 1993 the United States and Russia signed an agreement merging the last entries in the Cold War race, the U.S. and Russian space stations (Freedom, initiated in 1984, and Mir 2, the planned successor to Mir). This joint effort resulted in political complications for both countries; the transformation of U.S. and Russian aerospace industries; and the most complex engineering project of the space era, the International Space Station (ISS).

In this light, James Oberg's new book might well have been a welcome foray into an underexamined topic. As a former space engineer and now a freelance space commentator, Oberg presumably can offer an insider's unique knowledge and perspective. He provides entertaining anecdotes about what it is like to build, operate, and support a space station, and he regales the reader with stories about remarkable cosmonauts, quick-thinking engineers, and strained bureaucrats.

Oberg's basic theme is that the U.S.-Russia "relationship [regarding the ISS] has evolved into new patterns of mutual misunderstanding" based primarily on the ineptitude, naiveté and desperation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and on the Russians' propensity to mislead and even extort their U.S. partners (p.5). The book begins by reviewing the zenith of Soviet and Russian achievements in human spaceflight. After selectively tracing Soviet/Russian space history and the origins of the U.S.-Russian partnership, Oberg turns to the Shuttle-Mir program, also known as "Phase One" of the ISS. He focuses on Mir's problems and lambastes NASA for purposefully ignoring safety risks. His harshest criticism, though, is of NASA's claim that this initial phase gave the two sides valuable practice for the ISS and spawned meaningful scientific work. He dismisses the NASA statements as "dubious," [End Page 137] "desperate, even pathetic," and "ludicrously trivial" (pp.171, 172, 174). The remaining chapters cover the Freedom-Mir 2 merger, culminating in the beginning of human operations on ISS in late 2000.

In closing, Oberg laments that as a result of the cooperative nature of ISS people now believe "there should be no option for a purely U.S. project" (p.316). He speculates that the Russians might yet disconnect their half of the ISS, leaving the U.S.-led half to founder on its own (pp.322-323).

The danger of Star-Crossed Orbits is that people might consider it a serious contribution to important debates about space cooperation. Rather than presenting well-reasoned argumentation, Oberg subjects his readers to meandering, often self- aggrandizing anecdotes strewn with unfounded assertions and personal mudslinging. Much of his evidence, by his own admission, comes fromdisaffected former space officials, drunken cosmonauts, and intercepted e-mail messages and memoranda. Claiming protection of sources, Oberg includes not a single footnote. At best the result is a tale unsupported by credible evidence; at worst the author fixes the story to support an agenda aimed at debunking the real accomplishments in U.S.-Russian space cooperation.

Among the most dubious claims here is that the United States gained nothing from having astronauts on Mir. The Russians are by far the world's leading experts in long-duration human spaceflight, having orbited dozens of cosmonauts for record-setting flights continuously since 1971. The longest U.S. astronaut flight on...

pdf

Share