Epic Rivalry: The Inside Story of the Soviet and American Space Race (review)

Five decades after Sputnik I gave birth to the Space Age and the U.S.-Soviet space race, the story of that era has been told and retold countless times. In Epic Rivalry: The Inside Story of the Soviet and American Space Race, Von Hardesty and Gene Eisman tell it once more. Although the book does not break new ground, the authors weave an entertaining tale with the right blend of personalities, politics, and technospeak. The foreword by Sergei Khrushchev, the son of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and himself an engineer who worked in the Soviet space program, is of particular note with its first-hand stories of Soviet politics and the personal rivalries among the leaders of the key space design bureaus. Published in 2007, the book is just as timely in 2011, reminding us of the superpower status once associated with the ability to launch people into space at the very time that the United States is abandoning that capability for an indefinite number of years.

Many who read the book will be too young to remember the Cold War and the fear and distrust between the world’s two superpowers that characterized the early days of space exploration. Today, terrorist groups have replaced superpowers in fomenting fear, and the ranks of the superpowers have shrunk to only one—the United States. In the two decades since the Soviet Union collapsed, relations between the United States and Russia have remained relatively good. Despite significant tension on some issues, the two sides cooperate extensively on space exploration and many other issues. Russia has proven itself a reliable partner in the International Space Station (ISS), to such an extent that the U.S. government decided to become completely dependent on Russia to launch U.S. astronauts to the ISS for at least several years starting in 2011, when the U.S. space shuttle flew for the final time. U.S. astronauts, and those from the other non-Russian ISS partners who years ago thought they could rely on the U.S. National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) to take their astronauts to space, will henceforth be dependent on Russia for ferry services to and from Earth orbit—as long as Russia agrees to provide them at a cost other countries are willing to pay. NASA began work on a new crew transportation system, Constellation, but the Obama administration cancelled it in favor of turning crew transportation to low Earth orbit over to the private sector instead of NASA. That decision provoked a fight with Congress, and the compromise reflected in the 2010 NASA Authorization Act is for NASA to build a system as well as help the private sector create a “commercial crew” capability. In reality, Congress and the administration remain at odds, and the future of the U.S. human space flight program is murky at best.

How far we have come from the “Epic Rivalry” of the 1950s and 1960s to total dependence on former adversaries for what was once the crown jewel of technological supremacy. Do Americans care?

They did in 1957. Hardesty and Eisman offer a rich array of reactions by politicians, reporters, and scientists to the launches of Sputnik 1 on 4 October 1957 and Sputnik 2 a month later. “The popular response . . . is best described as an awkward mix of incredulity, a curiosity about Soviet intentions, and a growing anxiety over the unprecedented national humiliation” (p. 80). As Sergei Khrushchev recounts in his foreword, what made Sputnik a household word was the U.S. press, not the Soviet press. He tells the story of listening with his father, the Soviet Communist Party leader, to the sounds of the satellite passing overhead: “My father and I turned on the radio to listen to Sputnik beeping as it flew over Europe. Neither Khrushchev nor [Soviet Chief Designer] Korolev—and I even less—realized the immensity of what was happening during...