This book is an excellent addition to the history of the Soviet and Russian space programs. It provide interesting insights that I have not seen widely documented in other similar histories.

There's a joke that NASA scientists realized a normal pen wouldn't work in space so they spent time and money to create one that would. But the Soviets? They just used a pencil.* While this joke is not mentioned in John Strausbaugh's The Wrong Stuff: How the Soviet Space Program Crashed and Burned, the sense of make do and thrift it exhibits is key to the outcome of the space race.

Taking the oppositional meaning from Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff that celebrated the astronauts selected for NASA's Project Mercury, Strausbaugh documents the history of the Soviet Space program with its focus on propaganda victories above all else, even safety.

Strausbaugh traces the origins of Russian space exploration and rocketry designs from their forebears to the establishment of the Soviet program headquartered in what became known as Star City. Much of the narrative is centered around key post-world war two events, frequently juxtaposing American events against the Soviets.

But the main focus is on how despite corruption, poor materials, a lack of concern for safety and a very tight grip on the release of information the Soviet space program was able to accomplish so much. It is a story representing the conflict between the two ideologies. Some Soviet successes include, the first satellite, the first manned space flight and the first woman in space. Americans had funding, ingenuity and cutting edge materials. Soviets had ingenuity, stubbornness and bulking materials that required excessive redundancy.

A very engaging and entertaining book full of anecdotes and quotes from those who made it possible.

Recommended to readers of 20th Century politics, science of space explorations or modern history.

*Ciara Curtin "Fact of Fiction?: NASA Spent Millions to Develop a Pen that Would Write in Space, whereas the Soviet Cosmonauts Used a Pencil." Scientific American (December 20, 2006). https://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...

An excellent history of the Soviet space program, in all its shambolic, ramshackle "glory". The book was an interesting double-bill with Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, touching on the history (and failures) of parallel space programs, except where Challenger leans on pathos and human tragedy, The Wrong Stuff is often written with a more humorous, even sometimes colloquial tone. It's never outright comedic, necessarily, in the way of the film The Death of Stalin, but there's something of the black comedy about the dysfunction of the Soviet state, and at times you have a "laugh to keep from crying" kind of situation (most emblematized by the Soyuz 11 disaster, where ground control's response to a warning light about a faulty pressure seal was to tape a piece of paper over the light and proceed with reentry and three people died). Worth reading for any space-history enthusiast.

Behind the veil of Soviet propaganda, an untold saga of chaos and dysfunction raged in the race for space supremacy. Outward triumphs hid the malfunctioning machines and desperate improvisations behind every milestone. This exposé reveals the human cost of reaching for the stars at any price.

This book is every bit as good as I hoped it would be. It’s cogent, well-researched, and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. Smart, entertaining, and enlightening, it’s a pleasure to read.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

I read a lot of books about space exploration and I had never considered how it was only the American perspective. I always assumed that the Soviets were at least at the same level as the Americans, if not even higher, so I was shocked at what was really going on behind the iron curtain. The author clearly did a lot of research, which can’t have been easy considering the level of secrecy. Strausbaugh makes what could be boring truly riveting. Even the technical details and all the dates are put in such an entertaining way that it’s nonfiction that reads like a thriller. It is also funny, with an offbeat sense of humor that had me giggling even while cringing. I really enjoyed this read.
I chose to read this book and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, #NetGalley/#PublicAffairs.

A well written history of the Soviet space program, i learned a lot. Vividly detailed and a fun reading experience, it should be on the TBR pile of any Space Nerd. The way that Mr Strausbaugh details the exploits of the Cosmonauts and the failures and successes (?) of the program is an easy read and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher PublicAffairs for an advance copy of this history of the Soviet space program and how these men and women were far, far more braver going into the heavens than most of the world ever thought.

What comes up must come down. In the exploration of space, l that is sometimes part of the mission, sometimes not. Going into the heavens and returning to Earth takes a lot of work, a melding of math, engineering, skill, communication, and luck that can have tremendous results, or tremendous tragedies. The Soviet Union was first into space, with a satelitte, a dog, and a man. To do this they ignored all that was previously written, except for the luck, and accomplished amazing things. Things that were unsustainable, and led to many people losing their lives. The Wrong Stuff: How the Soviet Space Program Crashed and Burned by John Strausbaugh is a sometimes scary, sometimes funny, sometimes just plan weird history of the efforts made by the Soviet Union to control space, and even more control the message of how they got there.

The book begins with as seemed the case in Russia at the time, with a mission to put three people into space, beating the Americans to the punch. To do this, there was no special rocket built, no new capsule, the Soviet scientists just took what they had, stripped it to the bone and sent three men into space, sans space suits, or extra oxygen. And somehow they succeeded. This runs through the book. Readers learn of the start of the Soviet rocket program, that was to launch nuclear missiles into America, and at the same time, launch a Soviet citizen into space. The scientists were drawn from the gulags, most of them battling illness, diseases, or in many ways broken in mind and body by there treatment in the camps. While America was a check three times kind of space program, run by ex-Nazis, the Soviets was a now, now now. Mistakes could be hidden, even there launch areas were given fake name and locations. People killed, could be denied, their families told another story, another fate. Strausbaugh looks at the astronauts, Yuri Gagarin, the first person in space, whose life was changed in many many ways. Even the animals, a dog who was trained to flick switches in a space capsule, who escaped the night before he was to be launched into space. Also, the book covers the slow decline, when mistakes, a lack of interest, and a lack of backing began to drain the space program of its mission.

John Strausbaugh has written a very complete and often humourous book about space, that makes one wonder about luck and about taking anything safe and slow. The humour is black in many ways, as the astronauts all seemed to have problems, either dying on the job, or losing their luster due to excessive partying, and lots and lots of drinking. Though I do have to give these people my respect for what they accomplished and did. The book is fascinating, with a real strong narrative the keeps the reader flipping pages, sometimes in incredulity at one is reading, especially when it came to the lack of safety. There are a lot of what seems like Homer Simpson moments, putting tape over a warning light, bathroom habits before launch and more. Strausbaugh has done a lot of research, and makes complicated science easy to understand, be interesting and even more entertaining. Each page has facts, or something that really should have killed a lot more people. And yet.

Recommended for space fans without a doubt. History fans and science fans will enjoy this also, with again a lot of how did they do this. How did they not die? Fiction writers might enjoy this book as it proves that real life is odder than fiction, and there are quite a few events that could really be made into novels. This is the second book I have read by John Strausbaugh, and I am really enjoying his style and craft. I can't wait to read what Strausbaugh's has next.

A fun romp through the Soviet space program, featuring jokes and anecdotes, along with a fast-moving narrative. It serves as a healthy does to the narrative that the Soviets did everything better except for landing on the moon. Recommended for any fans of space history!

I found the book delightfully one-sided. It definitely focused on the failures of the USSR space program but that was the point. NASA spoke to its successes and failures. And certainly, the USSR spoke to the successes of its space program. But what was missing are the failures of the USSR space program. And John Strausbaugh did a brilliant job of discussing these. The book is thorough and well-paced. The storytelling is great and funny. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you to Netgalley and PublicAffairs for the advance reader copy.

I really respect this book for the facts and details. This is one of the only books I have ever seen give the actual pronunciation of Khrushchev's name. It has lots of new-to-me information and I love it!

The author is *occasionally* a little lacking in compassion. For instance, in the introduction he calls the three cosmonauts in the unsafe capsule three communist stooges, in a pun on the Three Stooges and "communist stooge." Which is a really good pun. However, these guys were in a death trap that their dictator created by prioritizing speed over safety and at least two of them volunteered to go, which means they quite possibly did that to spare their coworkers from risk of death. Calling them communist stooges is a bit unkind.

However, in terms of story and new details, this book is top quality.

This reads like a good survey of the existing popular literature on the subject. The author does a decent jobg summarizing it all into a reasonable history of major events in the Soviet space program, with a focus on the sensational (the scandalous and the disatrous). It's all true, much of it was only revealed when the USSR fell, and it's quite a story. I can't help but wonder if the program was really all bad, though. What I mean by that is they did get to space - they did so before us, and set many milestones that took us longer. Yes, the American space program is very risk-adverse, which is why we're seeing a shift to the commerical sector which is more risk-accepting. Could the Soviet program really be as slipshod as the book suggests? It certainly had major issues almost every step of the way, but I wonder what a sympathetic, non-Soviet study would read like.

I found it a quick, entertaining, and informative read. It seems like a good place to start reading up on the subject.