Breuer, William B. Race to the Moon: America’s Duel with the Soviets. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993. This book, written by a journalist who has made a career out of writing World War II adventures, is neither about the race to the Moon nor the U.S. rivalry with the U.S.S.R. The majority of it is, instead, about the World War II efforts of the German rocket team under Wernher von Braun at Peenemünde, their wartime exploits, their surrender to American forces in 1945, and their post-war activities in the U.S. Only 6 of 24 chapters actually deal with Project Apollo, and none of the book goes beyond the popular literature on either the Germans or Apollo.
Bulkeley, Rip. The Sputniks Crisis and Early United States Space Policy: A Critique of the Historiography of Space. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. This is an important discussion of early efforts to develop civil space policy in the aftermath of the Sputnik crisis of 1957. Not explicitly concerned with Project Apollo, it does contain much information relative to the rivalry between the United State and the Soviet Union and how it was affected by the launching of the Sputnik 1 scientific satellite. It also discusses the debate that took place within the Eisenhower administration over whether or not to begin an aggressive lunar landing program, the program that ultimately became Apollo. Eisenhower always opposed the idea of an aggressive lunar landing program, for as he said at a meeting in February 1958 “he would rather have a good Redstone than be able to hit the moon, for we didn’t have any enemies on the moon.”
Caiden, Martin. War for the Moon. New York: E.P. Dutton and Co., 1959. This presents a strong case for the U.S. to rush to the Moon, framed in the context of the Cold War rivalry with the Soviet Union, written at the time that the first lunar probes were being launched.
Clark, Philip S. The Soviet Manned Space Program. New York: Crown Pub., Orion Books, 1988. This is a general historical work on the Soviet space effort, emphasizing the Cold War rivalries with the United States and how they related to several programs, especially the race to the Moon.
_____. “Chelomei’s Alternative Manned Lunar Program.” Quest: The History of Spaceflight Magazine. 1 (Winter 1992): 31-34. Vladimir Chelomei was one of the leading spacecraft designers in the Soviet Union in the 1960s. As one of the leading rivals to Sergei Korolev’s efforts in space, Chelomei’s design bureau offered several different proposals for a lunar landing program to beat the Americans. He was unsuccessful in obtaining approval for these programs, but that fact that they existed indicates that the Soviet leadership could not agree on a method of racing the Americans to the Moon. This article describes the plans proposed by Chelomei.
_____. “The Soviet Manned Circumlunar Program.” Quest: The History of Spaceflight Magazine. 1 (Winter 1992): 17-20. This is a solid article based on post-Cold War documentation that describes the Soviet effort to send a piloted spacecraft around the Moon before the Americans did so. Heavily illustrated, and with tables showing major events in the program.
Cox, Donald W. America’s Explorers of Space; Including a Special Report on Project Apollo. Maplewood, NJ: Hammond, 1969. This is a short, 96-page, illustrated history of the rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States to the Moon. It is a revision of the 1962 publication by the same author (see below), the new edition being issued to capitalize on the success of Apollo 11.
_____. The Space Race: From Sputnik to Apollo, and Beyond. Philadelphia: Chilton Books, 1962. This is a short and rather simplistic account by a journalist of the major points of the international rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union on the use of space for prestige purposes. It discusses in elementary fashion the Sputnik crisis and the Gagarin 1961 orbital mission before describing the Kennedy decision to enter the Moon race and NASA’s early efforts to accomplish it through Project Apollo.
Daniloff, Nicholas. The Kremlin and the Cosmos. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972. A journalistic account of the Soviet space program with some discussion of the race to the Moon.
Divine, Robert A. The Sputnik Challenge. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. This book, while not dealing with Project Apollo explicitly, is concerned with Eisenhower’s reaction to the Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957. It contains insights into an ill-formed “alternative” space program promoted by the Eisenhower White House that emphasized a modest effort using satellites for exploration and practical applications rather than the aggressive and expensive piloted space flight program desired by space promoters and NASA leaders.
Doel, Ronald E. “Evaluating Soviet Lunar Science in Cold War America.” Osiris. 7 (1992): 238-64. An excellent discussion of the efforts of the U.S. scientific and governmental establishment to ascertain what research the Soviets were doing relative to the Moon, along with an analysis of Soviet lunar science’s findings.
Dupas, Alain. La lutte pour l’espace (The Battle for Space). Paris: Seuil, 1977. This French-language book contains a discussion of the U.S./U.S.S.R. rivalry in space and the lunar programs that resulted from it.
Glennan, T. Keith. The Birth of NASA: The Diary of T. Keith Glennan. Edited by J.D. Hunley. Washington, DC: NASA SP-4106, 1993. This diary of Eisenhower’s NASA administrator contains a detailed account of the discussions that took place prior to 1961 on the viability and desirability of undertaking an aggressive lunar landing program as a means of demonstrating national superiority over the Soviet Union. As administrator Glennan sponsored studies on the possibility of Project Apollo, but he always shied away from an aggressive stance on the effort. Funding for studies of the proposal were included in the NASA budgets for fiscal years 1961 and 1962 by Glennan, but he was unwilling to move beyond that stage until fundamental work on other space activities had been completed. After leaving office, Glennan watched the Apollo project closely and while admitting that he was excited by the lunar landing in 1969, he recognized that it was the capstone of a project he believed had been ill-advised and costly. An introduction to the diary by Roger D. Launius shows how Glennan’s background prepared him for his duties as NASA’s first administrator.
Harvey, Brian. “Promise Unfulfilled: The Soviet Unmanned Moon Programme, 1969-1988.” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. 43 (1990): 395-98. A solid discussion of the later efforts of the Soviet Union to explore the Moon with robotic probes using information made available in the post-Cold War era.
_____. Race into Space: The Soviet Space Programme. Chichester, England: Ellis Horwood Ltd., 1988. This is a solid history of the development of the Soviet space program through the mid-1980s. It has several chapters on the lunar program, describing what information was available before the official Russian announcement of the race in 1989.
Jastrow, Robert, and Newell, Homer E. “The Space Program and the National Interest.” Foreign Affairs. 50 (April 1972): 532-44. This article is not specifically related to Apollo, but it presents an argument in an important forum about the nature of the space program and comments on the lunar landing program in relation to it. The authors contend that the American space program sprang principally from considerations of national security and international prestige. That motivated most of its efforts toward Apollo in the 1960s and has informed them since that time.
Johnson, Nicholas L. “Apollo and Zond—Race around the Moon.” Spaceflight. 20 (December 1978): 403-412. This retrospective article written ten years after Apollo 8 compares what was known then about Apollo with information about the Soviet lunar program, called Zond. The author notes the incredible parallelism of events in the two programs, including the Apollo 204 and Soyuz 1 disasters in early 1967, and concludes that the United States and the Soviet Union were in a race to send humans around the Moon in 1968, despite Soviet claims to the contrary.
_____. The Soviet Reach for the Moon: The L-1 and L-3 Manned Lunar Program and the Story of the N-1 (Moon Rocket). Washington, DC: Cosmos Books, 1994. This is a heavily-illustrated volume containing a wealth of information about the history of the Soviet Union’s efforts to race the United States to the Moon in the 1960s. It incorporates much of the recently available information on the Soviet lunar program and describes how the USSR’s very real efforts to reach the Moon failed.
Killian, James R., Jr. Sputnik, Scientists, and Eisenhower: A Memoir of the First Special Assistant to the President for Science and Technology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977. In the wake of the Soviet orbiting of Sputnik in 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed a science advisor to his White House staff, James R. Killian from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Killian’s memoir describes in detail the debates over what course to take with the civil space program and whether or not to enter a Moon race with the Soviet Union.
Kistiakowsky, George B. A Scientist in the White House. Introduction by Charles S. Maier. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976. This is the edited diary of George B. Kistiakowsky, the second science advisor to President Eisenhower. Taking office in July 1959, he had previously served on James Killian’s advisory committee and was well aware of the efforts to best the Soviet Union in space. This diary is revealing about the efforts to keep the space program small and of the pressure brought to bear on the administration to race to the Moon.
Koelle, Heinz-Hermann. “Lunar Development, Past and Future: Part 1-Apollo was a Race.” Spaceflight. 35 (February 1993): 48-51. Discusses the development of the concept of sending humans to the Moon and describes the U.S. effort with Project Apollo. Places it in the context of the Cold War, and then continues with a discussion of the possibility of going back to the Moon at the end of the twentieth century.
Landis, Rob R. “The N-1 and the Soviet Manned Lunar Landing Program.” Quest: The History of Spaceflight Magazine. 1 (Winter 1992): 21-30. The N-1 launcher was to have been the super-rocket that would have taken Soviet cosmonauts to the Moon in the 1960s. Although it was officially denied until 1989, since then there have been several discussions of the development of the N-1. This article reviews the project, its configuration for circumlunar flight, the lunar lander it was to carry, and the unsuccessful test program of the launch vehicle.
Lebedev, Daniel A. “The N1-L3 Programme.” Spaceflight. 34 (September 1992): 288-90. This is a useful discussion of the development of the lunar landing booster, spacecraft, and lander under development by the Soviet Union in the 1960s. It is based on sources that came out of Russia with the end of the Cold War.
Lebedev, L.; Lyk’yanov, B.; and Romanov, A. Sons of the Blue Planet. New Delhi: Amerind Pub. Co., 1973. Translated from the Russian and published for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation. This book is a basic history of the Soviet space program through the 1960s. It is silent on the possibility of a lunar landing program.
Leskov, Sergei. “How We Didn’t Get to the Moon.” Izvestiya. 18 August 1989, pp. 130-135. Translated by David Doughan. This is an important official statement from Russian officials on the details of the previously secret Soviet race to the Moon conducted in the 1960s. It describes the work of Sergei Korolev and other designers to build the N-1 booster, the difficulties with the program, and its cancellation after the U.S. success with Apollo 11.
Logsdon, John M., and Dupas, Alain. “Was the Race to the Moon Real?” Scientific American. 270 (June 1994): 36-43. One of the better discussions, although not written with scholarly apparatus, of the race between the United States and the Soviet Union to the Moon in the 1960s. The answer to the question in the title, the authors contend, is a resounding yes. Using recently available Soviet documents, they find that the Soviets made several secret attempts to develop hardware for a lunar landing that would beat the U.S. to the Moon. That they were unsuccessful in doing so resulted from “personal rivalries, shifting political alliances and bureaucratic inefficiencies.” These “bred failure and delays within the Soviet lunar-landing program.” The Americans were successful, on the other hand, because they enjoyed “consistently strong political and public support.”
McDougall, Walter A. ...The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age. New York: Basic Books, 1985. This Pulitzer Prize-winning book analyzes the space race to the Moon in the 1960s. The author, then teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, argues that Apollo prompted the space program to become identified almost exclusively with high-profile, expensive, human space flight projects. This was because Apollo became a race against the Soviet Union for recognition as the world leader in science and technology, and by extension in other fields as well. McDougall juxtaposes the American effort of Apollo with the Soviet space program and the dreams of such designers as Sergei P. Korolev to land a Soviet cosmonaut on the Moon. The author recognizes Apollo as a significant engineering achievement but concludes that it was also enormously costly both in terms of resources and the direction to be taken in state support of science and technology.
_____. “Technocracy and Statecraft in the Space Age: Toward the History of a Saltation.” American Historical Review. 87 (1982): 1010-40. This well-written article in the premier historical journal of the United States places the space race in the context, initially, of World War II and then the Cold War. The author argues that because of “Apollo, the space program came to stress engineering over science, competition over cooperation, civilian over military management, and prestige over practical applications.” He calls Apollo a “magnificent achievement” but notes that by “1963-64 left-liberal critics denounced” it “as wasteful given problems of racism and poverty.” Much more an assessment of the effect of space upon American society than a history of developments in space, this wide-ranging essay concludes that the space race transformed the state into a “promoter of technological progress.” Implicit in the analysis is the author’s doubt that this was beneficial.
Mallove, Eugene F. “Once Upon a Moon Race.” Ad Astra. February 1990, pp. 14-18. This is a straightforward piece of reporting about six U.S. university professors who visited Russia and viewed what was left of the hardware developed for the Soviet lunar program. The article emphasizes the importance of the race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the 1960s.
Mishin, Vasali. “The Moon Programme That Faltered.” Spaceflight. 33 (March 1991): 2-3. This short article is most important because it represents an essentially official Russian statement, by one of the key members of the S.P. Korolev-led design bureau that was working on a lunar landing program. It describes the efforts to beat the U.S. to the Moon and admits that the plan failed and was therefore denied for more than twenty years.
_____. “The Role of Academician S.P. Korolev in the Development of Space Rocket Vehicles for the Lunar Exploration with the Help of Manned Spaceships.” IAA-91-674 paper, delivered at the 42d Congress of the International Astronautical Federation, Montreal, Canada, 5-11 October 1991. Copy available in NASA Historical Reference Collection, NASA History Office, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC. This paper, written by one of the senior assistants of Sergei Korolev in the 1960s, presents a detailed examination of the work of Korolev’s design bureau on Soviet hardware for use in a lunar exploration program.
Newkirk, Dennis. “More Data on the Soviet Manned Lunar Program.” Quest: The History of Spaceflight Magazine. 2 (Summer 1993): 32-35. This is a heavily-illustrated article on details of the Soviet N-1 “Moon Rocket” built in the late 1960s.
Oberg, James E. “The Moon Race (and the Coverup) in Hindsight.” Spaceflight. 35 (February 1993): 46-47. Since the Russians admitted only twenty years after the fact that they were indeed involved in a serious race to the Moon with the United States, Oberg has collected several statements from leaders in the West who believed the Soviet Union’s claims at the time that it was not involved in a lunar program. In the process, he comments that bad guesses, Soviet lies, and naive assumptions led them to accept Soviet denials. There are quotations from several major newspapers, politicians such as Senator J. William Fulbright, journalists such as Walter Cronkite and John Nobel Wilford, and academics like William Schauer and Richard Hutton.
_____. Red Star in Orbit. New York: Random House, 1981. Written by one of the premier Soviet space watchers, this history of the Soviet space program is among the best published in English prior to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989. Based on mostly western sources, it describes what was then known of the Soviet Union’s efforts to land a cosmonaut on the Moon before the U.S. Apollo landing in 1969.
_____. “Russia Meant to Win the ‘Moon Race.’” Spaceflight. 17 (May 1975): 163-171, 200. An early argument, based on semi-official Soviet statements, that the Soviet Union did try to reach the Moon before the United States.
_____. “Yes, There was a Moon Race.” Air Force Magazine. 73 (April 1990): 92-97. This article examines recently revealed evidence confirming that the Soviet Union did seek to reach the Moon before the United States during the 1960s. A Soviet uncrewed lunar probe crashed on the Moon’s surface shortly before the landing by the U.S. during Apollo 11. The article discusses this event and numerous other details of schedules for lunar exploration, Soviet lunar boosters and landers, the technical problems the Soviets faced, continuous changes in their goals, and much else, showing clearly the extent of the competition with the U.S. program.
Petrov, G.I. Editor. Conquest of Outer Space in the USSR. New Delhi: Amerind Pub. Co., 1973. Translated from the Russian and published for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation. This book is a collection of official announcements issued by Tass and material published in the Soviet press from October 1967 to 1970. It is silent on the possibility of a lunar landing program.
Riabchikov, Evgeny. Russians in Space. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1971. Translated by Guy Daniels. This is a translation of a Novosti Press, Moscow, publication that recounts the history of the Soviet space program as it was publicly acknowledged by the Soviet leadership. There is virtually no discussion of a lunar landing program by the Soviets, it not being an officially-acknowledged program at the time, but there is considerable description of the development of rockets and the activities of cosmonauts in space.
Shklovskii, Iosif. Five Billion Vodka Bottles to the Moon; Tales of a Soviet Scientist. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1991. An enlightening memoir of Soviet space science during the Cold War era. Written with charm and wit.
Smolder, Peter. Soviets in Space. New York: Taplinger Pub. Co., 1971. Based on Russian-language technical information and western sources, this journalistic account of the Soviet space program describes the broad base of activities by the Soviet Union in space through the 1960s. The author concentrates on the activities of the cosmonauts but does not discuss at length the possibility of a lunar landing program. He does, however, discuss the American reaction to Soviet space successes in announcing the Apollo program.
Stoiko, Michael. Soviet Rocketry: Past, Present, and Future. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970. The author, an expert on rocket technology, provides in this book a popular discussion of Soviet space technology, and by implication the development of the Russian space program. Beginning with Sputnik 1, Stoiko traces the development of the various major boosters used in the Soviet space program, as well as the spacecraft development and the launch facilities built.
Stroup, T.L., and Allen, R.D. “Early Lunar Base Concepts: The Lockheed Experience, Part 1.” Paper IAA-92-0190, Presented at the 43rd Congress of the International Astronautical Federation. Washington, DC, 1992. This is an interesting analysis of plans developed at Lockheed in the 1960s for the permanent colonization of the Moon. One of the uses advanced for such colonization was to support Cold War efforts against the Soviet Union.
Vick, Charles P., and DeMeis, Richard. “The Soviet Race to the Moon.” Aerospace America. November 1990, pp. 22-25. Another of the popular discussions of the Soviet lunar landing program that uses post-Cold War information to describe the details of the unsuccessful Soviet effort to beat the Americans to the Moon in the 1960s.
Vladimirov, Leonid. The Russian Space Bluff: The Inside Story of the Soviet Drive to the Moon. New York: Dial Press, 1973. Translated by David Floyd. In the aftermath of the American success with Apollo 11 to land astronauts on the Moon, this book describes how far behind the Soviet Union truly was in the development of space technology. The author, a Soviet defector who was both a journalist and a student of engineering, contends that the Soviet Union was involved in a secret effort to beat the Americans to the Moon and would have used the success as another means of demonstrating the superiority of the communist system over the capitalism of the West. They had done so with Sputnik in 1957 and the Gagarin flight in 1961—both of which had been secret efforts announced only after they had been successful—and they would have done so again. But the author contends that the Soviet scientific and industrial complex was insufficient to best the Americans and when Apollo 11 was completed, the Soviets quietly dropped their plans for a lunar landing program.
Young, Hugo; Silcock, Bryan; and Dunn, Peter. “From the Bay of Pigs to the Sea of Tranquility: Why We Went to the Moon.” The Washington Monthly. April 1970, pp. 28-58. This is a lengthy article castigating the entire space program for wasting billions of dollars on Project Apollo so that contractors could acquire greater wealth, government bureaucrats could enhance “turf,” and Congressmen could have more “pork barrel” opportunities.
Young, Steven. “Soviet Union was Far Behind in 1960’s Moon Race.” Space-flight. 32 (January 1990): 2-3. This is a linear discussion of the development of the Soviet lunar spacecraft emphasizing the difficulties of the program.