The omissions are glaring; no coverage of the programmes outside of Germany, USA, USSR, and very little coverage of important aspects of the Apollo moon missions.

This book is not about spaceflight, it's about rockets.


Excellent Overview, somewhat lacking in personalities.   August 6, 1998
This is an excellent broad scope look at the history of rocketry and how that led to spaceflight, along with the sometime practical and sometime cynical political decisions that led to spaceflight.

My only real complaint was that there was an overwhelming number of names that were involved and Heppenheimer gives them all due mention, but I never got a sense for the real personalities of Korolev and von Braun or anyone else that really made things happen.

Other than that minor flaw, I thought is was a greath history, and I came away with a new appreciation of spaceflight and the skill and expertise that it takes to make a satellite or rocket work.


The Right Stuff -- with the Right Facts!   December 1, 1997
This is a very well-researched, captivating, and intentionally unvarnished history of space flight as seen through the programs of the two big players in this venue -- the U.S. and Soviet Union. Heppenheimer has done his homework with meticulous perfection, including a very probing analysis of a Soviet program which has for many years been veiled in secrecy.

Even if you think you understand what the Cold War space race and its historical aftermath was all about -- think again. "Countdown" sheds light on behind-scenes decision-making of this era, and in so doing, challenges many of the conventional historical interpretations. Readers will learn how Kruschev ironically used the Soviet space program as a cynical and desperate ploy for propaganda value, ultimately selling the U.S.S.R. short on other vital technology development, and assuring its decendency to a "second-rate" world power. There is also much interesting information on the "mastermind" of Soviet rocketry -- Sergei Korolev -- and his story is a rather sad one of bureucratic undermining of brilliantly conceived projects.

Heppenheimer has a great gift for writing about sophisticated technological projects while also paying heed to how the human element factors into both successes and failures. He is just as comfortable illuminating NASA's proudest achievements as he is berating the agency for the bureaucratic ineptness that led to such debacles as the Challenger explosion. (And, by the way, one learns that the Challenger came seconds close to the same kind of disaster two years earlier). There is a sad, poignant description of the decline of the Soviet program, which evokes images of high-tech facilities being ravished by hoodlums and looters who no longer sense anything special about lofty space ideals. A test model of the Soviet sapce shuttle, Buran, is described as being displayed in Gorky Park, not far from a ferris wheel. We are told of cosmonauts who recently asked their control center about onboard tools found in their craft -- and nobody knowing what they were for due to pilfered or destroyed records. The decline of the U.S. program is also assessed, although it is more one afflicted by lack of purposeful missions than any economic strangulation.

In the end, "Countdown" proves that looking at things with informed hindsight can be just as exciting as the first unfolding of the events themselves. Heppenheimer concludes by asking some hard questions about the meaning and purpose of spaceflight, advocating that NASA take a very different approach than its current course. All in all, this is a book for those who want an intimate and factually sound telling of the symbolically glorious, yet pragmatically dubious, history of man's entry into outer space.