The Wrong Stuff

How the Soviet Space Program Crashed and Burned

By: John Strausbaugh

Narrated by: LJ Ganser

A witty, deeply researched history of the surprisingly ramshackle Soviet space program, and how its success was more spin than science.

In the wake of World War II, with America ascendant and the Soviet Union devastated by the conflict, the Space Race should have been over before it started. But the underdog Soviets scored a series of victories—starting with the 1957 launch of Sputnik and continuing in the years following—that seemed to achieve the impossible. It was proof, it seemed, that the USSR had manpower and collective will that went beyond America's material advantages. They had asserted themselves as a world power. But in The Wrong Stuff, John Strausbaugh tells a different story.

These achievements were amazing, yes, but they were also PR victories as much as scientific ones. The world saw a Potemkin spaceport; the internal facts were much sloppier, less impressive, more dysfunctional. The Soviet supply chain was a disaster, and many of its machines barely worked. The cosmonauts aboard its iconic launch of the Vostok 1 rocket had to go on a special diet, and take off their space suits, just to fit inside without causing a failure. Soviet scientists, under intense government pressure, had essentially made their rocket out of spit and band aids, and hurried to hide their work as soon as their worldwide demonstration was complete.

With a witty eye for detail and a gift for storytelling, John Strausbaugh takes us behind the Iron Curtain, and shows just how little there was to find there.

Critic reviews

“Strausbaugh’s droll sense of humor fits well with this examination of the Soviet space program… [He] clearly enjoyed writing this entertaining book, an accessible, engaging story about an era that, for better or worse, is nearly forgotten.”—Kirkus

The facts.

I liked the truth or the way the data was told. The storytelling was good enough that it wasn’t boring, but not overdone where you feel like it was fake.

entertaining

it demistifies the achievements of the USSR, potemkin village all the way, they barely made it

The right book

Excellent review of the Soviet space program. Very entertaining and well narrated. Would recommend it to anyone interested in this subject.

Good, but a bit over the top

I was one of those kids standing out in the middle of an open field watching Sputnik-1 pass overhead in the middle of the night. That was many, many years ago but I still remember being there and thinking about mankind's future in space. This book looks into the both the public and hidden history of the Russian space program and tells us what was not general knowledge as we watched and wondered why the Russians were beating us over and over again in the initial years of the space competition.

The top two things that stand out in this book are (1) that the Russian effort was very slapdash and fraught with danger for the cosmonauts and (2) how similar the individual cosmonauts and astronauts must have been in their private lives. The information about how Yuri Gagarin and Gherman Titov behaved, chasing women and fast cars, sounds very similar to how most, but not all, of the US astronauts also behaved. I guess the book really says that although the Russian space program was run in the wrong way (The Wrong Stuff) the Russian astronauts themselves were also The Right Stuff as test pilots and cosmonauts and I found that comforting as it implies that no matter how different our political systems were, we, as people, were still very similar.

The narration is quite good, although at times the book itself is a bit too cynical and over the top. Still, it contains a wealth of information about how many cosmonauts died during the early years of the space competition and is very informative. Anyone who is interested in the early years of the space race should find this book helpful and interesting.

love it

a very interesting and easy listen that leaves you hanging on every word and detail