Energiya-Buran: The Soviet Space Shuttle

Unique, Comprehensive, Invaluable:
The authors are two of the small number of space historians to have visited space facilities in Russia, getting to to know participants in programs like Energiya-Buran and performing hands-on research. The result of these efforts, ENERGIYA-BURAN, is a unique and comprehensive look at a fascinating chapter in the history of manned spaceflight. I can't imagine the subject being covered better than it is here. Michael Cassutt

Unique and comprehensive work:
This book describes the origins, acomplishments, and the traggic fate of the Buran shuttle (along w/ the Energiya rocket). It is a well-researched work, with information very hard to find anywhere else. Topics covered include: * Rationale behind the development of Buran * Flight testing of lifting bodies, and of versions of Buran configured with jet engines * Crew selection and training * Description of the actual flight * Slow and agonizing death of the program Highly recommended.

The most complete history on the Buran program:
This book comprises most of the public information on the subject so far in a well written volume of over 500 pages, making it the authoritative reference on the Energiya-Buran program. Many of the well-known soviet space program historians/authors provided the authors with infos, most photos are from V. Bis and www.buran.ru own files. I find this book a must for any space buff like me. A true treasure trove of information!

The Best Book Ever on The Buran Shuttle Project:
I've followed the Soviet space program for more than fifty years, and this is the best book ever written on the Buran shuttle -- and the best book ever LIKELY to BE written. The authors had access so wide and so deep into the project that the narrative they created probably tells the reader a lot more -- and in useful context -- than even the program's managers knew themselves as they were working on it. The authors can do that because of their own decades of investigation into the shadows of Soviet space mysteries (I've been privileged to be their colleague on many of those quests), and their superbly-honed skills at analysis, organization, and explanation. This book is more than a look backwards -- it's a lesson in how big space projects can go astray, even if they achieve technological success, because their fundamental rationale for existing was faulty from the start. All space program managers around the world -- Russia, China, the US, Japan, Europe, etc -- NEED these lessons from such 'bad examples' as Buran, and this book makes it possible.