Star-Crossed Orbits : Inside the U.S.-Russian Space Alliance

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Summary: Inside The U.S.-Russian Space Alliance
Review: For any student of US/Soviet/Russian space history, Oberg's latest book is required reading. He has synthesized the complexities of international space cooperation with an authoritative and well-documented expose of past and current space policy practices by both the United States and Russia. The book is a chilling reminder that "feel good" space policies and lack of visionary leadership will ultimately have both short-and long-term negative consequences not only to the surival of the brave crews who inhabit the International Space Station but to common-sense project managers, technicians and planners who will ultimately lead humankind to frontiers beyond earth orbit.

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Summary: Fast food reading
Review: How do you fault someone for writing a book that the "common man" could read and understand? The constant barrage of self-aggrandizing/first-person anecdotes (i.e. 'I was the lone voice of reason testifying to Congress about xyz corruption.') doesn't fit in with the "just a link in the chain" most NASA engineers/astronauts espouse and is distracting from the facts. More importantly, a large percentage of this book relies on personal interviews with sources that insist on anonymity. Sure, some is to be expected, but when it becomes a significant portion of the source material it's a house of cards. (I considered leaving this review anonymous, but that would be hypocritical.) Finally, the entire book could be summed up as follows: Pages 1-351, NASA & Russia cannot be trusted to run a space program; Page 352, Space exploration is a worthy cause, so forget what I previously wrote.

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Summary: nitpicking critic
Review: James Oberg is a big critic of the Russian space program - has been following it for decades - and poses as a sort of "Crusader for Truth", on a mission to expose lies and cover-ups. A reviewer of his book "Star-Crossed Orbits" described him as "rather too pleased with his role as the unsparing truth-teller picking his way through a minefield of lies and deception". He is obviously knowledgeable about his subject, and "Star-Crossed Orbits" is an informative read, but his pedantic nitpicking gets a tad irritating. He seems to feel that the Russians have the advantage in their partnership with NASA. He is a former NASA engineer, so it's obvious where his loyalties lie (though he can be critical of NASA, too). He mentions all the friends he has in the Russian space industry, yet is savagely critical of their way of doing things, regarding many in the industry (particularly at management level) as cunning and deceitful. If those friends read this book, they might be a bit more reluctant to talk to him!

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Summary: Fun Reading but Incomplete
Review: Oberg's book is required reading for anyone interested in the space station and our partnership with the Russians. Chatty and informative Oberg delivers a stream of detailed revelations about problems NASA and the Russians have chose to hide. In this role he serves as one of the few "gossip columnists" of the space program.

Two key themes of the book is Oberg's observation that 1) the International Space Station was a creature of politics rather than technical necessity, and 2) NASA deliberately ignored Russian deception and fraud. However the book falters when Oberg attempts to connect the gossip with the claims. The book falls flat in helping illuminate who were the authors of this strategy (other than some vauge paragraphs) and why NASA management and Congress decided to implement and ridigly maintain it for over a decade. Some insightful analysis about why Dan Goldin and George Abbey wrapped this albatross across their neck and were never able to remove it would have made this book an agent of change.

I only wish Oberg had developed as good a set of political instincts and contacts as he has inside NASA.

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Summary: Try an <amazon.com> Deal of Lou Dobbs & James Oberg Combo!
Review: Oberg's update is a "red-neck version" of US space history. By his own self-description, he is a 'hawk' on domestic space programs, and is thus fearful (perhaps: xenophoic?) when other nations actual 'do space work'! I've got news for him: That is precisely the future of spaceflight!

This is an attitude which should have gotten behind us in October, 1957 when Sputniks I and II were orbited - but it took Nixon Administration's inspired "Apollo-Soyuz/Soyuz Apollo Test Project" link-up during July, 1975 (when Mr. Nixon was out of presidential office) to make one small step toward international cooperation in manned spaceflight!

The International Space Station is a potential major step in that direction, while undergoing 'bean-counter scrutiny' from the combined European Space Agency nations and a new NASA Administrator, Sean O'Keefe.

Seven years ago, the US had an opportunity to grab a unique corner on the future of commercial space flight worldwide. Then the lawyers got hold of former US Cong. Andrea Seastrand's prescient "Highway to Space" legislation & wrestled away control of our financial futures from aerospace engineers! During the interim, multi-national consortia have taken to the commercial space arena and are financially succeeding.

I highly recommend combine Oberg's latest volume with Lou Dobbs' "Space: The Next Business Frontier" for a complete package of recent history and forecast developments. Individually, each book is a 'four-star' rating in my view.

Combined synergistically, however, they represent a full 'five star rating'!

Rating:
Summary: Try an Deal of Lou Dobbs & James Oberg Combo!
Review: Oberg's update is a "red-neck version" of US space history. By his own self-description, he is a 'hawk' on domestic space programs, and is thus fearful (perhaps: xenophoic?) when other nations actual 'do space work'! I've got news for him: That is precisely the future of spaceflight!

This is an attitude which should have gotten behind us in October, 1957 when Sputniks I and II were orbited - but it took Nixon Administration's inspired "Apollo-Soyuz/Soyuz Apollo Test Project" link-up during July, 1975 (when Mr. Nixon was out of presidential office) to make one small step toward international cooperation in manned spaceflight!

The International Space Station is a potential major step in that direction, while undergoing 'bean-counter scrutiny' from the combined European Space Agency nations and a new NASA Administrator, Sean O'Keefe.

Seven years ago, the US had an opportunity to grab a unique corner on the future of commercial space flight worldwide. Then the lawyers got hold of former US Cong. Andrea Seastrand's prescient "Highway to Space" legislation & wrestled away control of our financial futures from aerospace engineers! During the interim, multi-national consortia have taken to the commercial space arena and are financially succeeding.

I highly recommend combine Oberg's latest volume with Lou Dobbs' "Space: The Next Business Frontier" for a complete package of recent history and forecast developments. Individually, each book is a 'four-star' rating in my view.

Combined synergistically, however, they represent a full 'five star rating'!

Rating:
Summary: that's great
Review: The author, a former space engineer with Houston Mission Control for 22 years (his speciality was orbital mechanics), writes about the odd relationship that developed between the U.S. and Russian space programs after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Russian program, starved for funds, often at war with itself, managed to get by on a wing and a prayer (and considerable tinkering and luck), while NASA poured money into Russia, made absurd apologies for Russian screwups and missed deadlines, and covered up a lot of what went wrong on Mir and International Space Station flights. In many ways, Russia continued to behave as if the Cold War was still on: jealously guarding photocopiers, refusing to share information with American astronauts in orbit, insisting on carrying guns on every mission(!). Individually, astronauts, cosmonauts, and engineers got along famously across the borders (well, there was the sexual harassment of Western female astronauts), but political considerations repeatedly trumped safety, engineering, and other values. It's a bracing and depressing tale by an ever-hopeful science journalist.

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Summary: Base partnerships on truth, not self-delusion and make-belei
Review: The main theme I got from Oberg's book is that partnerships in space, like those on Earth, flourish on truth and choke on make-believe and self-delsuion and wishful-thinking.

Reviewer Phillips of Las Vegas provided an excellent example of how to misunderstand this message. Oberg in his space.com interview said he was a 'hawk' on space, meaning he saw it as very important, not as a politically nationalistic or isolationist exercise. He was calling for cooperation in space with the Soviets in the 1980s when it was very politically incorrect, the Reagan years. But he called for reality-based relations.

But partnership based on misunderstanding and delusion -- the kinds of flaws that Phillips's review exemplifies -- are doomed, writes Oberg, because you can't bluff 'Mother Nature', and reality always eventually prevails over dogma and hoping-for-the-best. He describes a number of successful US/Russian space deals, both government and commercial, that succeeded because they were fact-based. Then he describes how NASA arrogantly rejected the advice and insights from the successful practitioners, and chose instead the politically-inspired myopia that has led us to exactly where we are now -- a program financially and morally bankrupt.

How to make it work, and the lessons others have already paid for by their own mistakes, is the theme of this book. And the first requirement is to stop pretending that 'tough love' and reality-based decision making is somehow hostile to genuine international partnerships.

Of course this steps on toes and makes the make-believers howl! That's the most entertaining angle to the book and its reception in the space community. The workers love it, and management hates it. Need I say more?

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Summary: The True Drama Behind American and Russian Space Activities
Review: Veterans of NASA's space programs have long regretted that the programs we work on are far more interesting than the popular news media is able to portray. We are indeed fortunate to have James Oberg to chronicle the true story of the human drama of both the United States and Russian Space Programs. Future historians will no doubt write their histories as best they can, second-guessing motivations and events through the veil of time, but Oberg has the benefit of actually being there.

Coupled with his talent for riveting prose that grabs your attention and won't let loose, Oberg's personal on-the-job experience and dedicated research bring us a portrait of how these programs began, how they evolved, and how and why it appears today that United States and Russia have forged an alliance in space. In Star-Crossed Orbits he accomplishes this daunting task without resorting to a cheap grab for drama with the exaggerated character assassination that severely mars Bryan Burrough's otherwise outstanding Dragonfly.

I would take umbrage with the unnamed Publishers Weekly reviewer, who whined that Oberg "fails to provide enough fodder to convince the non-space enthusiast that pursuing new U.S. manned flights to the moon or even Mars is worth the time or the money." He also does not give us a terrific new recipe for butterscotch pudding. This book is not a sales pitch for the United States space programs; it is an in-depth behind-the-scenes look at how we got to where we are through decades of changes in political motivations and cultures, and analysis of the pitfalls of pursuing what appears to be our current direction in our government-sponsored space programs.

Star-Crossed Orbits is essential reading for anyone interested in U.S. or Russian history, international relations, or past and future endeavors in space.