Red Flag Over the Moon

Начало книги

After Sputnik and Muttnik, what? Science-fiction has been talking about space-flight for years while the politicians goofed. SATURN dares to present a grimly realistic analysis of what the future of space-flight is really going to be.

A mountain of self-deception came crashing down on the heads of the Western world on October 4, 1957, when the ominous beep-beep-beep of a man-made moon came circling the globe. For that satellite, the first actual step in the conquest of outer space, was not—as ten thousand science-fiction stories would have had it and as millions of lines of smug newspaper and magazine stories had predicted—was not an American invention.

Only a few weeks earlier Russian claims to having perfected a powerful rocket capable of intercontinental cargo travel (the cargo being, of course, atomic warheads) were pooh-poohed. From the White House on down to the lowliest politicos, the report was greeted with shrugs, smiles of scorn for such obvious poppycock, and jeers that it was mere propaganda. But as it turned out the Soviets were not making scarehead stories, they were coldly stating facts.

Читать дальше →