Race for Space 9: Baptisms of Fire

Despite the success of Gemini, all was not well with the Apollo program and in January 1967 came the disaster that everyone feared: a launchpad fire that claimed the lives of three astronauts. Three months later the USSR suffered a similar tragedy when Vladimir Komorov's fault-ridden Soyuz 1 spacecraft crashed to Earth in a ball of flames. Book 9 in the Race for Space series examines what went wrong – and how both nations' space programs bounced back.