The Wrong Stuff

A witty history of the surprisingly ridiculous and ramshackle Soviet space program.

“A brisk, rip-roaring account.” —The Wall Street Journal

The Space Race should have been over before it started. The USSR was battered from World War II and up against an ascendant United States. Nevertheless, the Soviets scored a series of victories―starting with the 1957 launch of Sputnik―that seemed to accomplish the impossible.

Yet as John Strausbaugh shows, these were PR victories as much as scientific ones. The reality was less impressive and much more farcical. The Soviet supply chain was a disaster, and many machines barely worked. The cosmonauts aboard the iconic Vostok 1 rocket had to remove their space suits just to fit inside. Soviet scientists, under intense government pressure, had essentially made their rockets out of spit and Band-Aids.

The Wrong Stuff is a vivid and entertaining journey beyond the Iron Curtain, revealing the dysfunctional reality behind the Soviet Union’s seemingly ingenious space program.