Translated material
Indomitable Venus
In recent years, the situation with popular science publications in Russia has noticeably improved. But so far, unfortunately, these are more often translated books. Nevertheless, the appearance of good authors in biology, physics and humanities is noticeable. It is hoped that new authors from other areas of science and technology will appear.
Domestic books dedicated to the astronautics are mainly in the nature of memoirs. But there are almost no books with a comprehensive description of space research programs. It’s a little better matter with manned programs, but to read in detail about the study of the solar system by automatic interplanetary stations (AMS) in Russian is almost impossible.
Publishers are reluctant to consider the manuscripts of such books, especially if the author is not known to the general public or not a loud information occasion - for example, the flight of the flight of Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin.
A similar situation has developed with the book “Venus: an indomitable planet”, which I will talk about. I came across an electronic manuscript of Pavel Shubin, a person widely known in narrow circles of cosmonautics enthusiasts. For ten years he collected information on domestic and foreign interplanetary stations. Pavel worked for a long time with the archives of the Russian State Archive of Scientific and Technical Documentation (RGAntd) [1] and met with participants in the Soviet assault on the moon, Venus, Mars.
The result of painstaking work was three books devoted to the study of space devices and remote methods of three closest large celestial bodies, with information, which has not yet been published in popular science literature. The pilot book, which the author decided to present to the general public, was the narrative about the assault on the morning star - "Venus: an indomitable planet."
Unfortunately, about a dozen publishing houses and one fund refused to help the publication of the Paul manuscript. The only opportunity to publish the book was a strong reduction in volume, during which it would be necessary to sacrifice interesting scientific and technical details.
But in this case, readers would have lost the opportunity to read the full of drama and technical breakthroughs of the history of the study of the harsh planet.
Pavel Shubin decided to go to the end in maintaining the concept of his creation and turned directly to the readers, opening the crowdfunding project [2] to raise funds for the publication of the book. You can evaluate the book by the passage posted on the project page, as well as by the story of the creation of a book on the author’s blog [3] .
I was honored to read the working material almost entirely. Yes, I know that Pavel is still finalizing the book after the comments of representatives of the RAS Space Research Institute, but in general everything turned out to be in great detail and exciting. I have never seen such a detailed description of scientific disputes around the three main hypotheses about the nature of the neighboring planet and the history of those AMS, the creation of which has ultimately allowed these disputes. Venus was a real white spot closed from earthly telescopes with its dense and opaque atmosphere:
“Designers Great I see level problems , but how It turned out they even Not assumed how far they from reality representation planetologists about These planets . However , for checks These Hypothesis and Need were Stations " .
Scientists had three main assumptions: “greenhouse”, “eolosphere” and “ionospheric” hypothesis. But none of them could contain all the data obtained about Venus with remote methods. The beginning of the space era opened the possibility of sending to the morning star AMS, and not only for scientific and technical purposes, but also to obtain a political priority.
The book very well reveals all the parties affecting the study of space and planets, moreover, it is able to destroy many stereotypes in our society.
Who remembers, for example, that "since the time of" Avangard-1 "in the USA, a gloomy confidence reigned:" Our missiles always explode. " Or: “It is necessary to come up with this! The height of the Cold War, the Caribbean crisis was not so long ago, and the Soviet scientist calmly puts his experiments on the best US instruments, pushing the full -time research program. Of course, this is not a fairy tale, but it sounds somewhat fantastic. ”
The book clearly shows how the idea of the planet over time has changed. As scientists and engineers of the two largest countries came together in one of the most peaceful competitions in history. Over time, thanks to these efforts, our heavenly neighbor had less and less secrets.
The author not only gathered exciting stories about scientific search and design solutions for an interested reader, but also picked up illustrations, some of which were not previously published or published in very poor quality. Especially for the book, drawings were ordered from a professional artist, which in our time happens infrequently.
I think that the book “Venus: an indomitable planet” will find his place on the book shelf of an inquisitive schoolboy, an interested student and any person who is interested in the history of astronautics and planetology. In our power, to make the circulation is printed and the hope is revived that good books about space are in demand and necessary.
2. Https://boomstarter.ru/projects/149141/izdanie_knigi_Venera_neukrotimaya_planeta