# Challenge to Apollo *A history by Asif A. Siddiqi.* > I opened NASA's free PDF (the "pt1" file, 517 PDF pages) and read the title and contents pages, the acknowledgments and the preface. I did not read the chapters, so I describe the structure and the author's stated aims only. ## 1. Book facts | | | |---|---| | Title | *Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945–1974* | | Author | Asif A. Siddiqi | | Publisher | NASA History Division, Office of Policy and Plans, Washington, DC; NASA SP-2000-4408 (title page) | | Published | 2000 (title page) | | ISBN | not opened (the NASA edition's copyright page carries a Library of Congress number, 00-038684) | | Pages | Not verified: the contents list runs to the index at p. 979 and the NASA History Series list at p. 1007 | | Genre / subject | History of the Soviet space program | | Length of the work | The author says it took "sixteen years" and the manuscript was completed in December 1998 (acknowledgments) | **Where it came up.** - [Apollo 8 Artemis 1 and 2 Orbit Comparison](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNQ7MoL7erI&t=342s), The Overview Effect, 5:42: the cover of *Challenge to Apollo* appears while the video describes the Space Race context of Apollo 8. Vault note: [[Video Summaries/The Overview Effect/Apollo 8 Artemis 1 and 2 Orbit Comparison]]. - [The Myths of Spaceflight History](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlFciE2iNW4), The Overview Effect: listed under sources. Vault note: [[Video Summaries/The Overview Effect/The Myths of Spaceflight History]]. - [A Visual History of Every Interplanetary Mission](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4b9R8Xqej4), The Overview Effect: listed under sources. Vault note: [[Video Summaries/The Overview Effect/A Visual History of Every Interplanetary Mission]]. - Companion dossier: [[Book Summaries/Siddiqi, Asif A/Beyond Earth - Asif A. Siddiqi|Beyond Earth]]. ## 2. Book resources - [NASA PDF (SP-4408, part 1)](https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/static/history/SP-4408pt1.pdf) - [NASA Technical Reports Server copy](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20000088626.pdf) - [Internet Archive item (NASA reports)](https://archive.org/details/nasa-reports_nas-1212000-4408) - [NASA History Series index](https://www.nasa.gov/history/history-publications-and-resources/nasa-history-series/) - [Wikipedia: Asif Azam Siddiqi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asif_Azam_Siddiqi) **Where to get it (legal, free).** NASA publishes the book itself. I opened the NASA PDF above; the NTRS and Internet Archive links load, but I did not open them. The NASA file is named "part 1" and has 517 pages, so it may be only part of the book (I did not look for part 2); the contents list shows 20 chapters to p. 855 plus tables and appendices. ## 3. Author biography Asif Azam Siddiqi is a Bangladeshi American historian of space exploration and a professor of history at Fordham University, specialising in the history of science and technology and modern Russian history. He earned bachelor's and master's degrees at Texas A&M, an MBA at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and a PhD at Carnegie Mellon (2004) with a National Science Foundation fellowship. His first book, *Challenge to Apollo*, is described by Wikipedia as widely considered the best English-language history of the Soviet space program; the *Wall Street Journal* named it one of the five best books on space exploration. He edited the English translation of Boris Chertok's memoirs *Rockets and People* for NASA, wrote *The Red Rockets' Glare* (Cambridge University Press), and has held a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Eugene M. Emme Astronautical Literature Award. ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asif_Azam_Siddiqi); [author site](https://www.asifsiddiqi.com/work/podcasts-etc)) ## 4. Author interviews and talks - [Asif Siddiqi on Rockets, Prisons, Pop Songs, and So Much More](https://castro.fm/episode/k6Ne3F), New Books in Russian and Eurasian Studies / Peoples & Things, 22 April 2024, 64 minutes. A career-spanning conversation with Lee Vinsel; the show notes discuss *The Red Rockets' Glare*, not the NASA books. - [Fordham History: interview on the Soviet space program](https://history.blog.fordham.edu/?p=1438) (11 October 2016): a news post pointing to a New Books Network interview about *The Red Rockets' Glare*. - [Fordham Conversations: Roots of Soviet Space Flight](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/fordham/roots-of-soviet-space-flight-dNynz_4-gVZ/), WFUV, 28 April 2007 (listing page; I did not listen). - Siddiqi's own [list of podcast appearances](https://www.asifsiddiqi.com/work/podcasts-etc) includes Planetary Radio's "The Soviet Moonshot" (7 June 2019), The Economist's Babbage (16 August 2023) and the Kennan Institute's *The Russia File* (26 April 2021). I did not open those episodes. ## 5. Summary **Thesis.** The preface says the Soviet space program, "the world's first", has never been told in full. Western accounts from the 1970s–80s worked from Soviet press and rumour under tight information control. After the Soviet archives opened (post-1988) "almost every area" of the story had to be revised. Siddiqi relies "exclusively", as far as possible, on Russian-language archival sources from the post-1988 era, and argues that understanding Cold War space policy, including American policy, needs those revelations. **Chapter outline (from the table of contents).** 1. Presage; 2. First Steps; 3. Stalin and the Rocket; 4. Sputnik; 5. Designing the First Spaceship; 6. Organizing for the Space Program 7. Gagarin; 8. Looking to the Future; 9. Space Politics; 10. "There Are More Things in Heaven and Earth…"; 11. Three Steps to the Moon; 12. A New Beginning 13. Tragedy; 14. Getting Back on Track; 15. Final Lap to the Moon; 16. Options; 17. Dreams Unfulfilled; 18. Ashes to Ashes; 19. Tomorrow Never Knows; 20. Coda Then a bibliographic essay, tables (launch attempts, cosmonaut selection groups, organisations, launch vehicles, governmental decrees) and appendices (Soviet piloted space projects 1945–74; dramatis personae). **Method note.** The author contrasts the Cold War and post-Cold War voices where it serves the narrative and treats disputed German postwar influence as a case where both Russian and Western accounts have been one-sided (preface). **Related paperbacks.** Wikipedia says the book was later issued in two volumes, *Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge* and *The Soviet Space Race with Apollo*. ## 6. Fact-check Overall verdict: **supported**. The claims the videos make about the book are bibliographic. | Claim | Verdict | Evidence | |---|---|---| | *Challenge to Apollo* was published in 2000 as part of the NASA history series | Supported | Title page: NASA SP-2000-4408 | | It is a standard account of the Soviet space program and its race to the Moon (Apollo 8 video note) | Supported | Wikipedia: widely considered the best English-language history of the Soviet program; WSJ "one of the five best books" on space exploration (as Wikipedia reports it; the WSJ review not opened) | | Apollo 8 put the US ahead of the Soviet crewed lunar program (video) | Unverified | The chapters on the Moon race were not read | | Siddiqi is a historian at Fordham | Supported | Wikipedia | ## 7. Citations and references - [NASA PDF](https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/static/history/SP-4408pt1.pdf) (opened); [NTRS](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20000088626.pdf); [Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/nasa-reports_nas-1212000-4408). - [Wikipedia: Asif Azam Siddiqi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asif_Azam_Siddiqi). - Videos: [Apollo 8 Artemis 1 and 2 Orbit Comparison](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNQ7MoL7erI); [The Myths of Spaceflight History](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlFciE2iNW4); [A Visual History of Every Interplanetary Mission](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4b9R8Xqej4).