DISCOVER Vol. 22 No. 10 (October 2001)
Table of Contents

Kosmos
Adam Bartos's documentary photographs of the Russian space program as it slip slides away
Text by Svetlana Boym

From Kosmos: A Portrait of the Russian Space Age by Adam Bartos, with text by Svetlana Boym. Photographs copyright 2001 by Adam Bartos; text copyright 2001 by Svetlana Boym. Published by Princeton Architectural Press.

When I was growing up in the Soviet Union in the 1960s, one of my favorite toys after the launch of Sputnik was a model of a rocket. Soviet children of the 1960s did not dream of becoming doctors and lawyers; they dreamed of becoming cosmonauts. They were encouraged to aim upward and not westward. A trip to the moon seemed more likely than a journey to America. "Would you like to have a million? No!" sang a chorus of Soviet children playing jump rope. "Would you like to go to the moon? Yes!"

Full text of this article can be found in the current issue of Discover Magazine.

See www.russianspaceweb.com for the history of the Russian space program as well as recent news. An encyclopedia of space history is at www.astronautix.com.