How Not To Launch a Rocket: The Nedelin Disaster
History’s worst rocket tragedy actually occurred on the ground, in 1960, when the Soviets were experimenting with a dangerous new fuel. Piers Bizony chronicles it in his upcoming book, How To Build Your Own Spaceship: On August 3, 1957, the Soviet Russian R-7 Semyorka missile, called “Little Seven” by the men who worked around it,…