Boris Rauschenbach was a Soviet physicist and engineer who developed space vehicle control systems in the 1950s and 1960s. In the interview, he dates the beginnings of Soviet rocket technology to the pre-revolutionary period, then discusses developments through World War II and the influence of German rocket scientists after the war. Comparing differing American and Russian approaches to rocketry, he points to the latter's reliance on automation and the former's dependence on human operation of equipment. He then recalls the Sputnik launch. Asked about the Soviets' choice of liquid versus solid fuel, he asserts that his Soviet colleagues developed ways to roughly equalize launch times. Assessing the space competition between the two countries in the 1960s, he declares that the Apollo program was designed to exact "revenge" on the USSR for its previous "defeat[s]," and had no scientific value.
![Interview with Jerome Wiesner, 1986 [1]](https://bpldcassets.blob.core.windows.net/derivatives/metadata/commonwealth-oai:p2678r299/image_thumbnail_300.jpg)
![War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Jerome Wiesner, 1986 [1]](https://bpldcassets.blob.core.windows.net/derivatives/metadata/commonwealth-oai:br86fg671/image_thumbnail_300.jpg)
