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How the Space Race Worked · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
0:13
Speaker 1: There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry laughing at me,
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Speaker 1: and uh, this is stuff you should know the podcast.
0:19
Speaker 1: That's right, Welcome, Welcome every one. That welcome friends. That
0:23
Speaker 1: was one of the best false starts we've ever had.
0:25
Speaker 1: It was like four and one. That was weird. Jerry
0:28
Speaker 1: hit record and Josh went, Chuck, you gotta welcome people
0:34
Speaker 1: on the podcast. I forgot. Hey, hey, man, you're sure
0:39
Speaker 1: it's taking me back. Man, it's taken me back to
0:43
Speaker 1: July exactly five years and three hundred and sixty days
0:49
Speaker 1: before my birth. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah, I just
0:53
Speaker 1: calculated that really quickly. Yeah, that was pretty chuck as well,
0:56
Speaker 1: I believe it or not. No, Yeah, you know I
0:59
Speaker 1: was born in the seven I know, is it seventy
1:01
Speaker 1: or seventy one. It's a nice round number, seventy one.
1:07
Speaker 1: I do remember all the Space race stuff though, from
1:09
Speaker 1: being young. Yeah, I remember the tail end obviously for sure. Well,
1:13
Speaker 1: we had already won when I was around. Yeah, we
1:16
Speaker 1: kind of already one since I was around, but it
1:18
Speaker 1: was still like a big deal. It's still doing the
1:20
Speaker 1: victory lap basically. Yeah. When I was around, it was
1:23
Speaker 1: Space Shuttle, Space Shuttle, Space Shuttle, and as an adult,
1:25
Speaker 1: I've not seen two of the space shuttles in person. Uh,
1:28
Speaker 1: launches are just like in the hangar. The commission was
1:32
Speaker 1: in the hangar. That's pretty cool, tho things are? He
1:34
Speaker 1: was very cool. Yeah, yeah, they're really neat. I've never
1:36
Speaker 1: seen one. You definitely should. There's one at the New
1:39
Speaker 1: Air and Space Museum at Dulis Airport. I think it's
1:43
Speaker 1: Enterprise maybe or Endeavor, and then um. You can also
1:48
Speaker 1: see one at Kate Canaveral Kennedy Space Center, which I
1:52
Speaker 1: highly recommend to anyone who's even remotely interested in space,
1:58
Speaker 1: space exploration or the history of space. Kennedy is the
2:01
Speaker 1: place to go. It is awesome. I've been to and
2:04
Speaker 1: can recommend the Naval Air Station Museum in Pensacola, Florida. Okay,
2:10
Speaker 1: and I've been Huntsville. But have you been to Space Camp? No? Man,
2:15
Speaker 1: that's where Space Camp is, right Huntsville. I think so.
2:18
Speaker 1: I don't know. If it's just look inside that movie
2:22
Speaker 1: and all the privileged kids you got to go to
2:24
Speaker 1: the movie was big. I never saw it. Yeah, I
2:26
Speaker 1: mean I was at the right age where a movie
2:28
Speaker 1: about kids in space was kind of perfect. So what's
2:31
Speaker 1: that Huntsville then? Is it like just the the that's
2:34
Speaker 1: like the rocket place, that's where they did the the
2:37
Speaker 1: original stuff, right. I think Huntsville's before Kennedy. We should
2:41
Speaker 1: know this stuff. I think it was in conjunction with it,
2:45
Speaker 1: if not before it. But yes, so it was a
2:47
Speaker 1: space center and I think it still is. Marshall is
2:50
Speaker 1: in Huntsville. It's getting on to a great start anyway.
2:55
Speaker 1: You like space. I like space. We're not like space
2:57
Speaker 1: junkies or anything like that. We don't like Intravene Slee
3:00
Speaker 1: injected space now like Tom Hanks. You know, we never
3:04
Speaker 1: produced a mini series about it or anything like that,
3:07
Speaker 1: but you know, it's an interesting thing. I think after
3:12
Speaker 1: researching how the space race worked, it occurred to me
3:14
Speaker 1: that there's at least two other episodes that we should
3:17
Speaker 1: do how the moon landing worked, where he did did
3:20
Speaker 1: they fake the moon landing? Which was a pretty good one,
3:24
Speaker 1: but we should do one like assuming that it actually happened,
3:28
Speaker 1: and then uh, the International Space Station or just space
3:32
Speaker 1: stations in general, like the history of the like Skylab Mirror,
3:35
Speaker 1: you know, the I S s. Totally should Okay, so
3:38
Speaker 1: we'll do those people we have committed ourselves, like John
3:41
Speaker 1: Kennedy committed America to put a man on the moon
3:44
Speaker 1: by the end of the sixties. So we're going to
3:47
Speaker 1: do our podcasts on space stations. Yeah. So, like I said,
3:52
Speaker 1: you took me back to July nine, So let's take
3:55
Speaker 1: everybody back. Do you want to get in the way
3:57
Speaker 1: back machine? Oh? Man? Yeah? Well the stuff this thing
4:11
Speaker 1: and did you leave like a halfy eating cheeseburger in here?
4:14
Speaker 1: Something is funky? Yeah, I thought that might keep. It's
4:18
Speaker 1: not keeping. Sorry, there's a mongoose in here. We can
4:22
Speaker 1: just go back in time to when that burger was fresh,
4:24
Speaker 1: good thinking. Will you share it with me? You obviously
4:27
Speaker 1: only wanted half. Well that's why we all know we're kidding,
4:29
Speaker 1: because Chuck didn't leave behind a half of cheeseburger. Silly. Okay,
4:34
Speaker 1: So Chuck, here we are. I assume this is yeah,
4:37
Speaker 1: it's July, and we're gonna listen in as you and
4:42
Speaker 1: I do a dramatic reading of the transmission between mission
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Speaker 1: control and the lunar Landing Module I'll be mission control.
4:54
Speaker 1: Then I'll beat eagle. Okay, thirty seconds uh in prencies
5:01
Speaker 1: of fuel remaining? Okay and stop de segent command over
5:07
Speaker 1: righte off, We copy you down, Eagle. Here's a tranquility
5:12
Speaker 1: base here. The Eagle has landed, Roger, tranquility. We copy
5:19
Speaker 1: you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys
5:21
Speaker 1: about the term blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot,
5:26
Speaker 1: Yeah it is. We're all wearing short sleeve shirts with ties. Uh,
5:30
Speaker 1: we're all cool under pressure. We've got flat tops and
5:34
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't know. I didn't know actually
5:36
Speaker 1: until I read this that when the landing module for
5:39
Speaker 1: Apollo eleven, the first time human set foot on the
5:42
Speaker 1: Moon that we know of, um, the there was a
5:46
Speaker 1: really tense moment where they were about to run out
5:49
Speaker 1: of fuel as they were trying to land. That's what
5:51
Speaker 1: that thirty seconds thing was from. And had they run
5:53
Speaker 1: out of fuel, all three or all two astronauts on
5:57
Speaker 1: board who landed would have died. Yeah. I mean they
6:00
Speaker 1: basically had to uh do it manually. Yeah, they took over.
6:05
Speaker 1: That's why they had. As Tom Wolfe put it, the
6:08
Speaker 1: right stuff. Great great book, great great movie, I've never
6:13
Speaker 1: read the book, but the movie is amazing, so good.
6:16
Speaker 1: If if you're out there and well, if you're a
6:18
Speaker 1: fan of space, then you've seen the right stuff. That
6:21
Speaker 1: just reminded me. Remember when I told you about garbage
6:24
Speaker 1: pails stew So, I guess it must have been for
6:27
Speaker 1: my dad's birthday or something. My family rented the right
6:29
Speaker 1: stuff and we made garbage pails too. That was part
6:32
Speaker 1: of the thing. Yeah every year. No, yeah, yeah, we
6:36
Speaker 1: didn't like my dad that much. Yeah, we got a
6:38
Speaker 1: listener mail from someone in Michigan that did the garbage
6:41
Speaker 1: jack and awesome. I did not see that one, so
6:43
Speaker 1: it must have been a Midwestern thing. Okay, so I'm
6:46
Speaker 1: not insane in either is my father? No? But see
6:49
Speaker 1: the Right Stuff people, really really great movie that encapsulates
6:53
Speaker 1: the Mercury program and the Mercury Seven and uh plus
6:57
Speaker 1: uh leave on Helm, isn't it is that? Yeah? Great?
7:01
Speaker 1: Who did you play? He was? He was not one
7:03
Speaker 1: of the Mercury seven. He was he got cut your
7:06
Speaker 1: cut now. I don't think he was even an astronaut training.
7:09
Speaker 1: I think he was just part of the support military crew.
7:12
Speaker 1: I can't remember exactly. It's been a while Yeah, that's
7:14
Speaker 1: an odd cameo. It wasn't came It was a genuine part, right,
7:19
Speaker 1: But I mean, like, why leave on helm he acts?
7:21
Speaker 1: Oh I didn't know that. Yeah, he was in coal
7:23
Speaker 1: Miner's Daughter and stuff. And he was in that Marquee
7:26
Speaker 1: Mark movie a couple of years ago, shoot Shooter, Shooter, Sniper.
7:35
Speaker 1: We done. Yeah, alright, alright, we got way off. Anyway,
7:40
Speaker 1: When Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, buzz Aldrin
7:43
Speaker 1: was close on his heels. Uh. That ended effectively a
7:49
Speaker 1: more than a decade of what was known as the
7:52
Speaker 1: Space Race. Yeah, very exciting time in the United States. Yeah.
7:57
Speaker 1: People were way way into it. Yeah, it was it
8:00
Speaker 1: was like, um, people cared. Yeah, it was like how
8:03
Speaker 1: the voice is viewed now. Oh boy, you know, I
8:08
Speaker 1: guess I've ever seen that show if it really happens
8:14
Speaker 1: a nice So the Space Race, it was this kind
8:17
Speaker 1: of this we should define it. It was this Cold
8:20
Speaker 1: War byproduct of the tensions between the US and the USSR,
8:27
Speaker 1: which we're competing for utter dominance in over the world
8:33
Speaker 1: one way or another. And um, out of that quest
8:37
Speaker 1: for dominance came a an uneasy balance of polarization and
8:44
Speaker 1: you're either with one side or against them. There was
8:46
Speaker 1: very few neutral states, uh, And from this came kind
8:51
Speaker 1: of a just a constant challenge. It was each country
8:57
Speaker 1: drove the other to try to advanced technologically, economically, um
9:03
Speaker 1: and just every single way. And it was kind of
9:06
Speaker 1: a really fruitful time, especially if you are into the
9:10
Speaker 1: whole military industrial complex gig. Yeah. But from from this
9:16
Speaker 1: competition we reached the Moon. The Soviets ended up building
9:20
Speaker 1: a mere space station. Like everything we know about space
9:24
Speaker 1: came out of this race. This tension between the US
9:26
Speaker 1: and the USS are Yeah, and it was it's pretty neat,
9:29
Speaker 1: like the early space programs were. It was all brand new.
9:33
Speaker 1: So it wasn't like let's see how much work we
9:37
Speaker 1: can get done up there. It was let's see if
9:39
Speaker 1: we can get up there. Let's see if this guy
9:41
Speaker 1: won't die if we shoot him up there. And it
9:43
Speaker 1: was like logical steps like can we put a chip
9:45
Speaker 1: up there? Can we put a ship with a jump,
9:47
Speaker 1: Can we put a ship with a human? Can we
9:49
Speaker 1: put too humans? How long can they stay? Can they
9:51
Speaker 1: dock with other ships and meet other astronauts? Can we
9:54
Speaker 1: actually trick them into drinking tank? Yeah? Exactly. And then
9:57
Speaker 1: eventually all right, we feel like we and get up there.
10:00
Speaker 1: Now we need to start accomplishing some things besides just
10:04
Speaker 1: getting up here. That's right. I mean they brought back
10:06
Speaker 1: lunar rocks and things. Don't get me wrong, they had
10:08
Speaker 1: goals aside from hitting a golf ball on the moon.
10:12
Speaker 1: But I just find it really remarkable that it's and
10:16
Speaker 1: logical that it was all just a series of steps
10:18
Speaker 1: and each time we try to one up one another.
10:20
Speaker 1: It was progress for the world, for mankind. And it's
10:25
Speaker 1: really difficult to overstate the effect that that rivalry had.
10:30
Speaker 1: I mean, we'll kind of see that, you know, if
10:32
Speaker 1: I want to achieve something. The other one was like,
10:34
Speaker 1: we've got to top you somehow by tenfold. Yeah, you
10:38
Speaker 1: send the man, we send the woman. Right, Yeah, yeah, Yeah,
10:43
Speaker 1: that was a good one. Like it was a lot
10:44
Speaker 1: of everyone's trying to get a first in there. Exactly.
10:48
Speaker 1: I thought you were doing Sean Connery doing the Ford October. No,
10:52
Speaker 1: they bring a knife, you bring a gun. No. If
10:56
Speaker 1: you thought that was my Irish accent, then I'm worse
10:58
Speaker 1: than I thought I've made. Yeah, just I'm not hearing right, Okay,
11:02
Speaker 1: So the the Space Race put us into space. Everything
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Speaker 1: we now understand and know and have in space, and
11:09
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff on Earth is directly related to
11:12
Speaker 1: the space race, and the space race we trace back
11:15
Speaker 1: to the Nazis. Yeah, it's funny those space races between
11:19
Speaker 1: the US and Russia. But it was really Germany. Yeah,
11:22
Speaker 1: that kind of started everything. During World War two, Nazi
11:25
Speaker 1: Germany had a world class rocket program led by a
11:30
Speaker 1: guy named Werner von Braun. Yeah, and von Braun um.
11:35
Speaker 1: At some point during World War two, I guess saw
11:37
Speaker 1: the writing on the wall. He came up with the
11:39
Speaker 1: V two rocket, which was the scourge of Britain. Yeah,
11:43
Speaker 1: it's uh. It was the first ballistic missile, and ballistic
11:46
Speaker 1: missile means it's not steered, it's fired on a trajectory
11:52
Speaker 1: and then just regular forces of nature and mechanics run
11:56
Speaker 1: the show, as opposed to a cruise missile which is steered.
12:00
Speaker 1: But it could it could hit London from like a
12:04
Speaker 1: launch pad around the Baltic Sea if they did their
12:06
Speaker 1: calculations correct. So von Braun had developed the V two rocket,
12:11
Speaker 1: and at some point during World War two, I guess
12:13
Speaker 1: he saw the writing on the wall that he and
12:15
Speaker 1: he lost faith that the Germans were gonna win. So
12:18
Speaker 1: he got together some of his fellow rocket scientists, literal
12:21
Speaker 1: rocket scientists uh, and said, hey, let's surrender to the Americans.
12:26
Speaker 1: I'll bet you if we come to them and bring
12:30
Speaker 1: some knowledge and schematics and stuff, that they'll just totally
12:34
Speaker 1: ignore the whole Nazi thing. And they were right, kind
12:37
Speaker 1: of work, uh, And Hitler pouted and um died. And
12:43
Speaker 1: then we got these dudes, Van Broun in particular, and
12:46
Speaker 1: took him to White Sands, New Mexico and said you
12:50
Speaker 1: now work for us, And they said great, because you
12:53
Speaker 1: guys got better food and cool cars and and women. Yes,
12:58
Speaker 1: there's like everything you need in New Mexico, Land of
13:03
Speaker 1: Land of plenty. Uh. You ever been to White Sands? No,
13:06
Speaker 1: I have it. It's pretty cool. Van Nostrum went, or No,
13:09
Speaker 1: he went to the Trinity testing site. That's not White Sands.
13:12
Speaker 1: I don't think so. No. Um. So White Sunds relocated
13:16
Speaker 1: to Huntsville and Marshall, Yes, so I was right by
13:19
Speaker 1: calling a Marshall, Yes, Marshall Space Flight Center. So the
13:22
Speaker 1: Soviets did the same thing. They poached a bunch of
13:25
Speaker 1: Nazi rocket scientists and created their own program under the
13:30
Speaker 1: leadership of a very talented and apt Russian named Sergei Kralov.
13:36
Speaker 1: And so basically it was von Braun versus Kralov. Teams
13:40
Speaker 1: of Nazi scientists working in the USSR in the USA,
13:44
Speaker 1: working with obviously American colleagues, Soviet colleagues, and Germany is like,
13:49
Speaker 1: what about our space program? They're They were like, you're lucky.
13:52
Speaker 1: We even let you have a flag right now. Um,
13:55
Speaker 1: and that was the start of the space race. And
14:00
Speaker 1: that's that's incorrect. There was a program developed, rocket program developed,
14:05
Speaker 1: another rocket program developed, and at the time, both of
14:07
Speaker 1: these nascent US and Soviet rocket programs they were designed
14:12
Speaker 1: to blow each other up. But at some point the
14:15
Speaker 1: scientists said, hey, how about rather than pointing them over Earth,
14:21
Speaker 1: how about up, let's shoot these things up and see
14:24
Speaker 1: what we can do. Yes, uh, like maybe carry a
14:29
Speaker 1: satellite space Eisenhower and this jumping ahead a little bit.
14:34
Speaker 1: He also had the foresight to say, you know what, Uh,
14:37
Speaker 1: space is fun and all, but we can use this
14:39
Speaker 1: for military purposes. So he started a couple of national
14:43
Speaker 1: security programs, one for the military potential of using these rockets,
14:49
Speaker 1: and the other one with the CIA. To say that
14:52
Speaker 1: was called the the National Reconnaissance Office, and that was
14:55
Speaker 1: secret until the nineties. Yeah, is it still around. I
14:58
Speaker 1: don't think so. It's codename Corona. And that was Eisenhower saying, well,
15:03
Speaker 1: if we can get satellites up there, and maybe we
15:05
Speaker 1: can start spying on the Russians with these satellites. So
15:08
Speaker 1: there was I was kind of surprised to learn that
15:10
Speaker 1: intelligence was behind some of this that early on. Yeah. So,
15:16
Speaker 1: uh the beginning what's called uh it was an International
15:22
Speaker 1: Geophysical Year, and that was when a bunch of scientists
15:25
Speaker 1: got together and said, hey, let's get together from all
15:27
Speaker 1: over the world and let's all do some put our
15:30
Speaker 1: heads together to do some like serious studying of our planet.
15:34
Speaker 1: That nate, yes, super neat. They said, Okay, well, like
15:38
Speaker 1: we've got these governments, these incredibly powerful governments behind us,
15:43
Speaker 1: let's see if we can use it for some good
15:45
Speaker 1: Like yes, we'll create their spy satellites and whatnot, but
15:48
Speaker 1: let's also see if we can funnel some of that
15:50
Speaker 1: funding towards space exploration, putting satellites into orbit. Let's see
15:55
Speaker 1: what we can do. And they did, and as a
15:58
Speaker 1: as a result, both the United and the USSR as
16:01
Speaker 1: a result of this International Geophysical Year, UM said we're
16:06
Speaker 1: going to be the first to launch a satellite in
16:09
Speaker 1: the orbit, and the race was on. That was the beginning.
16:12
Speaker 1: What was that? That's right, And one thing is clear
16:16
Speaker 1: if you know anything about the space race, is that
16:19
Speaker 1: the US was getting their butts kicked in the early
16:22
Speaker 1: part of that game. Like, if this is a four
16:24
Speaker 1: quarter game, I would say the first at the halftime,
16:28
Speaker 1: they were probably losing about the half. Somewhere in the
16:31
Speaker 1: half they started to come back and maybe she changed
16:36
Speaker 1: momentum around the half, okay, so like they had definitely
16:39
Speaker 1: lost all of the first quarter. Okay, but if this
16:41
Speaker 1: is basketball, they had to run late in the second quarter,
16:43
Speaker 1: maybe to get the fans fired up, Okay, exactly. The
16:47
Speaker 1: Soviets definitely start We're winning early though, um with their
16:51
Speaker 1: sput Nick one, which means traveler in Russian, and they
16:55
Speaker 1: launched that on October four, nineteen fifty seven, So they
16:58
Speaker 1: were the first ones to launch a sad all it
17:00
Speaker 1: in this space. That's right. They scored that first point
17:03
Speaker 1: they did, there was a big one. Well it's a
17:04
Speaker 1: big one they had. They seem to want to do
17:06
Speaker 1: things a little more robustly than Americans. Americans seemed to
17:09
Speaker 1: be a little more conservative, like with how many rockets
17:13
Speaker 1: can we put on, how fast can it go? How
17:15
Speaker 1: what should the payload be? And the Russians were pushing
17:18
Speaker 1: the boundaries a little or sorry the Soviets, um, but
17:21
Speaker 1: they were Russians. Yeah rescues yeah, um, but they had
17:25
Speaker 1: a payload much larger than than the Americans were willing
17:28
Speaker 1: to try. But we weren't too far behind. Um. About
17:31
Speaker 1: four months later, in January thirty first, nineteen eight, we
17:34
Speaker 1: launched launched our Explorer one right, and actually we launched
17:39
Speaker 1: Explorer which was finally attached to a Juno rocket, which
17:44
Speaker 1: was von Braun's design. And the reason we didn't launch
17:47
Speaker 1: one first was because for some reason America had decided
17:51
Speaker 1: to go with a different rocket design and ignored von Braunze. Yeah,
17:55
Speaker 1: and space experts historians say we most likely would have
17:59
Speaker 1: gotten one up there before the Soviets had we just
18:01
Speaker 1: stuck with von Braun's design because it would have been
18:04
Speaker 1: ready earlier and it proved that it could have worked,
18:07
Speaker 1: so we could have beaten them, but we didn't. And
18:10
Speaker 1: that's actually the first point scored by the Soviets. So
18:13
Speaker 1: after that it was like, Okay, well what's next. What's
18:16
Speaker 1: the next logical step from there? Start NASA? Yeah, I guess,
18:21
Speaker 1: so we need a bureaucracy here. Yeah, Congress passed the
18:26
Speaker 1: Space Act and that's what created NASA, and the Soviets
18:30
Speaker 1: created their space program Russ Cosmos and said let's do this,
18:35
Speaker 1: uh in earnest And it's pretty interesting when we're gonna
18:39
Speaker 1: go over some of the differences here. It's interesting to
18:41
Speaker 1: see this early, some of the different approaches, just some
18:44
Speaker 1: of the basic approaches to what each nation thought was
18:48
Speaker 1: like the way to the way to go. Um. So
18:52
Speaker 1: here's one of them. The Soviet rockets, like I said,
18:55
Speaker 1: were more powerful. So right off the bat, they were
18:58
Speaker 1: using more juice, right. The Soviets were using what are
19:02
Speaker 1: called Voss Stock rockets early on in the beginning of
19:04
Speaker 1: their program. Uh and uh the Americans were using Redstone
19:08
Speaker 1: and Atlas rockets. Yeah. And this is when we started
19:11
Speaker 1: the Mercury program. Like we referenced in the right stuff,
19:14
Speaker 1: the Mercury Seven, Scott Carpenter, Heroes, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn,
19:19
Speaker 1: Gus Grisson, uh, Wally Shira, Alan Shepard, and Deek Slayton.
19:24
Speaker 1: Those were some brave, like they would be the guys
19:28
Speaker 1: today that are wearing like those wingsuits and jumping off mountains.
19:31
Speaker 1: You know that they were the early uh what do
19:35
Speaker 1: you what do you call those thrill seekers? What's the
19:36
Speaker 1: word for him? Early thrill seekers? Now extreme, That's what
19:41
Speaker 1: I was looking for. Mountain dew code red mountain dew.
19:46
Speaker 1: Uh want to go ahead? So I was gonna say
19:49
Speaker 1: you you can kind of like, um, the programs were
19:54
Speaker 1: We're started and finished roughly at around the same time.
19:58
Speaker 1: So you have the Mercury program going on in America initially,
20:01
Speaker 1: and at the same time, the Soviets are carrying out
20:03
Speaker 1: their voss Stok program. So another difference is that the
20:08
Speaker 1: Soviets were like, uh, everything that they did super secret
20:13
Speaker 1: about it all, and it was tough to you know,
20:15
Speaker 1: you can't turn on the TV and get a lot
20:16
Speaker 1: of information about uh the cosmonaut of the month um,
20:21
Speaker 1: which by the way, I was like, how do you
20:22
Speaker 1: pronounce that in Russian? And apparently it's very close it's
20:25
Speaker 1: cosmon f not well. Yeah, I was curious about the
20:33
Speaker 1: word not as a suffix, and apparently that came from
20:37
Speaker 1: the Greek. Yeah, like nautical. So they're they're space sailors essentially.
20:42
Speaker 1: Don't you think it would radically alter our view of space?
20:46
Speaker 1: In the International Space Station and everything. Everyone we're called
20:49
Speaker 1: cosmonauts or astronauts if they you basically took away any
20:53
Speaker 1: kind of national or ethnic identity once you got out
20:57
Speaker 1: in space, like everybody was an astro Oh yeah, I
21:01
Speaker 1: thought you were going to say if they use sailor
21:04
Speaker 1: instead of not and it was Astra sailor, Cosmo sailor.
21:07
Speaker 1: Everybody was a dream sailor once you got on the space. No.
21:10
Speaker 1: I think you're totally right. I mean, I think that's
21:12
Speaker 1: like naming your teams. It is because like even now China,
21:16
Speaker 1: since Tycho knots in there in this space, so you
21:19
Speaker 1: can say, just just by reading a news report, you
21:21
Speaker 1: know who's up there. Yeah, there's a Tycho, not a
21:24
Speaker 1: cosmonaut and an astronaut. Well, you're totally right, there's no accident. No, Um,
21:29
Speaker 1: so divisive. Well it was a space race. Yeah, it's
21:32
Speaker 1: not a shuttle relay. That's true. Um, and not space shuttle.
21:38
Speaker 1: You know what I mean, I knew it. You mean, okay,
21:39
Speaker 1: I'm sure most people out there. So, Um, the Soviets
21:43
Speaker 1: were secret the Americans were not. We proudly broadcasted our
21:47
Speaker 1: successes and failures for the world to see. And there
21:49
Speaker 1: were some failures. There were. We should say that when
21:53
Speaker 1: the USSR launched spot Nick, Um, we had not one
21:57
Speaker 1: but two major failure they kind where the rocket will
22:02
Speaker 1: go up and then just come right back down and
22:04
Speaker 1: explode on the launch pad kind of failures and they
22:07
Speaker 1: were dubbed things like flop Nick and caput Nick, and
22:11
Speaker 1: it was very demoralizing for America. Or a pre launched
22:15
Speaker 1: test catching fire and losing three of our astronauts, including
22:19
Speaker 1: Gus Grissom, Well that was the beginning of the Apollo program. Yeah,
22:22
Speaker 1: but that one didn't even that was that was on
22:24
Speaker 1: the launch pad, that was a test. Was that televised?
22:28
Speaker 1: I don't know about that, but they still don't know
22:30
Speaker 1: what caused the actual fire. But um, the oxygen UH
22:37
Speaker 1: chamber did not help. No, they used to they used
22:40
Speaker 1: to pump a hundred percent oxygen rather than an air mixture.
22:43
Speaker 1: I think now it's like thirty percent aboard like the
22:45
Speaker 1: I S S. But they would they would have a
22:47
Speaker 1: hundred percent oxygen and there was extremely flammable and yeah,
22:51
Speaker 1: don during a test, I think in January of nineteen
22:55
Speaker 1: sixty seven. UM, they the catsule caught fire and killed
23:00
Speaker 1: three astronauts inside within like five minutes, the fire burned
23:04
Speaker 1: itself out and they were dead. Luckily they supposedly died
23:08
Speaker 1: from smoke inhalation. But which is what quicker? Yeah, they're burning, Yeah,
23:14
Speaker 1: but I don't know well, And the Soviets were the
23:17
Speaker 1: actually the first ones to learn that pure oxygen wasn't
23:20
Speaker 1: a good idea, and they didn't tell us that obviously,
23:24
Speaker 1: not because their program was in secret. Yeah. One of
23:27
Speaker 1: the other differences I thought was pretty interesting was that
23:29
Speaker 1: the Soviets um used a spherical capsule uh, in which
23:35
Speaker 1: the cosmonaut just rode along and they ejected and parachuted
23:42
Speaker 1: out and the capsule crashed into land, whereas we had
23:45
Speaker 1: our our funny shaped capsule that the astronauts actually drove,
23:49
Speaker 1: so they were pilots, and they splashed down into the
23:53
Speaker 1: sea still in the capsule. So again, two completely different approaches.
23:58
Speaker 1: And I just find it interesting that, you know, the
24:00
Speaker 1: Americans like, no, we want our pilots to fly and
24:03
Speaker 1: fly into the ocean because it's a soft place to land.
24:07
Speaker 1: And you know, it worked, didn't Somebody I think one
24:10
Speaker 1: of those guys, Jeff Bezos or somebody like that. We
24:13
Speaker 1: found one of the original mercury capsules at the bottom
24:17
Speaker 1: of the ocean. Interesting. Yeah, that neat pictures of it underwater. Well,
24:23
Speaker 1: the benefits of a spherical spacecraft as it can enter
24:26
Speaker 1: the atmosphere just however it wants to. Whereas you got
24:30
Speaker 1: to kind of nail that with the with the mercury
24:33
Speaker 1: capsule comical. You couldn't just go in there like upside down. Yeah,
24:38
Speaker 1: you have to use your boosters to thrust into place
24:40
Speaker 1: and just your yaw and all that stuff. Pilots dude. Yeah,
24:44
Speaker 1: well it's like Apaul of thirteen. That was one of
24:46
Speaker 1: their big concerns was being accurately angled to re enter
24:51
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. Els they were in big trouble. That's scary.
24:54
Speaker 1: That was such a good movie too. Yeah, that was good.
24:57
Speaker 1: The vomit comment, Yeah, do you remember for that? That's
25:00
Speaker 1: what they use for to train and to shoot. That's
25:04
Speaker 1: how they simulated to Yeah. I still love to write
25:09
Speaker 1: on the thing. I bet it's awesome. Have you ever
25:10
Speaker 1: seen that footage of those girls like on the Vomit
25:13
Speaker 1: comment or something similar? Girls? Yeah, there's three girls in
25:17
Speaker 1: a seat and one of them throws up and it
25:19
Speaker 1: just goes right back into her face, and this kind
25:21
Speaker 1: of hovers there. Have you not seen that? No, I
25:25
Speaker 1: gotta send that to you. Is there real? Yeah? Yeah, man,
25:29
Speaker 1: it is gross. What are they doing putting girls in
25:32
Speaker 1: the vomit comment? They what? No, I mean not like
25:37
Speaker 1: seven year old girls? Women? Women. We heard from our
25:41
Speaker 1: feminist listeners and they said girls is better than females.
25:45
Speaker 1: Girls is successible. I'm just coming with that. No, no, no no,
25:48
Speaker 1: I'm still amazed that people just say female if they're
25:51
Speaker 1: not talking about like a study or something. You know,
25:54
Speaker 1: I've been listening over there and anyone say that it's
25:57
Speaker 1: actually very very common female male. Yeah, it's very common.
26:02
Speaker 1: You've done your own, uh an impromptu survey just by
26:08
Speaker 1: being alive, man, being awake. Yeah. No, And it wasn't
26:11
Speaker 1: like the vomit comment, Like, I don't think it was
26:13
Speaker 1: the one that like Ron Howard wrote on it was
26:16
Speaker 1: a right at Disney. It's basically it looks a lot
26:18
Speaker 1: like a light aircraft that's doing a nose dive, but
26:22
Speaker 1: they're they're basically waitless for a second, So it's obviously
26:26
Speaker 1: not a light aircraft. But it just looks small. But
26:29
Speaker 1: that girl just pukes in her own face. It is
26:31
Speaker 1: so gross, all right, So just to clear it up,
26:34
Speaker 1: Chuck wasn't saying that women should not be allowed in
26:36
Speaker 1: vomit comments, and Josh wasn't saying that the women in
26:40
Speaker 1: the vomit comments were seven year old. I think that
26:43
Speaker 1: does well, put thank you. So the Soviets scored the
26:47
Speaker 1: second point as well. Second touchdown Big one April twel
26:51
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one. They actually put cosmonaut uh Euri Gagarin
26:56
Speaker 1: uh into space and he was the first man in
26:59
Speaker 1: space and the first man to orbit the Earth, and uh,
27:03
Speaker 1: that was egg on the face of the US at
27:04
Speaker 1: that point on fourteen nothing. Yeah, I think if you
27:09
Speaker 1: could like give him a couple of touchdowns for that one,
27:12
Speaker 1: you should nothing. Yeah, I mean, like Urie was the
27:16
Speaker 1: first person in space and again apparently America could have
27:22
Speaker 1: been the first. But it's actually better that, um, I guess.
27:28
Speaker 1: Von Braun said, we need to schedule a more test
27:30
Speaker 1: than the percent certain about putting a human in here,
27:33
Speaker 1: and um they they they added one more test, which
27:38
Speaker 1: pushed Alan Shepherd's Freedom seven flight back by a couple
27:42
Speaker 1: of months, which put it a month after Uri Gagarin's flight, Right,
27:47
Speaker 1: so we could have done it. But even if we had,
27:49
Speaker 1: the Russians still would have basically beaten us. They would
27:52
Speaker 1: have gotten at least some points even for being second,
27:55
Speaker 1: because Alan Shepherd's flight was basically shot up into a
27:58
Speaker 1: suborbital edition and came right back down. It was a
28:02
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes suborbital space flight, which you can do now
28:05
Speaker 1: if you've got like a hundred grands pretty much. Um,
28:08
Speaker 1: what you'r Garon did was he shot up into actual
28:12
Speaker 1: Earth orbit and orbited the Earth, the entire Earth once,
28:17
Speaker 1: and then came back down a hundred and eight minutes later.
28:19
Speaker 1: So yeah, straight up and down in fifteen minutes or
28:24
Speaker 1: up full orbit of the Earth and back down a
28:26
Speaker 1: hundred and eight minutes. I mean it's actually good that
28:29
Speaker 1: we came second in that anyway, And that chuck that
28:35
Speaker 1: lit the fire beneath America's bottom, like we gotta get going, yeah,
28:41
Speaker 1: because think about it, I mean, like we're down three touchdowns.
28:43
Speaker 1: Who wrote this one? Craig Freud and Rich right, he
28:48
Speaker 1: points out, like this is the time of the followed
28:51
Speaker 1: the McCarthy trials. Um, the people did not like the Soviets.
28:57
Speaker 1: America really wanted to dominate, and we were getting our
29:01
Speaker 1: butts kicked publicly by the USSR and it was demoralizing.
29:06
Speaker 1: But rather than let ourselves get beat down, Kennedy got
29:10
Speaker 1: with NASA and said, what can we do to beat
29:13
Speaker 1: these guys? That's right, because not only with those two
29:17
Speaker 1: things were they beating us, but they at one point
29:20
Speaker 1: during UH this time had more hours in space, this
29:25
Speaker 1: one rocket than all of ours put together. Yeah, so
29:30
Speaker 1: we were getting trounced bad. So they were basically just
29:33
Speaker 1: doing like victory lap after victory lap, like they would
29:37
Speaker 1: send guys up in orbit the Earth one after the other. Yeah.
29:40
Speaker 1: At the end of the UM the Vostok UH program,
29:44
Speaker 1: which was their first program, I believe, yes, their first program.
29:48
Speaker 1: By the time they finished it, they had not only
29:51
Speaker 1: sent the first man in his space, they sent the
29:53
Speaker 1: first woman in his space, Valentina Tereshkova, and she orbited
29:59
Speaker 1: the Earth forty eight times in Vostok six. During the
30:03
Speaker 1: Mercury program, I think the best we came up with
30:06
Speaker 1: was Gordon Cooper doing twenty two times around the Earth.
30:09
Speaker 1: So they were just crushing us um and just racking
30:13
Speaker 1: up the points left and right. That's right. So America says,
30:17
Speaker 1: you know what, we should develop something a new program,
30:20
Speaker 1: and that's how it works. You know, they have a program,
30:22
Speaker 1: it does what it does over a period of years.
30:24
Speaker 1: Then they retired that they start up in newing. The
30:27
Speaker 1: new program was the Gemini program, and the Soviets started
30:31
Speaker 1: the Voss called program on a little bit and they
30:38
Speaker 1: again got out to a little early lead with that
30:40
Speaker 1: program because they were the first to send multiple cosmonauts up,
30:46
Speaker 1: sent three into vols called one and then had a
30:50
Speaker 1: spacewalk before we did Alexei Leonoff and Volscott two March
30:55
Speaker 1: eighteenth nineteen. So there's still they're still beating us at
30:59
Speaker 1: this point. They are, but by this time, just a
31:03
Speaker 1: couple of weeks after Alan Shepherd's first flight and while
31:07
Speaker 1: we're still just reeling from the the the Ryga Garan flight,
31:14
Speaker 1: Um Kennedy came out onto the news and said, you
31:19
Speaker 1: know what, we're going to be the first to put
31:20
Speaker 1: a man on the Moon, and we're gonna do it
31:22
Speaker 1: before the decades out. He kind of declared that the
31:25
Speaker 1: finish line almost like whoever does this and it's gonna
31:29
Speaker 1: be us. We'll win and this is a substantial gold
31:34
Speaker 1: is set. I mean, like we've been beaten twice and
31:38
Speaker 1: like you said, trounced um by the Soviets, and now
31:41
Speaker 1: we're suddenly saying like, oh yeah, let's go to the moon.
31:44
Speaker 1: Let's see who's first to the moon. And uh that
31:48
Speaker 1: set the foundation for everything to follow. That began the
31:51
Speaker 1: Gemini program, which, like you were saying, the Mercury program,
31:55
Speaker 1: Each program was designed to kind of prove that we
31:59
Speaker 1: could do with certain step. The Mercury program proved that
32:03
Speaker 1: a human being could go into space and safely come
32:05
Speaker 1: back down, could orbit the Earth. These next two programs,
32:10
Speaker 1: I guess the next Soviet program, what is it again? Yeah,
32:14
Speaker 1: that one proved that a person could survive out in
32:17
Speaker 1: space outside of a space capsule or space transport um.
32:22
Speaker 1: And the Americans had Gemini, which ultimately bridged the gap
32:26
Speaker 1: between Mercury program and the Apollo program, which would put
32:30
Speaker 1: us on the Moon. And both the vox Shot and
32:32
Speaker 1: the Gemini programs were like putting multiple people in space
32:38
Speaker 1: together to work and do neat stuff, that's right. And
32:44
Speaker 1: uh so with Gemini early on we were like, all right,
32:47
Speaker 1: you guys are beaten into the punch. You're getting people
32:50
Speaker 1: up there, and you can fly around the Earth a
32:51
Speaker 1: bunch of times. You got the quantity part down, But
32:55
Speaker 1: we've got to focus on quality here in the US
32:58
Speaker 1: and learn how to do things up there like change orbits.
33:02
Speaker 1: Can you do that? Rusky? And they said, and yet
33:06
Speaker 1: And so all of a sudden we were flying around
33:08
Speaker 1: up there, changing orbits, um rendezvousing with other spacecraft, docking
33:14
Speaker 1: with rockets, and you can fly around the Earth as
33:17
Speaker 1: much as you want, but we're actually putting putting our
33:21
Speaker 1: work into practice, like you know, what's it gonna take
33:24
Speaker 1: to get on the moon. Since someone up there for
33:26
Speaker 1: two weeks and dock with someone else, change orbits, fly
33:29
Speaker 1: that thing around. And we were able to do that successfully.
33:31
Speaker 1: And that's when we started pulling ahead because the Soviets
33:34
Speaker 1: were just doing laps around the Earth. Well, they were
33:37
Speaker 1: doing some other stuff they did do, like spacewalks and
33:39
Speaker 1: stuff like that. But yeah, it was these two programs
33:41
Speaker 1: are where we started to pull away. And um, it
33:45
Speaker 1: was that Gemini program that we used to to prove
33:49
Speaker 1: that we could do things like spend two weeks in space,
33:52
Speaker 1: which is how long it would take, Like he said
33:54
Speaker 1: to go to the moon and back. Yeah, and the
33:55
Speaker 1: Soviets were doing a lot of unmanned missions at the time,
33:59
Speaker 1: or sending animals up their data gathering stuff like that. Yes,
34:03
Speaker 1: there were a lot of animals sent to space that
34:07
Speaker 1: that perished, that never came back, or that came back
34:12
Speaker 1: in as fireballs. It's sad. I went to this museum,
34:17
Speaker 1: um do you mean? I did? In in l A.
34:20
Speaker 1: It's called the Museum of Jurassic Technology. You should go.
34:24
Speaker 1: It is the most unique, peculiar museum you will ever
34:28
Speaker 1: go to in your life. But one of the exhibits
34:30
Speaker 1: is a hall of portraits of Soviet space dogs. Oh
34:35
Speaker 1: really pretty neat, interesting and sad because they all ended
34:38
Speaker 1: up dead. Huh yeah, it's it's sad. But the tone
34:41
Speaker 1: of them more is the national pride, Like these dogs
34:45
Speaker 1: gave their life the advancement of humans. Yeah. But I mean,
34:49
Speaker 1: like if you, if you step back and really think
34:51
Speaker 1: about it, these portraits are very much like human portraits.
34:54
Speaker 1: Like the dogs are like looking up right, uh, you know,
34:57
Speaker 1: into the future, with their chin raised and like their
35:00
Speaker 1: their breast you know, proud. Yeah, yeah, and yeah there
35:05
Speaker 1: the way they're done, it's neat. Well what they're looking
35:07
Speaker 1: at is a dog treat. They're staring at the effect. Yeah, uh,
35:14
Speaker 1: that's pretty neat. I'm gonna check that out. Oh you
35:16
Speaker 1: need to go, man, go with a child's heart. Well,
35:20
Speaker 1: I have no choice then, Okay, that's the only heart
35:23
Speaker 1: I have. Uh all right. So where we're Project Jim
35:27
Speaker 1: and I, we have a little bit of a momentum.
35:30
Speaker 1: We we have what it takes. We have the right stuff,
35:32
Speaker 1: if you will, to make it to the moon and
35:34
Speaker 1: to walk around up there. And that is when Apollo
35:37
Speaker 1: one caught fire, which was a pretty big setback in
35:41
Speaker 1: January nine seven. Yeah, I mean, like, not only do
35:44
Speaker 1: we lose like three of our great astronauts, these guys
35:48
Speaker 1: were some of the originals. Um, I imagine that it's
35:51
Speaker 1: scared the living daylights out of all the other astronauts
35:54
Speaker 1: and all of the people in mission control in NASA
35:57
Speaker 1: and Americans like, you know, this is everybody knew it
36:00
Speaker 1: was dangerous, but now it was proven like it's deadly.
36:04
Speaker 1: So this is a deadly endeavor that we're undertaking here. Yeah,
36:07
Speaker 1: they knew that, they knew how dangerous it was. That's
36:10
Speaker 1: why all their wives were just you know, no, no,
36:13
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't mean that might mean more like
36:14
Speaker 1: the American public. Oh yeah, like yeah, you're right now,
36:17
Speaker 1: we're losing people. Now. These aren't like dogs like these
36:21
Speaker 1: are three guys you know, yeah, totally, and people that
36:23
Speaker 1: America had grown to love, you know, like national heroes
36:26
Speaker 1: at this point, right like the voice you gotta quit
36:29
Speaker 1: saying that. And so after the fire, actually they disassembled
36:34
Speaker 1: the launch pads but left the posts as a permanent
36:37
Speaker 1: memorial to Apollo one astronauts. Yeah, and rebuilt launch pads elsewhere. Alright,
36:45
Speaker 1: So at this point, the Soviets are concentrating on, like
36:49
Speaker 1: I said, unmanned spacecraft. They're like, all right, you can
36:52
Speaker 1: go walk on the moon, but we're gonna send We're
36:54
Speaker 1: gonna orbit the Moon at least, and we're gonna develop
36:57
Speaker 1: some docking systems and um, seeing how long we can
37:01
Speaker 1: stay up there. Other David Blaine esque feats of strength, right,
37:05
Speaker 1: which is kind of neat Like at some point around
37:08
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven sixty eight, the Soviets said, it's obvious
37:13
Speaker 1: the Americans are going to make it to the moon.
37:15
Speaker 1: We're not going to send a man to the moon
37:17
Speaker 1: right now within time to be first. So let's pursue
37:21
Speaker 1: some other stuff that the Americans aren't doing, Like what's
37:23
Speaker 1: the big deal about the moon anyway? Right, And as
37:26
Speaker 1: it turns out that kind of right, kind of um.
37:29
Speaker 1: But humanity as a whole benefited from that decision because
37:35
Speaker 1: the while the Americans were perfecting what the Americans were
37:38
Speaker 1: perfecting things like space shuttles and that kind of stuff,
37:41
Speaker 1: things that came directly out of the Apollo program and
37:44
Speaker 1: the lunar landing and just that that science. The Russians were,
37:48
Speaker 1: like you said, experimenting with things like docking systems, space stations.
37:53
Speaker 1: They ended up building the Mirror and so after the
37:56
Speaker 1: sky Lab. Yeah, we had sky Lab in the seventies,
37:59
Speaker 1: which I again go to the National Air and Space Museum.
38:02
Speaker 1: There's two. There's one at Dullest and then there's one
38:05
Speaker 1: like on the mall in d C. Yeah, it's like
38:09
Speaker 1: when it's one of the main Smithsonian museums. They have
38:12
Speaker 1: like a model of skylight that you can walk through.
38:14
Speaker 1: It's so seventies rrific, It's awesome. Yeah. Um, so we
38:19
Speaker 1: were experimenting with space stations, but at the same time
38:22
Speaker 1: it was very apparent after well, it wasn't the end
38:25
Speaker 1: of the Cold War. This is before the end of
38:27
Speaker 1: the Cold War, but after we won, after we landed
38:29
Speaker 1: on the Moon, apparently the Soviets and Americans said, hey,
38:34
Speaker 1: let's see if we can work together, and they actually
38:38
Speaker 1: did in a very symbolic but also technically um proficient
38:43
Speaker 1: manner the Soyo's Apollo mission of And we'll talk more
38:48
Speaker 1: about that right up in this break man. That music
39:00
Speaker 1: that's got me fired up. I know. Wow, we already won,
39:04
Speaker 1: even yeah, at least the first time. All right, So
39:07
Speaker 1: we left off you were talking about the joint Apollo
39:10
Speaker 1: Soya's test project UM, which was a really big deal
39:14
Speaker 1: to get together on this, and I'm I'm kind of
39:16
Speaker 1: surprised even back then that they had the foresight to
39:20
Speaker 1: work together, you know. Yeah, but because then we still
39:23
Speaker 1: weren't like great friends his nation in the early seventies, no,
39:27
Speaker 1: and space was still a huge question as to whether
39:29
Speaker 1: or not it could or should or would be weaponized too, Yeah, exactly.
39:32
Speaker 1: So for the two dominant superpowers on the planet to
39:35
Speaker 1: get together was a big deal. Yeah, And that happened
39:37
Speaker 1: in they literally got together in space when an Apollo
39:42
Speaker 1: craft carrying three of our astronauts hooked up and docked
39:46
Speaker 1: with the Soya's spacecraft with two cosmonauts, and they spent
39:50
Speaker 1: a couple of days, uh, you know, working and probably
39:53
Speaker 1: getting into one another, maybe drinking vodka. Yeah, they're probably
39:57
Speaker 1: We're not so different. We don't have to go to
39:58
Speaker 1: space and get drunk. Exactly. It's the best. I like tang,
40:03
Speaker 1: you like tank, right, let's put some podka in it. Exactly.
40:07
Speaker 1: So that was a big deal. And UM, at least
40:10
Speaker 1: from that, it proved that we could work together, our
40:14
Speaker 1: space agencies could work together, and UM it led to
40:17
Speaker 1: this this age of cooperation that grew directly out of
40:22
Speaker 1: the rivalry. UM. And like we said, the Russians were
40:26
Speaker 1: kind of paying attention to living for the duration in space.
40:30
Speaker 1: The Americans big thing was this Space Shuttle. We basically
40:34
Speaker 1: had like some cars that we could drive to the
40:35
Speaker 1: Moon or space and back. Um, and we kind of
40:39
Speaker 1: put the two together. Um. The Russians had the Mere
40:42
Speaker 1: Space Station and in the nineties their crews had worked
40:48
Speaker 1: in the eighties or nineties, I don't remember their crews.
40:51
Speaker 1: At least one crew had spent more than a year
40:54
Speaker 1: in space. That was huge, super huge because part of
40:59
Speaker 1: the goal with all of these is, can we one
41:01
Speaker 1: day live in space? Period? And so ultimately this led
41:04
Speaker 1: to this joint cooperation led to the International Space Station
41:09
Speaker 1: UH in the nineties. Yep. And if you go up
41:11
Speaker 1: to the International Space Station, you're gonna see Russians and
41:14
Speaker 1: you're gonna see Americans and they're all up there working together. Still. Oh,
41:17
Speaker 1: but Chuck, that is possibly changing. Yeah, I guess I
41:21
Speaker 1: should have said had been working together nicely, like good neighbors.
41:25
Speaker 1: Because is it Russia trying to like evict this now? Well,
41:28
Speaker 1: they're basically saying like, hey, you guys can't get up
41:31
Speaker 1: there anymore because and we're not going to give you
41:34
Speaker 1: a ride. No, well, no, they will give us a ride,
41:36
Speaker 1: but it's seventy one million dollars a ride now yeah,
41:40
Speaker 1: and um, at the very least, it's humiliating that Americans
41:44
Speaker 1: are having to hit your ride from Russians who are
41:47
Speaker 1: basically extorting money from us. So is this all at
41:50
Speaker 1: the root of it? Is it like just tensions between
41:52
Speaker 1: Putin and the US? Yeah, it all came from the
41:56
Speaker 1: Ukraine stuff in the sanctions. One of the first Russians
41:59
Speaker 1: to be anction was the head of the Russian Space Agency.
42:03
Speaker 1: So They were like, oh really, you know that's that's
42:06
Speaker 1: space station up there, Like, you guys are in trouble now,
42:10
Speaker 1: So I wonder is it not going to be the
42:12
Speaker 1: International Space Station anymore? I think what Russia is basically
42:16
Speaker 1: saying is watch what happens when we stopped giving you
42:19
Speaker 1: guys ride right, and then we say, you know what,
42:22
Speaker 1: let's just let the space station fall out of orbit.
42:25
Speaker 1: We Russia will still have a space flight program, a
42:28
Speaker 1: human space flight program. You guys won't because the International
42:31
Speaker 1: Space Station is the only piece of human space flight
42:34
Speaker 1: equipment that the United States has because the space Shuttle
42:38
Speaker 1: program was scrapped. Wow. Uh so the space Shuttle was scrapped,
42:43
Speaker 1: Like you said, um Bush before he left office sort
42:48
Speaker 1: of had to read a directive for NASA moving forward
42:52
Speaker 1: that is moot now because Obama scrapped a lot of it,
42:57
Speaker 1: um Bush want to go back to the moon basically,
43:00
Speaker 1: and even some of the people within NASA said, it's
43:03
Speaker 1: like Apollo on steroids, and do we really need to
43:06
Speaker 1: go back to the moon, Like what can we gain
43:07
Speaker 1: from that at this point? So Obama scrapped it and
43:10
Speaker 1: redirected NASA's funding towards more rocket technology. Research like how
43:15
Speaker 1: can we fire rockets farther and uh, can we refuel
43:19
Speaker 1: them in flight? And not just for military, but maybe
43:22
Speaker 1: this stuff can be useful, uh, you know in the
43:26
Speaker 1: space program as well. So that is the current space program.
43:32
Speaker 1: But there's a new space race. Yeah, um ish China. Yeah,
43:37
Speaker 1: has come along and very methodically and plaudingly has followed
43:43
Speaker 1: and met its space goals. Two thousand three put its
43:48
Speaker 1: first man in space. What do you said? They were
43:51
Speaker 1: taco nuts, Tyco nuts, Psycho nuts. Yeah. Yeah, one of
43:55
Speaker 1: the um I read an article about China's space race
43:58
Speaker 1: and they said, so far their space program program is
44:02
Speaker 1: roughly equivalent to the US and Soviet space program circum
44:06
Speaker 1: mid sixties. I saw that too. Yeah, so they're clearly behind,
44:10
Speaker 1: but apparently they are making a lot of headway in
44:14
Speaker 1: a short amount of time. Plus they have the luxury
44:17
Speaker 1: of not having to invent items like microchips from scratch,
44:21
Speaker 1: right that people, the Russians in the so in the
44:24
Speaker 1: Americans and the space race had to do. Um. The
44:27
Speaker 1: fact is, though, if you if you read anything about
44:31
Speaker 1: China and it's space ambitions and the United States in
44:35
Speaker 1: the state of its current space program, you basically find
44:40
Speaker 1: you're sitting around reminiscing about the golden days of Tang
44:44
Speaker 1: and guests. Grissom. Yeah, we're we're China is basically going
44:51
Speaker 1: to dominate space. They're poised to dominate space. They very
44:54
Speaker 1: cleverly have started a space uh station program that will
45:00
Speaker 1: come online at the same time that the I S S,
45:04
Speaker 1: the International Space Station UM makes its fiery ark in
45:08
Speaker 1: to the Pacific Somewhere I read, Yeah, the I S
45:11
Speaker 1: S is going to come down some time after two
45:13
Speaker 1: thousand sixteen, probably two thousand twenty, and the United States
45:18
Speaker 1: will have no presence in space any longer. China will
45:21
Speaker 1: be the only game in town with the space station.
45:25
Speaker 1: And I feel like, I don't know that this is true,
45:29
Speaker 1: but I feel like in something like space space exploration, UM,
45:38
Speaker 1: that's kind of something that you have to build on momentum.
45:42
Speaker 1: Once you use momentum, you really are set back. Like
45:46
Speaker 1: all of these people who are working for NASSA who
45:48
Speaker 1: have been laid off recently, and as they age out
45:51
Speaker 1: and retire and and all of that cumulative knowledge and
45:56
Speaker 1: and organizational memories lost. So even if we m to
46:00
Speaker 1: ten years from now, five years from now and say,
46:03
Speaker 1: whoa we're a spacefaring nation. We need to get back
46:07
Speaker 1: out there. We've lost quite a bit already, not to
46:11
Speaker 1: mention in the ensuing five or ten years where we
46:13
Speaker 1: start to lose exponentially more. Yeah, it takes a while
46:16
Speaker 1: to ramp that back up. And my my I agree.
46:19
Speaker 1: My fear is this that we're going to take our
46:21
Speaker 1: typical or what's come to be our typical klectocratic view
46:26
Speaker 1: of things and just let private business handle it. We'll
46:29
Speaker 1: just let you know, SpaceX handle it. For America. They're
46:33
Speaker 1: addicted the money, so they're in their pursuit of money.
46:36
Speaker 1: Um will benefit as a nation. Well, that hasn't necessarily
46:39
Speaker 1: worked out for us with like you know, housing markets
46:42
Speaker 1: and stock markets and dangerous chemicals and that kind of thing.
46:46
Speaker 1: So while I do think that the true space race
46:50
Speaker 1: right now is between private industry amongst itself and private
46:54
Speaker 1: industry and China, I don't think that as a nation,
46:57
Speaker 1: by sitting back and just leaving it to private industry
47:00
Speaker 1: and virtually withdrawing our federal dollars from space exploration, that
47:06
Speaker 1: the United States is going to benefit in any way,
47:08
Speaker 1: shape or form. Well, Yeah, especially when you hear Aston
47:12
Speaker 1: Kutcher is going up on Virgin Galactic. How's that helping us?
47:16
Speaker 1: It's not Angelina Jolie's up there, though, I don't know.
47:22
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's neat, but it's it's one
47:25
Speaker 1: of those private space travel for the super rich. It's
47:29
Speaker 1: just like another thing for the super rich, like owning
47:33
Speaker 1: a yacht, Like, how does that benefit me that if
47:37
Speaker 1: you've got several hundred thousand dollars you can take a
47:39
Speaker 1: suborbital flight, which is basically like a tourist. You know,
47:42
Speaker 1: that's not that's not advancing I don't think that's advancing
47:46
Speaker 1: our space exploration at all. Just leave it to business.
47:51
Speaker 1: We'll see. And that's not to say that SpaceX or
47:55
Speaker 1: or any of the private space industries aren't working to
47:58
Speaker 1: do things beyond send movie stars enriched people to space. No,
48:03
Speaker 1: they're working to send the rest of us to space too.
48:06
Speaker 1: It's just the rich people and movie stars are the
48:08
Speaker 1: ones who will have the money to hit that first
48:10
Speaker 1: price point. But they're doing other things too, though, like
48:14
Speaker 1: research or are they not? Uh, Like that's what I
48:17
Speaker 1: need to look at. I would imagine that probably most
48:20
Speaker 1: of the goals of anything like SpaceX or any company
48:25
Speaker 1: like that is to is to make money from space,
48:29
Speaker 1: so I would guess mining, um, basically selling the services
48:34
Speaker 1: to space agencies, colonizing and selling a moon condos. Sure,
48:39
Speaker 1: like India, Iran, Um. These countries have space programs as
48:44
Speaker 1: well and are entering space themselves. Space X can go
48:47
Speaker 1: basically contract for them. Um. Yeah, they're they're doing stuff,
48:52
Speaker 1: but they're not doing stuff necessarily just for the pursuit
48:55
Speaker 1: of science like for the US even Yeah yeah, um,
48:59
Speaker 1: I got a couple of things before we finish. There's
49:02
Speaker 1: some inventions that sometimes are mistakenly attributed to NASA which
49:06
Speaker 1: aren't necessarily true, but our favorites in space. Yeah. Velcro
49:11
Speaker 1: is the one I've always heard that's wrong, is it? Yes?
49:15
Speaker 1: It was invented in the nineties by a hiker who
49:19
Speaker 1: um noticed that little birds were stuck to his socks
49:22
Speaker 1: and wondered how they stuck. I've heard that story. Look closely.
49:25
Speaker 1: This is the true story. Look closely and saw that
49:28
Speaker 1: birds have little hooks and his socks have little loops,
49:30
Speaker 1: and that gave rise to velcon and velcro is used
49:33
Speaker 1: a lot by NASA, so it's often wrongfully attributed to NASA.
49:36
Speaker 1: All right, this is a fun game, since you you
49:39
Speaker 1: know this stuff? Okay. How about Eminem's No, the popular
49:43
Speaker 1: candy that melts in your mouth and on in your hands. No,
49:45
Speaker 1: they also don't like squish around in space. The candy
49:48
Speaker 1: coated shell makes it great for space travel, but not
49:52
Speaker 1: invented four space. What about the joystick? Yes, okay, that
49:57
Speaker 1: is the direct result of the Space Race and the
50:00
Speaker 1: space programs. What about GPS? Yeah, because you can't spell
50:06
Speaker 1: Global Positioning satellite without positioning. Yeah it system, isn't it?
50:12
Speaker 1: GPS system? Yeah? It uses satellites. So we also have
50:17
Speaker 1: the space race bot that one. We also have the
50:20
Speaker 1: space face to thank for satellite TV. Uh. What about
50:24
Speaker 1: um smoke detectors in your home? Yes, because of Space
50:28
Speaker 1: program base yeah. Um. What about tang sopping dots, the
50:36
Speaker 1: freest dride, the dipping dots. I don't know, man, that
50:40
Speaker 1: was supposed to be like the you know, outer space
50:43
Speaker 1: ice cream. It's what the answer? Not tan supposedly, but
50:45
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was developed by NASSA for them.
50:48
Speaker 1: Um Tang. No, it was already around freeze drive foods.
50:53
Speaker 1: The freeze drying process was already around the freeze drive
50:57
Speaker 1: blood to save for later. Um. But then NASA adopted
51:01
Speaker 1: it to start free drying food, so technically you can
51:04
Speaker 1: thank NASA for free drive food. Yeah, and while tang
51:07
Speaker 1: was not invented by the Space program, it was definitely,
51:10
Speaker 1: um heavily marketed as being tied to the space program,
51:14
Speaker 1: and it was a big deal. Like it was like
51:17
Speaker 1: people gave it to their kids because they thought it
51:18
Speaker 1: would make them go into space. Yeah, like stronger and
51:22
Speaker 1: smarter and yeah, pretty much you got what are what
51:25
Speaker 1: are some other? I have one more for you. Have
51:27
Speaker 1: you ever heard there's like this um urban legend that
51:30
Speaker 1: the American Space program and the Soviet Space program both
51:33
Speaker 1: had this problem. Um, the the Americans they needed to
51:37
Speaker 1: be able to write in space, but if you use
51:39
Speaker 1: a pen, pens are functioned by gravity, and if you're
51:43
Speaker 1: in zero gravity you can't use a pen Seinfeld, had
51:47
Speaker 1: an astronaut been right, Yeah, So supposedly that NASA spent
51:51
Speaker 1: millions of dollars in coming up with a zero G pen,
51:54
Speaker 1: while the Soviets had a much better idea pencil. Was
51:58
Speaker 1: that really? Yeah? Wow, So apparently that's an urban myth.
52:02
Speaker 1: Both programs used pencils to start, but the Apollo one
52:06
Speaker 1: fire showed that you don't want anything that's even remotely flammable,
52:09
Speaker 1: like a wooden pencil aboard your spacecraft. So NASA started
52:15
Speaker 1: using mechanical pencils, which were a couple of hundred dollars
52:18
Speaker 1: a piece. They were way over paying them for him. Um.
52:22
Speaker 1: And then a man by the name of Fisher, who
52:24
Speaker 1: owned Fisher Pen Company, used his own millions of dollars
52:27
Speaker 1: to create a pressure functioning pen rather than gravity functioning pen,
52:33
Speaker 1: a space pen, which he in turns sold to the
52:35
Speaker 1: US Space program and eventually the Soviet space program for
52:39
Speaker 1: just a few dollars each. So that millions of dollars
52:42
Speaker 1: space pen is a myth that you that's your Paul
52:46
Speaker 1: Harvey moment. Uh pencils and hey, shout out to our
52:53
Speaker 1: buddy David Reese, who wrote the quintessential books how to
52:56
Speaker 1: sharpen Pencils book. Yep, not books, but if you want
53:00
Speaker 1: to know about sharpening pencils, that's the way to go.
53:02
Speaker 1: There's a book and he will explain that. And he's
53:04
Speaker 1: a great funny guy than a friend. So yeah, he's good.
53:07
Speaker 1: I always like to plug that. He's got a new
53:09
Speaker 1: show coming out. Well, um, what that geo? Oh yeah, yeah,
53:13
Speaker 1: what's it about. It's called Going Deep with David Reese,
53:16
Speaker 1: where he each episode is like how to open a Door,
53:19
Speaker 1: how to make ice, how to Squatterfly, where he goes
53:23
Speaker 1: deep into the how too is a very mundane task.
53:27
Speaker 1: It's nicely done. Yeah, I can't wait to see it
53:29
Speaker 1: for sure. Um, have you got anything else? I got
53:32
Speaker 1: nothing else. So if you want to know more about
53:35
Speaker 1: space race, you can type space and Race in the
53:37
Speaker 1: search part house to first dot com. And if this
53:39
Speaker 1: fascinated you, you should go back and listen to our
53:42
Speaker 1: was the mood Landing a hoax episode? Uh? And our
53:46
Speaker 1: episode did Reagan Star Wars program and the Cold War,
53:49
Speaker 1: both of them excellent excellent episodes we've done and you
53:53
Speaker 1: can find them both at Stuff you Should Know dot com,
53:56
Speaker 1: Slash Podcasts, slash archive. And we did a very special
54:02
Speaker 1: television episode about the Private Space Race. So one of
54:07
Speaker 1: our ten TV episode Stuff you Should Know featured John Hodgman. Uh.
54:11
Speaker 1: And the gist of the episode is we are have
54:13
Speaker 1: been invited to do some training for private space play. Yeah,
54:18
Speaker 1: it's bax and it's a fun episode. So you can
54:21
Speaker 1: get that on iTunes and Google Play and or you
54:23
Speaker 1: can stay up until four in the morning and watch
54:25
Speaker 1: it on side. Maybe apparently they do show the late
54:29
Speaker 1: night yeah, like regularly. Yeah cool for weird I'll have
54:33
Speaker 1: to watch those. Uh. If you already said all that,
54:37
Speaker 1: I think it's time, buddy for listening, ma'am. Okay, I'm
54:41
Speaker 1: gonna call this, uh breastfeeding from Becky. Hey, guys, I'm
54:45
Speaker 1: a newer fan. I'm so glad to found y'all. I
54:48
Speaker 1: discovered your shows while looking for ways to spend the
54:50
Speaker 1: vast amount of free time I have during my day.
54:52
Speaker 1: Now my husband I just had our first child, Penelope.
54:56
Speaker 1: Do you have free time? Well, you know, raising the
54:59
Speaker 1: kid not free. I wouldn't call it free time. I agree. Um,
55:03
Speaker 1: I've discovered that breastfeeding is very time consuming. I think
55:06
Speaker 1: she means while she's breastfeeding is not a lot of use.
55:09
Speaker 1: Basically forced to sit around for long stretches of time
55:11
Speaker 1: and able to do anything besides think, read, or listen
55:14
Speaker 1: to podcasts. I feel as if our daughters already leaps
55:17
Speaker 1: and bounds ahead of all the other four month olds
55:18
Speaker 1: out there. This is a while ago, so she's even
55:21
Speaker 1: older than that. She's been educated about how meth and
55:24
Speaker 1: crack cocaine, work, sign language, human cannonballs, the amputation, castration,
55:28
Speaker 1: diplomatic community, etcetera. The list is growing longer as we
55:31
Speaker 1: worked through the archives. Made me wonder if you ever
55:33
Speaker 1: thought about doing a show on breastfeeding. I thought at
55:36
Speaker 1: first it would be a super weird experience, but I've
55:38
Speaker 1: come to really be fascinated by the process. And let's
55:41
Speaker 1: be honest, it's something with which the vast majority of
55:44
Speaker 1: humans have had firsthand experience. So we didn't do breastfeeding
55:49
Speaker 1: doing No, we totally should that. That's a great suggestion
55:51
Speaker 1: as a huge hornet's nest too. Oh yeah, yeah, well,
55:55
Speaker 1: let's step right into it. Let's do it. That's from
55:57
Speaker 1: Becky Breastfeeding Becky. Thank you, Becky, Thanks Becky. Uh. If
56:01
Speaker 1: you want to suggest an episode, we are always up
56:03
Speaker 1: for that. We love great suggestions like Becky's. You can
56:07
Speaker 1: tweet to us at s Y s K podcast. You
56:09
Speaker 1: can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you
56:12
Speaker 1: should know. You can send us an email to Stuff
56:15
Speaker 1: Podcast at how stuff works dot com. Uh, and last
56:18
Speaker 1: but not least, you can hang out with us at
56:20
Speaker 1: our home on the web, the coolest location on the Internet.
56:24
Speaker 1: It's called Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more
56:31
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
56:34
Speaker 1: Works dot com.