How the Space Race Worked

In the 1950s and 60s, the United States and the Soviet Union battled it out to see who would dominate the race for outer space. The Soviets got out to an early lead, but the U.S. would ultimately win. Learn all about the Space Race in this week's episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry laughing at me,
and uh, this is stuff you should know the podcast.
That's right, Welcome, Welcome every one. That welcome friends. That

(00:23):
was one of the best false starts we've ever had.
It was like four and one. That was weird. Jerry
hit record and Josh went, Chuck, you gotta welcome people
on the podcast. I forgot. Hey, hey, man, you're sure
it's taking me back. Man, it's taken me back to

(00:43):
July exactly five years and three hundred and sixty days
before my birth. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah, I just
calculated that really quickly. Yeah, that was pretty chuck as well,
I believe it or not. No, Yeah, you know I
was born in the seven I know, is it seventy
or seventy one. It's a nice round number, seventy one.

(01:07):
I do remember all the Space race stuff though, from
being young. Yeah, I remember the tail end obviously for sure. Well,
we had already won when I was around. Yeah, we
kind of already one since I was around, but it
was still like a big deal. It's still doing the
victory lap basically. Yeah. When I was around, it was
Space Shuttle, Space Shuttle, Space Shuttle, and as an adult,
I've not seen two of the space shuttles in person. Uh,

(01:28):
launches are just like in the hangar. The commission was
in the hangar. That's pretty cool, tho things are? He
was very cool. Yeah, yeah, they're really neat. I've never
seen one. You definitely should. There's one at the New
Air and Space Museum at Dulis Airport. I think it's
Enterprise maybe or Endeavor, and then um. You can also
see one at Kate Canaveral Kennedy Space Center, which I

(01:52):
highly recommend to anyone who's even remotely interested in space,
space exploration or the history of space. Kennedy is the
place to go. It is awesome. I've been to and
can recommend the Naval Air Station Museum in Pensacola, Florida. Okay,
and I've been Huntsville. But have you been to Space Camp? No? Man,

(02:15):
that's where Space Camp is, right Huntsville. I think so.
I don't know. If it's just look inside that movie
and all the privileged kids you got to go to
the movie was big. I never saw it. Yeah, I
mean I was at the right age where a movie
about kids in space was kind of perfect. So what's
that Huntsville then? Is it like just the the that's
like the rocket place, that's where they did the the

(02:37):
original stuff, right. I think Huntsville's before Kennedy. We should
know this stuff. I think it was in conjunction with it,
if not before it. But yes, so it was a
space center and I think it still is. Marshall is
in Huntsville. It's getting on to a great start anyway.
You like space. I like space. We're not like space

(02:57):
junkies or anything like that. We don't like Intravene Slee
injected space now like Tom Hanks. You know, we never
produced a mini series about it or anything like that,
but you know, it's an interesting thing. I think after
researching how the space race worked, it occurred to me
that there's at least two other episodes that we should

(03:17):
do how the moon landing worked, where he did did
they fake the moon landing? Which was a pretty good one,
but we should do one like assuming that it actually happened,
and then uh, the International Space Station or just space
stations in general, like the history of the like Skylab Mirror,
you know, the I S s. Totally should Okay, so

(03:38):
we'll do those people we have committed ourselves, like John
Kennedy committed America to put a man on the moon
by the end of the sixties. So we're going to
do our podcasts on space stations. Yeah. So, like I said,
you took me back to July nine, So let's take
everybody back. Do you want to get in the way
back machine? Oh? Man? Yeah? Well the stuff this thing

(04:11):
and did you leave like a halfy eating cheeseburger in here?
Something is funky? Yeah, I thought that might keep. It's
not keeping. Sorry, there's a mongoose in here. We can
just go back in time to when that burger was fresh,
good thinking. Will you share it with me? You obviously
only wanted half. Well that's why we all know we're kidding,
because Chuck didn't leave behind a half of cheeseburger. Silly. Okay,

(04:34):
So Chuck, here we are. I assume this is yeah,
it's July, and we're gonna listen in as you and
I do a dramatic reading of the transmission between mission
control and the lunar Landing Module I'll be mission control.

(04:54):
Then I'll beat eagle. Okay, thirty seconds uh in prencies
of fuel remaining? Okay and stop de segent command over
righte off, We copy you down, Eagle. Here's a tranquility
base here. The Eagle has landed, Roger, tranquility. We copy

(05:19):
you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys
about the term blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot,
Yeah it is. We're all wearing short sleeve shirts with ties. Uh,
we're all cool under pressure. We've got flat tops and
a lot of people don't know. I didn't know actually
until I read this that when the landing module for

(05:39):
Apollo eleven, the first time human set foot on the
Moon that we know of, um, the there was a
really tense moment where they were about to run out
of fuel as they were trying to land. That's what
that thirty seconds thing was from. And had they run
out of fuel, all three or all two astronauts on
board who landed would have died. Yeah. I mean they

(06:00):
basically had to uh do it manually. Yeah, they took over.
That's why they had. As Tom Wolfe put it, the
right stuff. Great great book, great great movie, I've never
read the book, but the movie is amazing, so good.
If if you're out there and well, if you're a
fan of space, then you've seen the right stuff. That

(06:21):
just reminded me. Remember when I told you about garbage
pails stew So, I guess it must have been for
my dad's birthday or something. My family rented the right
stuff and we made garbage pails too. That was part
of the thing. Yeah every year. No, yeah, yeah, we
didn't like my dad that much. Yeah, we got a
listener mail from someone in Michigan that did the garbage
jack and awesome. I did not see that one, so

(06:43):
it must have been a Midwestern thing. Okay, so I'm
not insane in either is my father? No? But see
the Right Stuff people, really really great movie that encapsulates
the Mercury program and the Mercury Seven and uh plus
uh leave on Helm, isn't it is that? Yeah? Great?
Who did you play? He was? He was not one
of the Mercury seven. He was he got cut your

(07:06):
cut now. I don't think he was even an astronaut training.
I think he was just part of the support military crew.
I can't remember exactly. It's been a while Yeah, that's
an odd cameo. It wasn't came It was a genuine part, right,
But I mean, like, why leave on helm he acts?
Oh I didn't know that. Yeah, he was in coal
Miner's Daughter and stuff. And he was in that Marquee
Mark movie a couple of years ago, shoot Shooter, Shooter, Sniper.

(07:35):
We done. Yeah, alright, alright, we got way off. Anyway,
When Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, buzz Aldrin
was close on his heels. Uh. That ended effectively a
more than a decade of what was known as the
Space Race. Yeah, very exciting time in the United States. Yeah.

(07:57):
People were way way into it. Yeah, it was it
was like, um, people cared. Yeah, it was like how
the voice is viewed now. Oh boy, you know, I
guess I've ever seen that show if it really happens
a nice So the Space Race, it was this kind

(08:17):
of this we should define it. It was this Cold
War byproduct of the tensions between the US and the USSR,
which we're competing for utter dominance in over the world
one way or another. And um, out of that quest
for dominance came a an uneasy balance of polarization and

(08:44):
you're either with one side or against them. There was
very few neutral states, uh, And from this came kind
of a just a constant challenge. It was each country
drove the other to try to advanced technologically, economically, um
and just every single way. And it was kind of

(09:06):
a really fruitful time, especially if you are into the
whole military industrial complex gig. Yeah. But from from this
competition we reached the Moon. The Soviets ended up building
a mere space station. Like everything we know about space
came out of this race. This tension between the US
and the USS are Yeah, and it was it's pretty neat,

(09:29):
like the early space programs were. It was all brand new.
So it wasn't like let's see how much work we
can get done up there. It was let's see if
we can get up there. Let's see if this guy
won't die if we shoot him up there. And it
was like logical steps like can we put a chip
up there? Can we put a ship with a jump,
Can we put a ship with a human? Can we
put too humans? How long can they stay? Can they

(09:51):
dock with other ships and meet other astronauts? Can we
actually trick them into drinking tank? Yeah? Exactly. And then
eventually all right, we feel like we and get up there.
Now we need to start accomplishing some things besides just
getting up here. That's right. I mean they brought back
lunar rocks and things. Don't get me wrong, they had
goals aside from hitting a golf ball on the moon.

(10:12):
But I just find it really remarkable that it's and
logical that it was all just a series of steps
and each time we try to one up one another.
It was progress for the world, for mankind. And it's
really difficult to overstate the effect that that rivalry had.
I mean, we'll kind of see that, you know, if

(10:32):
I want to achieve something. The other one was like,
we've got to top you somehow by tenfold. Yeah, you
send the man, we send the woman. Right, Yeah, yeah, Yeah,
that was a good one. Like it was a lot
of everyone's trying to get a first in there. Exactly.
I thought you were doing Sean Connery doing the Ford October. No,

(10:52):
they bring a knife, you bring a gun. No. If
you thought that was my Irish accent, then I'm worse
than I thought I've made. Yeah, just I'm not hearing right, Okay,
So the the Space Race put us into space. Everything
we now understand and know and have in space, and
a lot of stuff on Earth is directly related to
the space race, and the space race we trace back

(11:15):
to the Nazis. Yeah, it's funny those space races between
the US and Russia. But it was really Germany. Yeah,
that kind of started everything. During World War two, Nazi
Germany had a world class rocket program led by a
guy named Werner von Braun. Yeah, and von Braun um.

(11:35):
At some point during World War two, I guess saw
the writing on the wall. He came up with the
V two rocket, which was the scourge of Britain. Yeah,
it's uh. It was the first ballistic missile, and ballistic
missile means it's not steered, it's fired on a trajectory
and then just regular forces of nature and mechanics run

(11:56):
the show, as opposed to a cruise missile which is steered.
But it could it could hit London from like a
launch pad around the Baltic Sea if they did their
calculations correct. So von Braun had developed the V two rocket,
and at some point during World War two, I guess
he saw the writing on the wall that he and
he lost faith that the Germans were gonna win. So

(12:18):
he got together some of his fellow rocket scientists, literal
rocket scientists uh, and said, hey, let's surrender to the Americans.
I'll bet you if we come to them and bring
some knowledge and schematics and stuff, that they'll just totally
ignore the whole Nazi thing. And they were right, kind
of work, uh, And Hitler pouted and um died. And

(12:43):
then we got these dudes, Van Broun in particular, and
took him to White Sands, New Mexico and said you
now work for us, And they said great, because you
guys got better food and cool cars and and women. Yes,
there's like everything you need in New Mexico, Land of
Land of plenty. Uh. You ever been to White Sands? No,

(13:06):
I have it. It's pretty cool. Van Nostrum went, or No,
he went to the Trinity testing site. That's not White Sands.
I don't think so. No. Um. So White Sunds relocated
to Huntsville and Marshall, Yes, so I was right by
calling a Marshall, Yes, Marshall Space Flight Center. So the
Soviets did the same thing. They poached a bunch of
Nazi rocket scientists and created their own program under the

(13:30):
leadership of a very talented and apt Russian named Sergei Kralov.
And so basically it was von Braun versus Kralov. Teams
of Nazi scientists working in the USSR in the USA,
working with obviously American colleagues, Soviet colleagues, and Germany is like,
what about our space program? They're They were like, you're lucky.

(13:52):
We even let you have a flag right now. Um,
and that was the start of the space race. And
that's that's incorrect. There was a program developed, rocket program developed,
another rocket program developed, and at the time, both of
these nascent US and Soviet rocket programs they were designed

(14:12):
to blow each other up. But at some point the
scientists said, hey, how about rather than pointing them over Earth,
how about up, let's shoot these things up and see
what we can do. Yes, uh, like maybe carry a
satellite space Eisenhower and this jumping ahead a little bit.

(14:34):
He also had the foresight to say, you know what, Uh,
space is fun and all, but we can use this
for military purposes. So he started a couple of national
security programs, one for the military potential of using these rockets,
and the other one with the CIA. To say that
was called the the National Reconnaissance Office, and that was

(14:55):
secret until the nineties. Yeah, is it still around. I
don't think so. It's codename Corona. And that was Eisenhower saying, well,
if we can get satellites up there, and maybe we
can start spying on the Russians with these satellites. So
there was I was kind of surprised to learn that
intelligence was behind some of this that early on. Yeah. So,

(15:16):
uh the beginning what's called uh it was an International
Geophysical Year, and that was when a bunch of scientists
got together and said, hey, let's get together from all
over the world and let's all do some put our
heads together to do some like serious studying of our planet.
That nate, yes, super neat. They said, Okay, well, like

(15:38):
we've got these governments, these incredibly powerful governments behind us,
let's see if we can use it for some good
Like yes, we'll create their spy satellites and whatnot, but
let's also see if we can funnel some of that
funding towards space exploration, putting satellites into orbit. Let's see
what we can do. And they did, and as a
as a result, both the United and the USSR as

(16:01):
a result of this International Geophysical Year, UM said we're
going to be the first to launch a satellite in
the orbit, and the race was on. That was the beginning.
What was that? That's right, And one thing is clear
if you know anything about the space race, is that
the US was getting their butts kicked in the early

(16:22):
part of that game. Like, if this is a four
quarter game, I would say the first at the halftime,
they were probably losing about the half. Somewhere in the
half they started to come back and maybe she changed
momentum around the half, okay, so like they had definitely
lost all of the first quarter. Okay, but if this
is basketball, they had to run late in the second quarter,

(16:43):
maybe to get the fans fired up, Okay, exactly. The
Soviets definitely start We're winning early though, um with their
sput Nick one, which means traveler in Russian, and they
launched that on October four, nineteen fifty seven, So they
were the first ones to launch a sad all it
in this space. That's right. They scored that first point
they did, there was a big one. Well it's a

(17:04):
big one they had. They seem to want to do
things a little more robustly than Americans. Americans seemed to
be a little more conservative, like with how many rockets
can we put on, how fast can it go? How
what should the payload be? And the Russians were pushing
the boundaries a little or sorry the Soviets, um, but
they were Russians. Yeah rescues yeah, um, but they had

(17:25):
a payload much larger than than the Americans were willing
to try. But we weren't too far behind. Um. About
four months later, in January thirty first, nineteen eight, we
launched launched our Explorer one right, and actually we launched
Explorer which was finally attached to a Juno rocket, which
was von Braun's design. And the reason we didn't launch

(17:47):
one first was because for some reason America had decided
to go with a different rocket design and ignored von Braunze. Yeah,
and space experts historians say we most likely would have
gotten one up there before the Soviets had we just
stuck with von Braun's design because it would have been
ready earlier and it proved that it could have worked,

(18:07):
so we could have beaten them, but we didn't. And
that's actually the first point scored by the Soviets. So
after that it was like, Okay, well what's next. What's
the next logical step from there? Start NASA? Yeah, I guess,
so we need a bureaucracy here. Yeah, Congress passed the
Space Act and that's what created NASA, and the Soviets

(18:30):
created their space program Russ Cosmos and said let's do this,
uh in earnest And it's pretty interesting when we're gonna
go over some of the differences here. It's interesting to
see this early, some of the different approaches, just some
of the basic approaches to what each nation thought was
like the way to the way to go. Um. So

(18:52):
here's one of them. The Soviet rockets, like I said,
were more powerful. So right off the bat, they were
using more juice, right. The Soviets were using what are
called Voss Stock rockets early on in the beginning of
their program. Uh and uh the Americans were using Redstone
and Atlas rockets. Yeah. And this is when we started
the Mercury program. Like we referenced in the right stuff,

(19:14):
the Mercury Seven, Scott Carpenter, Heroes, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn,
Gus Grisson, uh, Wally Shira, Alan Shepard, and Deek Slayton.
Those were some brave, like they would be the guys
today that are wearing like those wingsuits and jumping off mountains.
You know that they were the early uh what do

(19:35):
you what do you call those thrill seekers? What's the
word for him? Early thrill seekers? Now extreme, That's what
I was looking for. Mountain dew code red mountain dew.
Uh want to go ahead? So I was gonna say
you you can kind of like, um, the programs were
We're started and finished roughly at around the same time.

(19:58):
So you have the Mercury program going on in America initially,
and at the same time, the Soviets are carrying out
their voss Stok program. So another difference is that the
Soviets were like, uh, everything that they did super secret
about it all, and it was tough to you know,
you can't turn on the TV and get a lot
of information about uh the cosmonaut of the month um,

(20:21):
which by the way, I was like, how do you
pronounce that in Russian? And apparently it's very close it's
cosmon f not well. Yeah, I was curious about the
word not as a suffix, and apparently that came from
the Greek. Yeah, like nautical. So they're they're space sailors essentially.

(20:42):
Don't you think it would radically alter our view of space?
In the International Space Station and everything. Everyone we're called
cosmonauts or astronauts if they you basically took away any
kind of national or ethnic identity once you got out
in space, like everybody was an astro Oh yeah, I
thought you were going to say if they use sailor

(21:04):
instead of not and it was Astra sailor, Cosmo sailor.
Everybody was a dream sailor once you got on the space. No.
I think you're totally right. I mean, I think that's
like naming your teams. It is because like even now China,
since Tycho knots in there in this space, so you
can say, just just by reading a news report, you
know who's up there. Yeah, there's a Tycho, not a

(21:24):
cosmonaut and an astronaut. Well, you're totally right, there's no accident. No, Um,
so divisive. Well it was a space race. Yeah, it's
not a shuttle relay. That's true. Um, and not space shuttle.
You know what I mean, I knew it. You mean, okay,
I'm sure most people out there. So, Um, the Soviets
were secret the Americans were not. We proudly broadcasted our

(21:47):
successes and failures for the world to see. And there
were some failures. There were. We should say that when
the USSR launched spot Nick, Um, we had not one
but two major failure they kind where the rocket will
go up and then just come right back down and
explode on the launch pad kind of failures and they

(22:07):
were dubbed things like flop Nick and caput Nick, and
it was very demoralizing for America. Or a pre launched
test catching fire and losing three of our astronauts, including
Gus Grissom, Well that was the beginning of the Apollo program. Yeah,
but that one didn't even that was that was on
the launch pad, that was a test. Was that televised?

(22:28):
I don't know about that, but they still don't know
what caused the actual fire. But um, the oxygen UH
chamber did not help. No, they used to they used
to pump a hundred percent oxygen rather than an air mixture.
I think now it's like thirty percent aboard like the
I S S. But they would they would have a
hundred percent oxygen and there was extremely flammable and yeah,

(22:51):
don during a test, I think in January of nineteen
sixty seven. UM, they the catsule caught fire and killed
three astronauts inside within like five minutes, the fire burned
itself out and they were dead. Luckily they supposedly died
from smoke inhalation. But which is what quicker? Yeah, they're burning, Yeah,

(23:14):
but I don't know well, And the Soviets were the
actually the first ones to learn that pure oxygen wasn't
a good idea, and they didn't tell us that obviously,
not because their program was in secret. Yeah. One of
the other differences I thought was pretty interesting was that
the Soviets um used a spherical capsule uh, in which

(23:35):
the cosmonaut just rode along and they ejected and parachuted
out and the capsule crashed into land, whereas we had
our our funny shaped capsule that the astronauts actually drove,
so they were pilots, and they splashed down into the
sea still in the capsule. So again, two completely different approaches.

(23:58):
And I just find it interesting that, you know, the
Americans like, no, we want our pilots to fly and
fly into the ocean because it's a soft place to land.
And you know, it worked, didn't Somebody I think one
of those guys, Jeff Bezos or somebody like that. We
found one of the original mercury capsules at the bottom
of the ocean. Interesting. Yeah, that neat pictures of it underwater. Well,

(24:23):
the benefits of a spherical spacecraft as it can enter
the atmosphere just however it wants to. Whereas you got
to kind of nail that with the with the mercury
capsule comical. You couldn't just go in there like upside down. Yeah,
you have to use your boosters to thrust into place
and just your yaw and all that stuff. Pilots dude. Yeah,

(24:44):
well it's like Apaul of thirteen. That was one of
their big concerns was being accurately angled to re enter
the atmosphere. Els they were in big trouble. That's scary.
That was such a good movie too. Yeah, that was good.
The vomit comment, Yeah, do you remember for that? That's
what they use for to train and to shoot. That's

(25:04):
how they simulated to Yeah. I still love to write
on the thing. I bet it's awesome. Have you ever
seen that footage of those girls like on the Vomit
comment or something similar? Girls? Yeah, there's three girls in
a seat and one of them throws up and it
just goes right back into her face, and this kind
of hovers there. Have you not seen that? No, I

(25:25):
gotta send that to you. Is there real? Yeah? Yeah, man,
it is gross. What are they doing putting girls in
the vomit comment? They what? No, I mean not like
seven year old girls? Women? Women. We heard from our
feminist listeners and they said girls is better than females.

(25:45):
Girls is successible. I'm just coming with that. No, no, no no,
I'm still amazed that people just say female if they're
not talking about like a study or something. You know,
I've been listening over there and anyone say that it's
actually very very common female male. Yeah, it's very common.
You've done your own, uh an impromptu survey just by

(26:08):
being alive, man, being awake. Yeah. No, And it wasn't
like the vomit comment, Like, I don't think it was
the one that like Ron Howard wrote on it was
a right at Disney. It's basically it looks a lot
like a light aircraft that's doing a nose dive, but
they're they're basically waitless for a second, So it's obviously
not a light aircraft. But it just looks small. But

(26:29):
that girl just pukes in her own face. It is
so gross, all right, So just to clear it up,
Chuck wasn't saying that women should not be allowed in
vomit comments, and Josh wasn't saying that the women in
the vomit comments were seven year old. I think that
does well, put thank you. So the Soviets scored the
second point as well. Second touchdown Big one April twel

(26:51):
nineteen sixty one. They actually put cosmonaut uh Euri Gagarin
uh into space and he was the first man in
space and the first man to orbit the Earth, and uh,
that was egg on the face of the US at
that point on fourteen nothing. Yeah, I think if you
could like give him a couple of touchdowns for that one,

(27:12):
you should nothing. Yeah, I mean, like Urie was the
first person in space and again apparently America could have
been the first. But it's actually better that, um, I guess.
Von Braun said, we need to schedule a more test
than the percent certain about putting a human in here,

(27:33):
and um they they they added one more test, which
pushed Alan Shepherd's Freedom seven flight back by a couple
of months, which put it a month after Uri Gagarin's flight, Right,
so we could have done it. But even if we had,
the Russians still would have basically beaten us. They would
have gotten at least some points even for being second,

(27:55):
because Alan Shepherd's flight was basically shot up into a
suborbital edition and came right back down. It was a
fifteen minutes suborbital space flight, which you can do now
if you've got like a hundred grands pretty much. Um,
what you'r Garon did was he shot up into actual
Earth orbit and orbited the Earth, the entire Earth once,

(28:17):
and then came back down a hundred and eight minutes later.
So yeah, straight up and down in fifteen minutes or
up full orbit of the Earth and back down a
hundred and eight minutes. I mean it's actually good that
we came second in that anyway, And that chuck that
lit the fire beneath America's bottom, like we gotta get going, yeah,

(28:41):
because think about it, I mean, like we're down three touchdowns.
Who wrote this one? Craig Freud and Rich right, he
points out, like this is the time of the followed
the McCarthy trials. Um, the people did not like the Soviets.
America really wanted to dominate, and we were getting our

(29:01):
butts kicked publicly by the USSR and it was demoralizing.
But rather than let ourselves get beat down, Kennedy got
with NASA and said, what can we do to beat
these guys? That's right, because not only with those two
things were they beating us, but they at one point
during UH this time had more hours in space, this

(29:25):
one rocket than all of ours put together. Yeah, so
we were getting trounced bad. So they were basically just
doing like victory lap after victory lap, like they would
send guys up in orbit the Earth one after the other. Yeah.
At the end of the UM the Vostok UH program,
which was their first program, I believe, yes, their first program.

(29:48):
By the time they finished it, they had not only
sent the first man in his space, they sent the
first woman in his space, Valentina Tereshkova, and she orbited
the Earth forty eight times in Vostok six. During the
Mercury program, I think the best we came up with
was Gordon Cooper doing twenty two times around the Earth.

(30:09):
So they were just crushing us um and just racking
up the points left and right. That's right. So America says,
you know what, we should develop something a new program,
and that's how it works. You know, they have a program,
it does what it does over a period of years.
Then they retired that they start up in newing. The
new program was the Gemini program, and the Soviets started

(30:31):
the Voss called program on a little bit and they
again got out to a little early lead with that
program because they were the first to send multiple cosmonauts up,
sent three into vols called one and then had a
spacewalk before we did Alexei Leonoff and Volscott two March

(30:55):
eighteenth nineteen. So there's still they're still beating us at
this point. They are, but by this time, just a
couple of weeks after Alan Shepherd's first flight and while
we're still just reeling from the the the Ryga Garan flight,
Um Kennedy came out onto the news and said, you

(31:19):
know what, we're going to be the first to put
a man on the Moon, and we're gonna do it
before the decades out. He kind of declared that the
finish line almost like whoever does this and it's gonna
be us. We'll win and this is a substantial gold
is set. I mean, like we've been beaten twice and
like you said, trounced um by the Soviets, and now

(31:41):
we're suddenly saying like, oh yeah, let's go to the moon.
Let's see who's first to the moon. And uh that
set the foundation for everything to follow. That began the
Gemini program, which, like you were saying, the Mercury program,
Each program was designed to kind of prove that we
could do with certain step. The Mercury program proved that

(32:03):
a human being could go into space and safely come
back down, could orbit the Earth. These next two programs,
I guess the next Soviet program, what is it again? Yeah,
that one proved that a person could survive out in
space outside of a space capsule or space transport um.
And the Americans had Gemini, which ultimately bridged the gap

(32:26):
between Mercury program and the Apollo program, which would put
us on the Moon. And both the vox Shot and
the Gemini programs were like putting multiple people in space
together to work and do neat stuff, that's right. And
uh so with Gemini early on we were like, all right,

(32:47):
you guys are beaten into the punch. You're getting people
up there, and you can fly around the Earth a
bunch of times. You got the quantity part down, But
we've got to focus on quality here in the US
and learn how to do things up there like change orbits.
Can you do that? Rusky? And they said, and yet
And so all of a sudden we were flying around

(33:08):
up there, changing orbits, um rendezvousing with other spacecraft, docking
with rockets, and you can fly around the Earth as
much as you want, but we're actually putting putting our
work into practice, like you know, what's it gonna take
to get on the moon. Since someone up there for
two weeks and dock with someone else, change orbits, fly

(33:29):
that thing around. And we were able to do that successfully.
And that's when we started pulling ahead because the Soviets
were just doing laps around the Earth. Well, they were
doing some other stuff they did do, like spacewalks and
stuff like that. But yeah, it was these two programs
are where we started to pull away. And um, it
was that Gemini program that we used to to prove

(33:49):
that we could do things like spend two weeks in space,
which is how long it would take, Like he said
to go to the moon and back. Yeah, and the
Soviets were doing a lot of unmanned missions at the time,
or sending animals up their data gathering stuff like that. Yes,
there were a lot of animals sent to space that
that perished, that never came back, or that came back

(34:12):
in as fireballs. It's sad. I went to this museum,
um do you mean? I did? In in l A.
It's called the Museum of Jurassic Technology. You should go.
It is the most unique, peculiar museum you will ever
go to in your life. But one of the exhibits
is a hall of portraits of Soviet space dogs. Oh

(34:35):
really pretty neat, interesting and sad because they all ended
up dead. Huh yeah, it's it's sad. But the tone
of them more is the national pride, Like these dogs
gave their life the advancement of humans. Yeah. But I mean,
like if you, if you step back and really think
about it, these portraits are very much like human portraits.
Like the dogs are like looking up right, uh, you know,

(34:57):
into the future, with their chin raised and like their
their breast you know, proud. Yeah, yeah, and yeah there
the way they're done, it's neat. Well what they're looking
at is a dog treat. They're staring at the effect. Yeah, uh,
that's pretty neat. I'm gonna check that out. Oh you
need to go, man, go with a child's heart. Well,

(35:20):
I have no choice then, Okay, that's the only heart
I have. Uh all right. So where we're Project Jim
and I, we have a little bit of a momentum.
We we have what it takes. We have the right stuff,
if you will, to make it to the moon and
to walk around up there. And that is when Apollo
one caught fire, which was a pretty big setback in

(35:41):
January nine seven. Yeah, I mean, like, not only do
we lose like three of our great astronauts, these guys
were some of the originals. Um, I imagine that it's
scared the living daylights out of all the other astronauts
and all of the people in mission control in NASA
and Americans like, you know, this is everybody knew it
was dangerous, but now it was proven like it's deadly.

(36:04):
So this is a deadly endeavor that we're undertaking here. Yeah,
they knew that, they knew how dangerous it was. That's
why all their wives were just you know, no, no,
I don't. I don't mean that might mean more like
the American public. Oh yeah, like yeah, you're right now,
we're losing people. Now. These aren't like dogs like these
are three guys you know, yeah, totally, and people that
America had grown to love, you know, like national heroes

(36:26):
at this point, right like the voice you gotta quit
saying that. And so after the fire, actually they disassembled
the launch pads but left the posts as a permanent
memorial to Apollo one astronauts. Yeah, and rebuilt launch pads elsewhere. Alright,
So at this point, the Soviets are concentrating on, like

(36:49):
I said, unmanned spacecraft. They're like, all right, you can
go walk on the moon, but we're gonna send We're
gonna orbit the Moon at least, and we're gonna develop
some docking systems and um, seeing how long we can
stay up there. Other David Blaine esque feats of strength, right,
which is kind of neat Like at some point around
nineteen sixty seven sixty eight, the Soviets said, it's obvious

(37:13):
the Americans are going to make it to the moon.
We're not going to send a man to the moon
right now within time to be first. So let's pursue
some other stuff that the Americans aren't doing, Like what's
the big deal about the moon anyway? Right, And as
it turns out that kind of right, kind of um.
But humanity as a whole benefited from that decision because

(37:35):
the while the Americans were perfecting what the Americans were
perfecting things like space shuttles and that kind of stuff,
things that came directly out of the Apollo program and
the lunar landing and just that that science. The Russians were,
like you said, experimenting with things like docking systems, space stations.
They ended up building the Mirror and so after the

(37:56):
sky Lab. Yeah, we had sky Lab in the seventies,
which I again go to the National Air and Space Museum.
There's two. There's one at Dullest and then there's one
like on the mall in d C. Yeah, it's like
when it's one of the main Smithsonian museums. They have
like a model of skylight that you can walk through.
It's so seventies rrific, It's awesome. Yeah. Um, so we

(38:19):
were experimenting with space stations, but at the same time
it was very apparent after well, it wasn't the end
of the Cold War. This is before the end of
the Cold War, but after we won, after we landed
on the Moon, apparently the Soviets and Americans said, hey,
let's see if we can work together, and they actually
did in a very symbolic but also technically um proficient

(38:43):
manner the Soyo's Apollo mission of And we'll talk more
about that right up in this break man. That music
that's got me fired up. I know. Wow, we already won,

(39:04):
even yeah, at least the first time. All right, So
we left off you were talking about the joint Apollo
Soya's test project UM, which was a really big deal
to get together on this, and I'm I'm kind of
surprised even back then that they had the foresight to
work together, you know. Yeah, but because then we still
weren't like great friends his nation in the early seventies, no,

(39:27):
and space was still a huge question as to whether
or not it could or should or would be weaponized too, Yeah, exactly.
So for the two dominant superpowers on the planet to
get together was a big deal. Yeah, And that happened
in they literally got together in space when an Apollo
craft carrying three of our astronauts hooked up and docked
with the Soya's spacecraft with two cosmonauts, and they spent

(39:50):
a couple of days, uh, you know, working and probably
getting into one another, maybe drinking vodka. Yeah, they're probably
We're not so different. We don't have to go to
space and get drunk. Exactly. It's the best. I like tang,
you like tank, right, let's put some podka in it. Exactly.
So that was a big deal. And UM, at least

(40:10):
from that, it proved that we could work together, our
space agencies could work together, and UM it led to
this this age of cooperation that grew directly out of
the rivalry. UM. And like we said, the Russians were
kind of paying attention to living for the duration in space.
The Americans big thing was this Space Shuttle. We basically

(40:34):
had like some cars that we could drive to the
Moon or space and back. Um, and we kind of
put the two together. Um. The Russians had the Mere
Space Station and in the nineties their crews had worked
in the eighties or nineties, I don't remember their crews.
At least one crew had spent more than a year

(40:54):
in space. That was huge, super huge because part of
the goal with all of these is, can we one
day live in space? Period? And so ultimately this led
to this joint cooperation led to the International Space Station
UH in the nineties. Yep. And if you go up
to the International Space Station, you're gonna see Russians and
you're gonna see Americans and they're all up there working together. Still. Oh,

(41:17):
but Chuck, that is possibly changing. Yeah, I guess I
should have said had been working together nicely, like good neighbors.
Because is it Russia trying to like evict this now? Well,
they're basically saying like, hey, you guys can't get up
there anymore because and we're not going to give you
a ride. No, well, no, they will give us a ride,
but it's seventy one million dollars a ride now yeah,

(41:40):
and um, at the very least, it's humiliating that Americans
are having to hit your ride from Russians who are
basically extorting money from us. So is this all at
the root of it? Is it like just tensions between
Putin and the US? Yeah, it all came from the
Ukraine stuff in the sanctions. One of the first Russians
to be anction was the head of the Russian Space Agency.

(42:03):
So They were like, oh really, you know that's that's
space station up there, Like, you guys are in trouble now,
So I wonder is it not going to be the
International Space Station anymore? I think what Russia is basically
saying is watch what happens when we stopped giving you
guys ride right, and then we say, you know what,
let's just let the space station fall out of orbit.

(42:25):
We Russia will still have a space flight program, a
human space flight program. You guys won't because the International
Space Station is the only piece of human space flight
equipment that the United States has because the space Shuttle
program was scrapped. Wow. Uh so the space Shuttle was scrapped,
Like you said, um Bush before he left office sort

(42:48):
of had to read a directive for NASA moving forward
that is moot now because Obama scrapped a lot of it,
um Bush want to go back to the moon basically,
and even some of the people within NASA said, it's
like Apollo on steroids, and do we really need to
go back to the moon, Like what can we gain
from that at this point? So Obama scrapped it and

(43:10):
redirected NASA's funding towards more rocket technology. Research like how
can we fire rockets farther and uh, can we refuel
them in flight? And not just for military, but maybe
this stuff can be useful, uh, you know in the
space program as well. So that is the current space program.

(43:32):
But there's a new space race. Yeah, um ish China. Yeah,
has come along and very methodically and plaudingly has followed
and met its space goals. Two thousand three put its
first man in space. What do you said? They were
taco nuts, Tyco nuts, Psycho nuts. Yeah. Yeah, one of

(43:55):
the um I read an article about China's space race
and they said, so far their space program program is
roughly equivalent to the US and Soviet space program circum
mid sixties. I saw that too. Yeah, so they're clearly behind,
but apparently they are making a lot of headway in
a short amount of time. Plus they have the luxury

(44:17):
of not having to invent items like microchips from scratch,
right that people, the Russians in the so in the
Americans and the space race had to do. Um. The
fact is, though, if you if you read anything about
China and it's space ambitions and the United States in
the state of its current space program, you basically find

(44:40):
you're sitting around reminiscing about the golden days of Tang
and guests. Grissom. Yeah, we're we're China is basically going
to dominate space. They're poised to dominate space. They very
cleverly have started a space uh station program that will
come online at the same time that the I S S,

(45:04):
the International Space Station UM makes its fiery ark in
to the Pacific Somewhere I read, Yeah, the I S
S is going to come down some time after two
thousand sixteen, probably two thousand twenty, and the United States
will have no presence in space any longer. China will
be the only game in town with the space station.

(45:25):
And I feel like, I don't know that this is true,
but I feel like in something like space space exploration, UM,
that's kind of something that you have to build on momentum.
Once you use momentum, you really are set back. Like

(45:46):
all of these people who are working for NASSA who
have been laid off recently, and as they age out
and retire and and all of that cumulative knowledge and
and organizational memories lost. So even if we m to
ten years from now, five years from now and say,
whoa we're a spacefaring nation. We need to get back

(46:07):
out there. We've lost quite a bit already, not to
mention in the ensuing five or ten years where we
start to lose exponentially more. Yeah, it takes a while
to ramp that back up. And my my I agree.
My fear is this that we're going to take our
typical or what's come to be our typical klectocratic view
of things and just let private business handle it. We'll

(46:29):
just let you know, SpaceX handle it. For America. They're
addicted the money, so they're in their pursuit of money.
Um will benefit as a nation. Well, that hasn't necessarily
worked out for us with like you know, housing markets
and stock markets and dangerous chemicals and that kind of thing.
So while I do think that the true space race

(46:50):
right now is between private industry amongst itself and private
industry and China, I don't think that as a nation,
by sitting back and just leaving it to private industry
and virtually withdrawing our federal dollars from space exploration, that
the United States is going to benefit in any way,
shape or form. Well, Yeah, especially when you hear Aston

(47:12):
Kutcher is going up on Virgin Galactic. How's that helping us?
It's not Angelina Jolie's up there, though, I don't know.
I mean, I think it's neat, but it's it's one
of those private space travel for the super rich. It's
just like another thing for the super rich, like owning

(47:33):
a yacht, Like, how does that benefit me that if
you've got several hundred thousand dollars you can take a
suborbital flight, which is basically like a tourist. You know,
that's not that's not advancing I don't think that's advancing
our space exploration at all. Just leave it to business.
We'll see. And that's not to say that SpaceX or

(47:55):
or any of the private space industries aren't working to
do things beyond send movie stars enriched people to space. No,
they're working to send the rest of us to space too.
It's just the rich people and movie stars are the
ones who will have the money to hit that first
price point. But they're doing other things too, though, like
research or are they not? Uh, Like that's what I

(48:17):
need to look at. I would imagine that probably most
of the goals of anything like SpaceX or any company
like that is to is to make money from space,
so I would guess mining, um, basically selling the services
to space agencies, colonizing and selling a moon condos. Sure,

(48:39):
like India, Iran, Um. These countries have space programs as
well and are entering space themselves. Space X can go
basically contract for them. Um. Yeah, they're they're doing stuff,
but they're not doing stuff necessarily just for the pursuit
of science like for the US even Yeah yeah, um,
I got a couple of things before we finish. There's

(49:02):
some inventions that sometimes are mistakenly attributed to NASA which
aren't necessarily true, but our favorites in space. Yeah. Velcro
is the one I've always heard that's wrong, is it? Yes?
It was invented in the nineties by a hiker who
um noticed that little birds were stuck to his socks

(49:22):
and wondered how they stuck. I've heard that story. Look closely.
This is the true story. Look closely and saw that
birds have little hooks and his socks have little loops,
and that gave rise to velcon and velcro is used
a lot by NASA, so it's often wrongfully attributed to NASA.
All right, this is a fun game, since you you
know this stuff? Okay. How about Eminem's No, the popular

(49:43):
candy that melts in your mouth and on in your hands. No,
they also don't like squish around in space. The candy
coated shell makes it great for space travel, but not
invented four space. What about the joystick? Yes, okay, that
is the direct result of the Space Race and the
space programs. What about GPS? Yeah, because you can't spell

(50:06):
Global Positioning satellite without positioning. Yeah it system, isn't it?
GPS system? Yeah? It uses satellites. So we also have
the space race bot that one. We also have the
space face to thank for satellite TV. Uh. What about
um smoke detectors in your home? Yes, because of Space

(50:28):
program base yeah. Um. What about tang sopping dots, the
freest dride, the dipping dots. I don't know, man, that
was supposed to be like the you know, outer space
ice cream. It's what the answer? Not tan supposedly, but
I don't know if it was developed by NASSA for them.

(50:48):
Um Tang. No, it was already around freeze drive foods.
The freeze drying process was already around the freeze drive
blood to save for later. Um. But then NASA adopted
it to start free drying food, so technically you can
thank NASA for free drive food. Yeah, and while tang
was not invented by the Space program, it was definitely,

(51:10):
um heavily marketed as being tied to the space program,
and it was a big deal. Like it was like
people gave it to their kids because they thought it
would make them go into space. Yeah, like stronger and
smarter and yeah, pretty much you got what are what
are some other? I have one more for you. Have
you ever heard there's like this um urban legend that

(51:30):
the American Space program and the Soviet Space program both
had this problem. Um, the the Americans they needed to
be able to write in space, but if you use
a pen, pens are functioned by gravity, and if you're
in zero gravity you can't use a pen Seinfeld, had
an astronaut been right, Yeah, So supposedly that NASA spent

(51:51):
millions of dollars in coming up with a zero G pen,
while the Soviets had a much better idea pencil. Was
that really? Yeah? Wow, So apparently that's an urban myth.
Both programs used pencils to start, but the Apollo one
fire showed that you don't want anything that's even remotely flammable,
like a wooden pencil aboard your spacecraft. So NASA started

(52:15):
using mechanical pencils, which were a couple of hundred dollars
a piece. They were way over paying them for him. Um.
And then a man by the name of Fisher, who
owned Fisher Pen Company, used his own millions of dollars
to create a pressure functioning pen rather than gravity functioning pen,
a space pen, which he in turns sold to the

(52:35):
US Space program and eventually the Soviet space program for
just a few dollars each. So that millions of dollars
space pen is a myth that you that's your Paul
Harvey moment. Uh pencils and hey, shout out to our
buddy David Reese, who wrote the quintessential books how to

(52:56):
sharpen Pencils book. Yep, not books, but if you want
to know about sharpening pencils, that's the way to go.
There's a book and he will explain that. And he's
a great funny guy than a friend. So yeah, he's good.
I always like to plug that. He's got a new
show coming out. Well, um, what that geo? Oh yeah, yeah,
what's it about. It's called Going Deep with David Reese,

(53:16):
where he each episode is like how to open a Door,
how to make ice, how to Squatterfly, where he goes
deep into the how too is a very mundane task.
It's nicely done. Yeah, I can't wait to see it
for sure. Um, have you got anything else? I got
nothing else. So if you want to know more about
space race, you can type space and Race in the

(53:37):
search part house to first dot com. And if this
fascinated you, you should go back and listen to our
was the mood Landing a hoax episode? Uh? And our
episode did Reagan Star Wars program and the Cold War,
both of them excellent excellent episodes we've done and you
can find them both at Stuff you Should Know dot com,
Slash Podcasts, slash archive. And we did a very special

(54:02):
television episode about the Private Space Race. So one of
our ten TV episode Stuff you Should Know featured John Hodgman. Uh.
And the gist of the episode is we are have
been invited to do some training for private space play. Yeah,
it's bax and it's a fun episode. So you can
get that on iTunes and Google Play and or you

(54:23):
can stay up until four in the morning and watch
it on side. Maybe apparently they do show the late
night yeah, like regularly. Yeah cool for weird I'll have
to watch those. Uh. If you already said all that,
I think it's time, buddy for listening, ma'am. Okay, I'm
gonna call this, uh breastfeeding from Becky. Hey, guys, I'm

(54:45):
a newer fan. I'm so glad to found y'all. I
discovered your shows while looking for ways to spend the
vast amount of free time I have during my day.
Now my husband I just had our first child, Penelope.
Do you have free time? Well, you know, raising the
kid not free. I wouldn't call it free time. I agree. Um,
I've discovered that breastfeeding is very time consuming. I think

(55:06):
she means while she's breastfeeding is not a lot of use.
Basically forced to sit around for long stretches of time
and able to do anything besides think, read, or listen
to podcasts. I feel as if our daughters already leaps
and bounds ahead of all the other four month olds
out there. This is a while ago, so she's even
older than that. She's been educated about how meth and
crack cocaine, work, sign language, human cannonballs, the amputation, castration,

(55:28):
diplomatic community, etcetera. The list is growing longer as we
worked through the archives. Made me wonder if you ever
thought about doing a show on breastfeeding. I thought at
first it would be a super weird experience, but I've
come to really be fascinated by the process. And let's
be honest, it's something with which the vast majority of
humans have had firsthand experience. So we didn't do breastfeeding

(55:49):
doing No, we totally should that. That's a great suggestion
as a huge hornet's nest too. Oh yeah, yeah, well,
let's step right into it. Let's do it. That's from
Becky Breastfeeding Becky. Thank you, Becky, Thanks Becky. Uh. If
you want to suggest an episode, we are always up
for that. We love great suggestions like Becky's. You can
tweet to us at s Y s K podcast. You

(56:09):
can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you
should know. You can send us an email to Stuff
Podcast at how stuff works dot com. Uh, and last
but not least, you can hang out with us at
our home on the web, the coolest location on the Internet.
It's called Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more

(56:31):
on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
Works dot com.