WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.760 You know, you might look up at the moon on a 00:00:01.760 --> 00:00:06.599 clear night and see, well, a glowing symbol of 00:00:06.599 --> 00:00:08.759 human achievement. Right. A testament to our 00:00:08.759 --> 00:00:11.300 boundless curiosity. Exactly. It feels so peaceful 00:00:11.300 --> 00:00:14.439 up there. But today, we are going to look at 00:00:14.439 --> 00:00:16.920 the night sky through a completely different 00:00:16.920 --> 00:00:19.820 lens. A much darker one. Yeah. We are going to 00:00:19.820 --> 00:00:22.579 look at it as the ultimate Cold War battleground. 00:00:22.839 --> 00:00:26.120 Which fundamentally changes how you view those 00:00:26.120 --> 00:00:28.079 early triumphs. I mean, when you strip away the 00:00:28.079 --> 00:00:30.519 romance and the polished public relations campaigns 00:00:30.519 --> 00:00:32.479 of the mid 20th century, the black and white 00:00:32.479 --> 00:00:35.640 photos of smiling astronauts. Exactly. The early 00:00:35.640 --> 00:00:38.240 days of space exploration were not born out of 00:00:38.240 --> 00:00:40.939 some noble, unified desire to touch the stars. 00:00:41.179 --> 00:00:44.140 They were forged in the fires of geopolitical 00:00:44.140 --> 00:00:48.039 paranoia and, well, military rivalry. OK, let's 00:00:48.039 --> 00:00:50.219 unpack this, because to truly understand how 00:00:50.219 --> 00:00:52.799 human beings managed to leave this planet, We 00:00:52.799 --> 00:00:56.200 have to acknowledge a very uncomfortable, honestly 00:00:56.200 --> 00:00:59.560 terrifying historical truth. It is terrifying. 00:00:59.960 --> 00:01:02.179 Everything we know about orbital mechanics, satellite 00:01:02.179 --> 00:01:04.819 technology, and deep space travel started with 00:01:04.819 --> 00:01:07.500 weapons of mass destruction. That is the undeniable 00:01:07.500 --> 00:01:10.599 foundation. Right. So we are going to trace this 00:01:10.599 --> 00:01:13.719 entire timeline, impartially breaking down the 00:01:13.719 --> 00:01:16.859 triumphs and the darkest, most closely guarded 00:01:16.859 --> 00:01:19.319 secrets of both the United States and the Soviet 00:01:19.319 --> 00:01:21.599 Union. And we should clarify our goal isn't to 00:01:21.599 --> 00:01:24.140 take a political stance on capitalism versus 00:01:24.140 --> 00:01:27.480 communism here. No, not at all. The mission of 00:01:27.480 --> 00:01:29.840 this deep dives is to uncover the raw engineering 00:01:29.840 --> 00:01:32.620 and the sheer psychological pressure that pushed 00:01:32.620 --> 00:01:35.379 humanity into the cosmos. And to do that, we 00:01:35.379 --> 00:01:37.819 really can't start our story in space. Right. 00:01:37.859 --> 00:01:39.900 We have to start in the rubble of World War Two. 00:01:39.939 --> 00:01:42.459 We do, because the vehicles that eventually carried 00:01:42.459 --> 00:01:46.079 humans to the stars, they were originally engineered 00:01:46.079 --> 00:01:49.659 to deliver explosives to European cities. It's 00:01:49.659 --> 00:01:51.959 wild to think about. It is. If you want to trace 00:01:51.959 --> 00:01:54.180 the technological lineage of the modern space 00:01:54.180 --> 00:01:58.140 age, all roads lead back to Nazi Germany. Specifically, 00:01:58.180 --> 00:02:01.620 they lead to a weapon called the V2 rocket. Developed 00:02:01.620 --> 00:02:04.019 by Werner von Braun, right? Yes, von Braun and 00:02:04.019 --> 00:02:06.760 his engineering team at Peenemünde. And for anyone 00:02:06.760 --> 00:02:09.000 unfamiliar with the V2, it wasn't just like another 00:02:09.000 --> 00:02:11.860 bomb. It was a technological leap that changed 00:02:11.860 --> 00:02:14.099 the paradigm of warfare literally overnight. 00:02:14.479 --> 00:02:18.020 It was the world's first long -range guided ballistic 00:02:18.020 --> 00:02:20.530 missile. I mean, before the V2, if you wanted 00:02:20.530 --> 00:02:23.050 to bomb London, you had to fly a heavy bomber 00:02:23.050 --> 00:02:25.710 across the English Channel. Right. Brave the 00:02:25.710 --> 00:02:28.650 anti -aircraft fire, evade fighter planes, and 00:02:28.650 --> 00:02:31.650 then physically drop the payload. Exactly. The 00:02:31.650 --> 00:02:33.830 V2 bypassed all of that. It was launched from 00:02:33.830 --> 00:02:36.009 the continent, flew right to the edge of space 00:02:36.009 --> 00:02:39.430 at supersonic speeds, and just plunged down on 00:02:39.430 --> 00:02:41.650 its target. And because it was traveling faster 00:02:41.650 --> 00:02:43.590 than the speed of sound? You didn't even hear 00:02:43.590 --> 00:02:45.990 it coming until after it had already exploded. 00:02:46.129 --> 00:02:48.830 Wow. It was absolute unstoppable. terror from 00:02:48.830 --> 00:02:51.750 above. So the war ends in 1945, the Third Right 00:02:51.750 --> 00:02:54.830 collapses, and suddenly you have these two emerging 00:02:54.830 --> 00:02:58.050 global superpowers. The United States and the 00:02:58.050 --> 00:03:00.169 Soviet Union. Right, standing in the ashes of 00:03:00.169 --> 00:03:02.310 Europe. They look at this V2 technology, they 00:03:02.310 --> 00:03:04.550 look at the destruction it caused, and they both 00:03:04.550 --> 00:03:07.310 instantly realize that the future of global dominance 00:03:07.310 --> 00:03:09.969 doesn't belong to airplanes anymore. No, airplanes 00:03:09.969 --> 00:03:12.430 were suddenly obsolete in that strategic sense. 00:03:12.689 --> 00:03:15.289 It belongs to rocketry. So what happens, I mean, 00:03:15.449 --> 00:03:17.599 they just scramble for the tech. It triggered 00:03:17.599 --> 00:03:21.460 an immediate frantic scramble. Both nations knew 00:03:21.460 --> 00:03:24.900 they had to capture not just the remaining physical 00:03:24.900 --> 00:03:28.379 V -2 rockets, but the mines that actually conceived 00:03:28.379 --> 00:03:31.060 them. The engineers. Right. The United States 00:03:31.060 --> 00:03:33.780 launched a highly classified intelligence program 00:03:33.780 --> 00:03:36.379 called Operation Paperclip. I've heard of it. 00:03:36.460 --> 00:03:38.879 Yeah, they successfully located and recruited 00:03:38.879 --> 00:03:41.740 Wernher von Braun and a massive contingent of 00:03:41.740 --> 00:03:44.560 his top scientists. The U .S. military brought 00:03:44.560 --> 00:03:47.120 them to White Sands, New Mexico. And what did 00:03:47.120 --> 00:03:49.900 they tell them? Just build us rockets. Essentially, 00:03:50.139 --> 00:03:53.340 yes. They said, reassemble these captured V2s, 00:03:53.360 --> 00:03:55.680 show our engineers exactly how the plumbing and 00:03:55.680 --> 00:03:58.280 the guidance systems work, and, you know, build 00:03:58.280 --> 00:04:00.639 us an American rocket program. Meanwhile, the 00:04:00.639 --> 00:04:03.979 Soviet Union is running its own parallel intelligence 00:04:03.979 --> 00:04:06.199 operation, like in their occupation zone. They 00:04:06.199 --> 00:04:08.759 absolutely were. The Soviets managed to capture 00:04:08.759 --> 00:04:11.780 several key V2 production facilities and testing 00:04:11.780 --> 00:04:13.819 grounds that fell within their territory. Did 00:04:13.819 --> 00:04:16.279 they get scientists, too? They did. They rounded 00:04:16.279 --> 00:04:19.100 up a significant group of German aerospace experts 00:04:19.100 --> 00:04:21.420 who hadn't made it to the American lines. The 00:04:21.420 --> 00:04:23.959 most notable of these was a team led by Helmut 00:04:23.959 --> 00:04:26.930 Gritrup. Who was he? A brilliant guidance control 00:04:26.930 --> 00:04:30.610 engineer. The Soviet military essentially packed 00:04:30.610 --> 00:04:33.629 Gruchrup and his team onto trains, sent them 00:04:33.629 --> 00:04:36.009 deep into the Soviet Union, and ordered them 00:04:36.009 --> 00:04:39.089 to help jumpstart the Soviet rocketry initiative. 00:04:39.370 --> 00:04:41.990 But the way the two countries utilize these captured 00:04:41.990 --> 00:04:44.649 scientists was fundamentally different, right? 00:04:45.129 --> 00:04:47.110 Which kind of sets the stage for everything that 00:04:47.110 --> 00:04:49.290 follows. It's a critical divergence. I mean, 00:04:49.430 --> 00:04:51.629 the Americans eventually integrated von Braun 00:04:51.629 --> 00:04:54.610 into the very core of their aerospace infrastructure. 00:04:54.769 --> 00:04:57.589 He became like the public face of the U .S. space 00:04:57.589 --> 00:05:00.759 program. Exactly. But the Soviet strategy was 00:05:00.759 --> 00:05:03.399 much more insular. They used Grotrupp and his 00:05:03.399 --> 00:05:06.100 German colleagues to understand the V -2, asking 00:05:06.100 --> 00:05:09.040 them to draft designs for improved versions. 00:05:09.259 --> 00:05:11.680 So they just learned from them? Yeah. The Soviets 00:05:11.680 --> 00:05:14.180 built an exact replica of the V -2, which they 00:05:14.180 --> 00:05:17.199 called the R -1 rocket. But once the Soviet engineers, 00:05:17.319 --> 00:05:19.839 under the leadership of their own fiercely brilliant 00:05:19.839 --> 00:05:22.939 chief designer, Sergei Korolev... Wait, Sergei 00:05:22.939 --> 00:05:25.180 Korolev? Yes, remember that name. He's central 00:05:25.180 --> 00:05:27.939 to this. Once Korolev and his team felt they 00:05:27.939 --> 00:05:30.339 had extracted all the necessary knowledge, they 00:05:30.339 --> 00:05:33.740 completely isolated the German scientists. Really? 00:05:34.060 --> 00:05:36.620 To shut them out? Completely. The Soviets wanted 00:05:36.620 --> 00:05:38.939 their advanced rockets to be purely indigenous 00:05:38.939 --> 00:05:41.579 designs. So the starting gun for the space race 00:05:41.579 --> 00:05:43.600 wasn't fired on a launch pad with a countdown. 00:05:43.980 --> 00:05:46.259 It was fired in the chaotic intelligence gathering 00:05:46.259 --> 00:05:49.079 of 1945. That's a great way to put it. But what 00:05:49.079 --> 00:05:52.139 turns this from just like an engineering exercise 00:05:52.139 --> 00:05:54.860 into an existential crisis is the nuclear arms 00:05:54.860 --> 00:05:57.879 race. The ultimate game changer. Right. In 1949, 00:05:58.139 --> 00:06:00.660 the Soviet Union successfully detonates its first 00:06:00.660 --> 00:06:04.000 nuclear weapon, the RDS -1. Now, both the US 00:06:04.000 --> 00:06:06.860 and the USSR possessed the ultimate bomb. But 00:06:06.860 --> 00:06:09.620 having a nuclear weapon is only half the geopolitical 00:06:09.620 --> 00:06:11.439 equation. Because you have to be able to deliver 00:06:11.439 --> 00:06:14.000 it to your enemy's doorstep. Exactly. And in 00:06:14.000 --> 00:06:16.920 the early 1950s, the only delivery method was 00:06:16.920 --> 00:06:19.519 a strategic bomber. Which, like we said, are 00:06:19.519 --> 00:06:21.540 slow. They can be tracked by radar networks. 00:06:21.720 --> 00:06:24.259 Or intercepted by fighter squadrons. Or shot 00:06:24.259 --> 00:06:26.180 out of the sky by surface -to -air missiles. 00:06:26.859 --> 00:06:29.339 Both superpowers recognize that if you could 00:06:29.339 --> 00:06:31.939 miniaturize a nuclear warhead enough to put it 00:06:31.939 --> 00:06:34.779 on the tip of a massive rocket. An intercontinental 00:06:34.779 --> 00:06:38.540 ballistic missile. An ICBM. Yes, an ICBM. If 00:06:38.540 --> 00:06:41.220 you could do that, you'd change the rules of 00:06:41.220 --> 00:06:43.959 engagement. You could launch a weapon from your 00:06:43.959 --> 00:06:46.579 own soil, send it up into the vacuum of space 00:06:46.579 --> 00:06:48.699 where there is no air resistance. And have it 00:06:48.699 --> 00:06:50.699 strike a target on the opposite side of the planet 00:06:50.699 --> 00:06:53.379 in what, 30 minutes? Roughly 30 minutes, yes. 00:06:53.439 --> 00:06:56.360 It's the ultimate unblockable punch. I mean, 00:06:56.500 --> 00:06:58.279 you're not sending a delivery truck. You're building 00:06:58.279 --> 00:07:00.879 a FedEx overnight tube that travels through the 00:07:00.879 --> 00:07:03.379 exosphere. That's terrifyingly accurate. There 00:07:03.379 --> 00:07:06.860 was absolutely no defense against an ICBM in 00:07:06.860 --> 00:07:10.399 the 1950s. If it launched, the target was obliterated. 00:07:10.600 --> 00:07:13.500 Period. Which creates this frantic, terrifying 00:07:13.500 --> 00:07:15.959 missile race. And this is where the engineering 00:07:15.959 --> 00:07:18.899 paths of the two nations start to diverge in 00:07:18.899 --> 00:07:21.540 a way that accidentally dictates the entire early 00:07:21.540 --> 00:07:23.920 space race. It really was an accident of engineering. 00:07:24.240 --> 00:07:26.279 We have to look closely at the specific missiles 00:07:26.279 --> 00:07:28.540 they were building to understand why the Soviet 00:07:28.540 --> 00:07:31.300 Union took such a massive early lead in space. 00:07:31.720 --> 00:07:34.480 The differences in those early ICBMs really just 00:07:34.480 --> 00:07:36.740 come down to payload weight. OK, break that down 00:07:36.740 --> 00:07:40.100 for us. In 1953, Sergei Korolev and his design 00:07:40.100 --> 00:07:42.819 bureau began developing the Soviet Union's first 00:07:42.819 --> 00:07:47.319 true ICBM, the R -7 Semyorka. The R -7. Right. 00:07:48.019 --> 00:07:50.920 At this point in history, Soviet nuclear physicists 00:07:50.920 --> 00:07:54.079 were still refining their bomb designs. The thermonuclear 00:07:54.079 --> 00:07:56.319 warhead they intended to place on the R -7 was 00:07:56.319 --> 00:07:59.439 massive. Like, how massive? Rudimentary and incredibly 00:07:59.439 --> 00:08:01.839 heavy. We are talking about a payload weighing 00:08:01.839 --> 00:08:04.180 between five and a half and six metric tons. 00:08:04.420 --> 00:08:07.399 Oh, wow. Which is an absurd amount of dead weight 00:08:07.399 --> 00:08:09.660 to try and push into the upper atmosphere. It 00:08:09.660 --> 00:08:12.060 required a behemoth of a launch vehicle. I mean, 00:08:12.259 --> 00:08:15.300 to lift a 610 warhead across the globe, Korolev 00:08:15.300 --> 00:08:17.459 couldn't just build a taller rocket. He had to 00:08:17.459 --> 00:08:19.920 rethink the thrust mechanics entirely. So what 00:08:19.920 --> 00:08:22.529 did he do? The R7 wasn't a single pencil -shaped 00:08:22.529 --> 00:08:25.089 tube. It was a cluster design. It featured a 00:08:25.089 --> 00:08:27.889 massive central core surrounded by four strap 00:08:27.889 --> 00:08:29.709 -on booster rockets. Oh, so they all fire at 00:08:29.709 --> 00:08:31.910 once. Yes. They would ignite simultaneously on 00:08:31.910 --> 00:08:34.009 the launch pad and then fall away as the rocket 00:08:34.009 --> 00:08:37.429 gained altitude. At liftoff, the R7 generated 00:08:37.429 --> 00:08:40.690 an astonishing initial thrust of over 400 tons. 00:08:40.889 --> 00:08:43.629 400 tons. It was raw brute force engineering. 00:08:43.889 --> 00:08:46.190 Now, contrast that with what the United States 00:08:46.190 --> 00:08:48.769 was doing at the exact same time. The U .S. was 00:08:48.769 --> 00:08:52.179 developing the Atlas. missile. Right. But American 00:08:52.179 --> 00:08:54.860 physicists had achieved a breakthrough in warhead 00:08:54.860 --> 00:08:57.659 miniaturization, right? Yeah. Their nuclear bombs 00:08:57.659 --> 00:09:00.879 were significantly lighter and much more compact. 00:09:01.259 --> 00:09:03.960 Which changed everything for the rocket designers. 00:09:04.559 --> 00:09:07.440 Therefore, the American aerospace engineers didn't 00:09:07.440 --> 00:09:11.000 need to build a 400 -ton thrust monster. They 00:09:11.000 --> 00:09:13.539 could build something sleeker. And they took 00:09:13.539 --> 00:09:15.519 that mandate for a lightweight vehicle to an 00:09:15.519 --> 00:09:18.159 extreme. Oh, they absolutely did. The Atlas missile 00:09:18.159 --> 00:09:20.799 featured what engineers call a balloon tank design. 00:09:20.940 --> 00:09:24.120 A balloon tank. Yeah. Most rockets have a rigid 00:09:24.120 --> 00:09:26.840 internal framework, like the skeleton of a building 00:09:26.840 --> 00:09:29.179 with the fuel tank sitting inside. Makes sense. 00:09:29.639 --> 00:09:32.059 The Atlas designers stripped all of that internal 00:09:32.059 --> 00:09:34.700 bracing away to save weight. The outer skin of 00:09:34.700 --> 00:09:37.539 the rocket was just very thin stainless steel. 00:09:37.759 --> 00:09:40.480 Wait, so what kept it from crumpling? The missile 00:09:40.480 --> 00:09:42.419 actually relied on the internal pressure of its 00:09:42.419 --> 00:09:45.340 own fuel and nitrogen gas to keep it from collapsing 00:09:45.340 --> 00:09:47.379 under its own weight. So it's literally like 00:09:47.379 --> 00:09:49.639 a pressurized balloon. I mean, if you take the 00:09:49.639 --> 00:09:51.799 air out of a Belenico's lamp, if you let the 00:09:51.799 --> 00:09:53.740 pressure out of an Atlas missile on the launch 00:09:53.740 --> 00:09:56.740 pad, the entire multi -million dollar rocket 00:09:56.740 --> 00:09:59.000 would just crumple into a pile of steel foil. 00:09:59.159 --> 00:10:01.100 Exactly. It would just collapse. The obsession 00:10:01.100 --> 00:10:03.279 with weight saving on the Atlas was so intense 00:10:03.279 --> 00:10:05.039 that they didn't even want to add the weight 00:10:05.039 --> 00:10:08.120 of a coat of paint. Which created a massive logistical 00:10:08.120 --> 00:10:11.419 headache. A huge one. Because these rockets were 00:10:11.419 --> 00:10:13.960 being tested and staged on the coast of Florida 00:10:13.960 --> 00:10:17.330 at Cape Canaveral. You have bare stainless steel 00:10:17.330 --> 00:10:21.649 sitting in the hot, incredibly humid, salty ocean 00:10:21.649 --> 00:10:24.230 air. The missiles began to rust before they could 00:10:24.230 --> 00:10:26.889 even be launched. And this leads to one of my 00:10:26.889 --> 00:10:29.789 absolute favorite bizarre historical connections. 00:10:30.830 --> 00:10:33.289 The aerospace contractors realized they needed 00:10:33.289 --> 00:10:36.529 some kind of chemical solvent, like a water displacement 00:10:36.529 --> 00:10:39.049 formula. Right, to wipe down the outside of the 00:10:39.049 --> 00:10:41.470 Atlas rockets and protect the bare steel from 00:10:41.470 --> 00:10:43.429 the floor to humidity without adding the weight 00:10:43.429 --> 00:10:46.279 of paint. Exactly. So they handed the problem 00:10:46.279 --> 00:10:49.259 to a small chemical company in San Diego. The 00:10:49.259 --> 00:10:52.259 chemists tried dozens of different mixtures. 00:10:52.700 --> 00:10:55.700 Formula 1 failed. Formula 20 failed. They just 00:10:55.700 --> 00:10:58.620 kept trying. Finally, on their 40th attempt, 00:10:59.100 --> 00:11:01.779 they perfected the chemical makeup. Water displacement, 00:11:01.940 --> 00:11:05.169 40th formula. WD -40. It's an amazing story. 00:11:05.450 --> 00:11:07.669 The exact same blue and yellow can sitting under 00:11:07.669 --> 00:11:10.289 your kitchen sink right now, which you use to 00:11:10.289 --> 00:11:13.509 fix a squeaky door hinge, was literally invented 00:11:13.509 --> 00:11:16.429 to stop early American nuclear missiles from 00:11:16.429 --> 00:11:18.929 rusting on the launch pad. It perfectly illustrates 00:11:18.929 --> 00:11:21.570 how high stakes military problem -solving bleeds 00:11:21.570 --> 00:11:24.190 into everyday consumer technology. It's wild. 00:11:24.490 --> 00:11:26.610 But to bring the focus back to the aerospace 00:11:26.610 --> 00:11:29.629 engineering, the disparity in size between the 00:11:29.629 --> 00:11:31.970 Atlas and the R -7 is the single most important 00:11:31.970 --> 00:11:34.309 factor of the late 1950s. Because they were built 00:11:34.309 --> 00:11:36.769 for totally different bombs. Exactly. The American 00:11:36.769 --> 00:11:39.590 Atlas was an elegant, highly optimized, lightweight 00:11:39.590 --> 00:11:42.090 missile meant to carry a light weapon. The Soviet 00:11:42.090 --> 00:11:44.590 R -7 was a brute force leviathan designed to 00:11:44.590 --> 00:11:46.750 carry an exceptionally heavy weapon. So essentially 00:11:46.750 --> 00:11:49.210 none of this initial rocketry was a noble quest 00:11:49.210 --> 00:11:51.559 for scientific knowledge. Not even a little bit. 00:11:51.799 --> 00:11:54.919 To use an analogy, it's like two extremely paranoid 00:11:54.919 --> 00:11:57.759 neighbors deciding to build increasingly massive 00:11:57.759 --> 00:12:00.139 sniper rifles to aim at each other's living rooms. 00:12:00.240 --> 00:12:02.940 That's a good way to picture it. But then one 00:12:02.940 --> 00:12:05.539 day they suddenly decide to point those same 00:12:05.539 --> 00:12:08.740 rifles up at the sky and shoot apples into orbit 00:12:08.740 --> 00:12:10.919 just to prove to the rest of the neighborhood 00:12:10.919 --> 00:12:14.330 how incredibly powerful their weapons are. If 00:12:14.330 --> 00:12:17.009 we connect this to the bigger picture, that analogy 00:12:17.009 --> 00:12:20.090 highlights the accidental Soviet advantage. Right. 00:12:20.250 --> 00:12:22.649 When the geopolitical goals shifted from just 00:12:22.649 --> 00:12:24.690 threatening each other to actually placing a 00:12:24.690 --> 00:12:27.529 satellite in orbit, K -load disparity became 00:12:27.529 --> 00:12:30.250 everything. Because satellites are heavy. Exactly. 00:12:30.570 --> 00:12:32.590 If you want to launch a satellite, especially 00:12:32.590 --> 00:12:34.690 a heavy one filled with scientific instruments, 00:12:34.950 --> 00:12:37.450 you need a heavy lift launch vehicle. The Soviet 00:12:37.450 --> 00:12:40.620 Union already had one sitting on the pad. Right. 00:12:40.840 --> 00:12:43.600 The R7 was perfectly suited for space exploration 00:12:43.600 --> 00:12:46.080 by sheer accident of its nuclear requirements. 00:12:46.779 --> 00:12:49.480 The United States did not have a heavy lift vehicle 00:12:49.480 --> 00:12:52.340 ready. And the staggering part of this is that 00:12:52.340 --> 00:12:55.240 the U .S. intelligence community was completely 00:12:55.240 --> 00:12:58.879 blind to this Soviet advantage. I mean, the CIA 00:12:58.879 --> 00:13:02.379 entirely misjudged what Sergei Korolev was building. 00:13:02.659 --> 00:13:05.259 They really did. They suffered from a classic 00:13:05.259 --> 00:13:07.779 intelligence failure known as mirror imaging. 00:13:08.000 --> 00:13:10.360 Mirror imaging. What's that? It's when you assume 00:13:10.360 --> 00:13:12.620 your adversary thinks and builds exactly like 00:13:12.620 --> 00:13:15.779 you do. When the CIA analysts tried to estimate 00:13:15.779 --> 00:13:18.620 Soviet rocket capabilities, they looked at their 00:13:18.620 --> 00:13:22.159 own highly optimized, lightweight American Atlas 00:13:22.159 --> 00:13:25.169 rocket. Oh, I see. And they wrongly assumed the 00:13:25.169 --> 00:13:27.789 Soviets must be following the exact same engineering 00:13:27.789 --> 00:13:30.250 philosophy. So when the Soviets eventually began 00:13:30.250 --> 00:13:32.870 launching massive, heavy satellites, the CIA 00:13:32.870 --> 00:13:35.309 was just utterly bewildered. They couldn't understand 00:13:35.309 --> 00:13:37.690 it. They worked the math backward from the weight 00:13:37.690 --> 00:13:40.470 of the objects in orbit and concluded the Soviet 00:13:40.470 --> 00:13:43.590 rockets must weigh an impossible 500 metric tons 00:13:43.590 --> 00:13:45.929 and operate on some three -stage system they 00:13:45.929 --> 00:13:47.289 couldn't fathom. They just couldn't wrap their 00:13:47.289 --> 00:13:48.789 heads around the cluster design. Because they 00:13:48.789 --> 00:13:50.710 refused to believe the Soviets would build something 00:13:50.710 --> 00:13:53.500 so drastically different. What makes this intelligence 00:13:53.500 --> 00:13:56.279 failure even worse is that the CIA actually had 00:13:56.279 --> 00:13:59.240 human intelligence warning them about this. Wait, 00:13:59.379 --> 00:14:01.899 they did? Remember Helmut Grotrup, the German 00:14:01.899 --> 00:14:04.480 scientist the Soviets took? Oh right, the one 00:14:04.480 --> 00:14:07.539 who helped build the R1. Exactly. He eventually 00:14:07.539 --> 00:14:09.740 returned to the West. He sat down with Western 00:14:09.740 --> 00:14:12.480 intelligence and explicitly told them that Soviet 00:14:12.480 --> 00:14:14.860 engineers were utilizing completely different 00:14:14.860 --> 00:14:17.440 design concepts. He told them they were doing 00:14:17.440 --> 00:14:19.360 it differently. Yes. Different thrust -to -weight 00:14:19.360 --> 00:14:21.840 ratios, prioritizing different systems than the 00:14:21.840 --> 00:14:25.460 Americans. But the CIA analysts dismissed him. 00:14:25.580 --> 00:14:27.720 You're kidding. They ignored the human intelligence 00:14:27.720 --> 00:14:31.039 because it conflicted with their own rigid engineering 00:14:31.039 --> 00:14:34.879 assumptions. That hubris perfectly sets up the 00:14:34.879 --> 00:14:37.379 massive psychological shock that the American 00:14:37.379 --> 00:14:40.019 public is about to endure. Because as we move 00:14:40.019 --> 00:14:43.440 into the mid -1950s, all of these giant ICBMs 00:14:43.440 --> 00:14:46.340 are being built. tested, and occasionally exploding 00:14:46.340 --> 00:14:48.759 in deep secrecy. Lots of explosions. But the 00:14:48.759 --> 00:14:51.279 Cold War wasn't just a military standoff. It 00:14:51.279 --> 00:14:55.080 was a sprawling global ideological theater. You 00:14:55.080 --> 00:14:57.919 couldn't just have weapons hidden in silos. No. 00:14:58.059 --> 00:15:00.500 You had to actively demonstrate to the unaligned 00:15:00.500 --> 00:15:03.220 nations of the world that your system of government 00:15:03.220 --> 00:15:07.299 produced superior technology, superior intellect, 00:15:07.980 --> 00:15:10.580 and, well, a superior future. So the transition 00:15:10.580 --> 00:15:13.360 from secret missiles to highly visible public 00:15:13.360 --> 00:15:16.210 satellites was inevitable. The catalyst for that 00:15:16.210 --> 00:15:18.830 transition really arrived in the summer of 1955. 00:15:19.090 --> 00:15:21.269 What happened then? The international scientific 00:15:21.269 --> 00:15:24.070 community was organizing the International Geophysical 00:15:24.070 --> 00:15:27.169 Year. It was a massive coordinated global effort 00:15:27.169 --> 00:15:29.509 to study the Earth and its environment, scheduled 00:15:29.509 --> 00:15:33.850 to run from 1957 to 1958. Seizing the opportunity 00:15:33.850 --> 00:15:36.169 to demonstrate technological prowess under the 00:15:36.169 --> 00:15:38.870 banner of peaceful science, the White House announced 00:15:38.870 --> 00:15:42.149 in July 1955 that the United States intended 00:15:42.149 --> 00:15:44.539 to launch small Earth -circling satellite as 00:15:44.539 --> 00:15:47.460 their primary contradiction to this global initiative. 00:15:49.980 --> 00:15:52.600 But the Soviet response was incredibly swift, 00:15:52.700 --> 00:15:54.940 wasn't it? It took exactly five days. Five days. 00:15:55.220 --> 00:15:57.340 Less than a week after the American announcement, 00:15:57.480 --> 00:15:59.639 a Soviet scientist attending an astrophysics 00:15:59.639 --> 00:16:02.500 conference in Copenhagen casually mentioned to 00:16:02.500 --> 00:16:05.059 a group of international reporters that the USSR 00:16:05.059 --> 00:16:07.580 also intended to launch a satellite in the near 00:16:07.580 --> 00:16:10.179 future. Just casually drop that in? Yeah, but 00:16:10.179 --> 00:16:12.559 that casual announcement was actually the result 00:16:12.559 --> 00:16:15.700 of intense internal lobbying. Sergei Korolev 00:16:15.700 --> 00:16:18.179 used the American press release as leverage. 00:16:18.279 --> 00:16:20.590 And he played the political game? Masterfully. 00:16:20.909 --> 00:16:23.330 He went to the Soviet Academy of Sciences and 00:16:23.330 --> 00:16:26.590 the Politburo and essentially argued the Americans 00:16:26.590 --> 00:16:29.450 have declared their intentions. If we do not 00:16:29.450 --> 00:16:31.629 fund a satellite program immediately, they will 00:16:31.629 --> 00:16:33.730 beat us and it will be a global embarrassment 00:16:33.730 --> 00:16:36.330 for international communism. And it worked. It 00:16:36.330 --> 00:16:38.129 worked perfectly. He successfully secured the 00:16:38.129 --> 00:16:40.309 funding purely on the basis of beating the United 00:16:40.309 --> 00:16:43.629 States. But the way these two nations handle 00:16:43.629 --> 00:16:46.509 the public relations of this impending space 00:16:46.509 --> 00:16:49.779 race couldn't have been more different. Let's 00:16:49.779 --> 00:16:52.440 examine the Soviet strategy first, because it 00:16:52.440 --> 00:16:55.200 relied on a concept that historians call the 00:16:55.200 --> 00:16:58.700 space curtain. Right, the space curtain. The 00:16:58.700 --> 00:17:01.899 Soviet Union managed its entire space exploration 00:17:01.899 --> 00:17:05.279 initiative as a top -secret military operation. 00:17:05.700 --> 00:17:08.519 There was no, like, civilian space agency in 00:17:08.519 --> 00:17:12.069 the USSR. No. Korlov's design bureau was directly 00:17:12.069 --> 00:17:14.250 subordinated to the Ministry of General Machine 00:17:14.250 --> 00:17:16.670 Building. Which sounds incredibly vague. It was 00:17:16.670 --> 00:17:19.150 designed to be. It was the exact same ministry 00:17:19.150 --> 00:17:23.170 responsible for building the nuclear ICBMs. The 00:17:23.170 --> 00:17:26.509 space cut -in was a policy of absolute impenetrable 00:17:26.509 --> 00:17:29.390 secrecy beforehand. They revealed nothing. So 00:17:29.390 --> 00:17:31.690 no public countdowns, no press conferences? Never. 00:17:31.789 --> 00:17:34.269 Launches were never scheduled publicly. A launch 00:17:34.269 --> 00:17:35.910 was only announced to the world by the state 00:17:35.910 --> 00:17:38.589 news agency TSS after the satellite was already 00:17:38.589 --> 00:17:41.690 safely in orbit. That is wild. The identities 00:17:41.690 --> 00:17:44.049 of the chief designers, including Korolev himself, 00:17:44.170 --> 00:17:46.890 were considered state secrets. Even the physical 00:17:46.890 --> 00:17:49.190 appearance of the R -7 rocket was hidden from 00:17:49.190 --> 00:17:52.049 the global public for years. It's a brilliant, 00:17:52.210 --> 00:17:55.329 if deceptive, propaganda strategy. I mean, you 00:17:55.329 --> 00:17:57.769 only ever show the world your flawless victories. 00:17:58.490 --> 00:18:01.690 If a rocket blew up on the pad, and we know now 00:18:01.690 --> 00:18:04.470 that many of them did, the world simply never 00:18:04.470 --> 00:18:09.309 heard about it. It created this terrifying, monolithic 00:18:09.309 --> 00:18:12.289 illusion that the Soviet engineering apparatus 00:18:12.289 --> 00:18:15.289 was infallible. Winston Churchill once described 00:18:15.289 --> 00:18:18.289 the actions of the Soviet Union as a riddle wrapped 00:18:18.289 --> 00:18:21.430 in a mystery inside an enigma. That's a perfect 00:18:21.430 --> 00:18:23.769 quote for this. It perfectly encapsulates their 00:18:23.769 --> 00:18:26.470 space program. They projected absolute technological 00:18:26.470 --> 00:18:29.250 dominance simply by hiding all of their failures 00:18:29.250 --> 00:18:32.019 in the dark. Meanwhile, in the United States, 00:18:32.380 --> 00:18:34.859 President Dwight D. Eisenhower is operating under 00:18:34.859 --> 00:18:36.940 a completely different framework, with a totally 00:18:36.940 --> 00:18:39.299 different set of anxieties. Very different anxieties. 00:18:39.440 --> 00:18:41.559 It's common in pop history to hear Eisenhower 00:18:41.559 --> 00:18:44.240 criticized for lacking vision, for letting the 00:18:44.240 --> 00:18:46.440 Soviets beat America to space because he just 00:18:46.440 --> 00:18:48.420 didn't care about satellites. I hear that all 00:18:48.420 --> 00:18:50.759 the time. But that's a profound misreading of 00:18:50.759 --> 00:18:53.279 history, isn't it? Eisenhower was intensely focused 00:18:53.279 --> 00:18:55.759 on the space race, but his primary concern was 00:18:55.759 --> 00:18:58.859 international law. This is perhaps the most crucial 00:18:58.859 --> 00:19:01.420 nuance of the early space age. You really have 00:19:01.420 --> 00:19:04.160 to put yourself in the legal mindset of the 1950s. 00:19:04.480 --> 00:19:07.160 For decades, international law recognized that 00:19:07.160 --> 00:19:10.460 a nation's sovereign airspace extended directly 00:19:10.460 --> 00:19:12.900 up from its borders. Right. If you fly over France, 00:19:13.059 --> 00:19:15.960 you're in French airspace. Exactly. But nobody 00:19:15.960 --> 00:19:18.900 had defined where airspace ended and where outer 00:19:18.900 --> 00:19:22.319 space began. Eisenhower was looking at the reality 00:19:22.319 --> 00:19:24.799 of the Cold War and realized that eventually 00:19:24.799 --> 00:19:27.059 the United States was going to need to launch 00:19:27.059 --> 00:19:30.380 spy satellites to photograph Soviet military 00:19:30.380 --> 00:19:33.519 installations from orbit. Because flying U -2 00:19:33.519 --> 00:19:36.720 spy planes through Soviet airspace was incredibly 00:19:36.720 --> 00:19:39.819 dangerous and highly illegal. Exactly. Eisenhower 00:19:39.819 --> 00:19:42.180 was deeply afraid that if the United States took 00:19:42.180 --> 00:19:45.299 a military ICBM, strapped a satellite to it, 00:19:45.299 --> 00:19:47.799 and launched it into an orbit that passed directly 00:19:47.799 --> 00:19:50.559 over Moscow, the Soviet leadership would rightfully 00:19:50.559 --> 00:19:52.920 point out that an American military weapon was 00:19:52.920 --> 00:19:55.160 overflying their sovereign territory. They could 00:19:55.160 --> 00:19:57.299 consider it an act of war. They could shoot it 00:19:57.299 --> 00:19:59.900 down and spark World War III. So how do you solve 00:19:59.900 --> 00:20:02.579 a legal problem that has literally never existed 00:20:02.579 --> 00:20:05.119 in the history of human jurisprudence? You establish 00:20:05.119 --> 00:20:07.880 a new legal precedent. Eisenhower wanted to firmly 00:20:07.880 --> 00:20:10.720 establish the concept of freedom of space. Okay, 00:20:10.759 --> 00:20:12.880 what does that mean practically? Well, there 00:20:12.880 --> 00:20:15.740 is a boundary, roughly 62 miles above sea level, 00:20:15.900 --> 00:20:18.910 known as the Karman Line. Theodore von Karman, 00:20:19.089 --> 00:20:21.769 an aerospace engineer, calculated that at this 00:20:21.769 --> 00:20:24.549 altitude the Earth's atmosphere becomes so thin 00:20:24.549 --> 00:20:26.930 that an airplane would have to travel faster 00:20:26.930 --> 00:20:29.750 than orbital velocity just to generate enough 00:20:29.750 --> 00:20:32.970 aerodynamic lift to stay aloft. So effectively 00:20:32.970 --> 00:20:35.829 aerodynamics ends and orbital mechanics begins. 00:20:36.609 --> 00:20:38.990 Exactly. Eisenhower wanted international law 00:20:38.990 --> 00:20:41.970 to recognize that above the Karman line, national 00:20:41.970 --> 00:20:45.150 borders simply do not apply. Space belongs to 00:20:45.150 --> 00:20:47.329 everyone, much like international waters in the 00:20:47.329 --> 00:20:50.049 middle of the ocean. And his method for establishing 00:20:50.049 --> 00:20:52.460 this precedent was incredibly calculated. It 00:20:52.460 --> 00:20:55.460 was a geopolitical masterstroke. To ensure that 00:20:55.460 --> 00:20:57.579 the first American satellite wouldn't be perceived 00:20:57.579 --> 00:21:00.640 as a military threat, Eisenhower explicitly ordered 00:21:00.640 --> 00:21:02.720 that it could not be launched on a military weapon. 00:21:02.859 --> 00:21:05.099 Wait, but von Braun had military rockets ready, 00:21:05.099 --> 00:21:08.240 right? He did. Werner von Braun had the Jupiter 00:21:08.240 --> 00:21:11.079 C rocket derived from the Redstone military missile 00:21:11.079 --> 00:21:13.059 sitting in the hangar, essentially ready to go. 00:21:13.599 --> 00:21:15.920 But Eisenhower told him to stand down. Must have 00:21:15.920 --> 00:21:19.319 driven von Braun crazy. Oh, he was furious. Instead, 00:21:19.420 --> 00:21:21.559 the president mandated that the first U .S. satellite 00:21:21.559 --> 00:21:24.420 must be launched on the Vanguard rocket, a brand 00:21:24.420 --> 00:21:27.160 new, highly complex, untried research rocket 00:21:27.160 --> 00:21:29.440 being developed by the Naval Research Laboratory 00:21:29.440 --> 00:21:32.440 strictly for civilian scientific purposes. I 00:21:32.440 --> 00:21:34.759 want to highlight the genius of this move. Yeah. 00:21:35.059 --> 00:21:37.880 We criticize Eisenhower for the delay. But his 00:21:37.880 --> 00:21:40.559 insistence on using a civilian rocket was a trap. 00:21:40.660 --> 00:21:43.640 It really was. By waiting, he essentially allowed 00:21:43.640 --> 00:21:45.960 the Soviet Union to launch first. And when the 00:21:45.960 --> 00:21:48.460 Soviets launched their satellite on their R -7 00:21:48.460 --> 00:21:51.400 military ICBM, and that satellite flew directly 00:21:51.400 --> 00:21:53.900 over the United States, Washington didn't object. 00:21:54.160 --> 00:21:55.759 They didn't declare war? They didn't declare 00:21:55.759 --> 00:21:58.079 war. They simply tracked it and congratulated 00:21:58.079 --> 00:22:00.750 the scientists. By doing so, The United States 00:22:00.750 --> 00:22:02.970 trapped the Soviet Union into establishing the 00:22:02.970 --> 00:22:05.490 precedent of freedom of space. It's brilliant 00:22:05.490 --> 00:22:07.490 diplomacy. The Serbites couldn't claim the U 00:22:07.490 --> 00:22:09.549 .S. was violating their airspace with future 00:22:09.549 --> 00:22:11.829 spy satellites because the Soviets had already 00:22:11.829 --> 00:22:14.930 violated everyone else's airspace first. Eisenhower 00:22:14.930 --> 00:22:18.549 prioritized the long -term vital strategic ability 00:22:18.549 --> 00:22:21.349 to conduct orbital reconnaissance over the short 00:22:21.349 --> 00:22:24.650 -term propaganda victory of being first. He willingly 00:22:24.650 --> 00:22:27.029 absorbed the public relations blow to secure 00:22:27.029 --> 00:22:29.309 the ultimate high ground. And what a massive 00:22:29.309 --> 00:22:31.589 public relations blow it was. Let's talk about 00:22:31.589 --> 00:22:34.480 the launch that changed the world. October 4th, 00:22:34.599 --> 00:22:37.980 1957. What's fascinating about Sputnik 1 is that 00:22:37.980 --> 00:22:41.140 the tiny metal ball we all recognize wasn't even 00:22:41.140 --> 00:22:43.440 the machine Sir Guy Korolev originally intended 00:22:43.440 --> 00:22:46.140 to send into space. Not at all. Korolev's original 00:22:46.140 --> 00:22:49.119 plan was grand. He wanted to launch a massive, 00:22:49.220 --> 00:22:52.599 highly sophisticated, 1 ,400 kilogram orbital 00:22:52.599 --> 00:22:56.140 laboratory designated Object D. 1 ,400 kilograms? 00:22:56.160 --> 00:22:59.000 That's huge! He knew his R -7 rocket was incredibly 00:22:59.000 --> 00:23:01.059 powerful and he wanted a payload that proved 00:23:01.059 --> 00:23:03.829 it. Object D was with scientific instruments 00:23:03.829 --> 00:23:06.630 to measure radiation, magnetic fields, and atmospheric 00:23:06.630 --> 00:23:09.029 density. So what happened? Building something 00:23:09.029 --> 00:23:12.089 that complex takes time. And as 1957 dragged 00:23:12.089 --> 00:23:14.430 on, Object D fell further and further behind 00:23:14.430 --> 00:23:16.730 schedule due to severe manufacturing delays. 00:23:16.950 --> 00:23:18.890 And Korolev starts feeling the heat. He's getting 00:23:18.890 --> 00:23:20.630 intelligence briefings that the Americans are 00:23:20.630 --> 00:23:23.609 making progress. He was intensely paranoid that 00:23:23.609 --> 00:23:25.829 Wernher von Braun was going to launch a Jupiter 00:23:25.829 --> 00:23:28.450 -C and steal the prize. He couldn't wait for 00:23:28.450 --> 00:23:32.519 Object D to be finished. So in February 1957, 00:23:33.160 --> 00:23:35.700 Korolev made a massive pivot. He just scrapped 00:23:35.700 --> 00:23:38.759 it. Temporarily, yes. He went back to the Soviet 00:23:38.759 --> 00:23:40.740 Council of Ministers and asked for permission 00:23:40.740 --> 00:23:43.420 to build something he called a Prosteshe Sputnik, 00:23:43.819 --> 00:23:46.240 which translates roughly to simplest satellite. 00:23:46.480 --> 00:23:48.640 Simplest satellite. He stripped away all the 00:23:48.640 --> 00:23:51.420 complex science. He essentially said, just give 00:23:51.420 --> 00:23:53.779 me a metal ball, put a radio transmitter inside 00:23:53.779 --> 00:23:55.759 it, and let's get it on the rocket so we can 00:23:55.759 --> 00:23:58.160 claim the record. Which resulted in the Sputnik 00:23:58.160 --> 00:24:01.259 1 design. It was incredibly rudimentary. A highly 00:24:01.259 --> 00:24:04.420 polished aluminum alloy sphere about 23 inches 00:24:04.420 --> 00:24:06.779 in diameter, roughly the size of a beach ball. 00:24:06.900 --> 00:24:09.640 And it weighed just under 84 kilograms. It had 00:24:09.640 --> 00:24:12.420 four long antennas trailing behind it. It contained 00:24:12.420 --> 00:24:15.960 no cameras, no complex sensors. Its entire purpose 00:24:15.960 --> 00:24:18.839 was to survive the launch and broadcast a simple 00:24:18.839 --> 00:24:21.720 continuous radio pulse on two frequencies, 20 00:24:21.720 --> 00:24:23.700 megahertz and 40 megahertz. Frequencies that 00:24:23.700 --> 00:24:26.299 were easily picked up by amateur ham radio operators 00:24:26.299 --> 00:24:28.579 all over the world. Beep, beep, beep. So launch 00:24:28.579 --> 00:24:31.039 day arrives. On the night of Friday, October 00:24:31.039 --> 00:24:36.339 4th, 1957, the modified R -7 ICBM roared to life 00:24:36.339 --> 00:24:39.819 on the launch pad at Tiratam in the Kazakh steppe. 00:24:39.940 --> 00:24:42.299 Inside the launch control bunker, the atmosphere 00:24:42.299 --> 00:24:44.839 was incredibly tense. Because they couldn't just 00:24:44.839 --> 00:24:47.420 watch it go to orbit. No, when the rocket cleared 00:24:47.420 --> 00:24:50.220 the tower, there was no cheering. They had to 00:24:50.220 --> 00:24:53.200 wait for 95 agonizing minutes for the satellite 00:24:53.200 --> 00:24:55.799 to complete its first full orbit around the Earth 00:24:55.799 --> 00:24:58.599 and pass over the Soviet tracking stations again. 00:24:58.730 --> 00:25:01.130 That weight must have been excruciating. It was 00:25:01.130 --> 00:25:03.849 only when the radio operators heard that distinct 00:25:03.849 --> 00:25:06.289 beep beep beep fading in from the sky that the 00:25:06.289 --> 00:25:09.069 room finally erupted. They had done the impossible. 00:25:09.529 --> 00:25:12.230 Interestingly, the initial Soviet media reaction 00:25:12.230 --> 00:25:15.339 the next morning was quite muted. Pravda ran 00:25:15.339 --> 00:25:17.960 a relatively small article. It wasn't until the 00:25:17.960 --> 00:25:20.759 Soviet leadership saw the absolute explosive 00:25:20.759 --> 00:25:23.140 panic happening in the West that they realized 00:25:23.140 --> 00:25:25.299 the magnitude of their propaganda victory. The 00:25:25.299 --> 00:25:27.779 reaction in the West was visceral. And that panic 00:25:27.779 --> 00:25:30.420 triggers what historians call the Sputnik Crisis. 00:25:31.160 --> 00:25:34.059 I mean, imagine being an American in 1957. You've 00:25:34.059 --> 00:25:36.079 been told your whole life that your country is 00:25:36.079 --> 00:25:38.279 the undisputed king of industry and technology. 00:25:38.519 --> 00:25:40.680 And suddenly you walk out to your backyard at 00:25:40.680 --> 00:25:43.619 night. Look up at the stars and realize that 00:25:43.619 --> 00:25:46.140 a communist nation, a nation you've been told 00:25:46.140 --> 00:25:49.500 is backward. An agrarian has placed a machine 00:25:49.500 --> 00:25:52.259 directly over your house and there's absolutely 00:25:52.259 --> 00:25:55.200 nothing your military can do to stop it. The 00:25:55.200 --> 00:25:58.339 psychological terror was profound. The assumption 00:25:58.339 --> 00:26:00.980 of American technological supremacy vanished 00:26:00.980 --> 00:26:04.180 overnight. The immediate logical leap for the 00:26:04.180 --> 00:26:07.819 general public and the politicians was terrifyingly 00:26:07.819 --> 00:26:10.880 simple. If he can launch a ball. Exactly. If 00:26:10.880 --> 00:26:13.380 the Soviet Union has a rocket powerful enough 00:26:13.380 --> 00:26:15.599 to put a metal sphere into orbit, they have a 00:26:15.599 --> 00:26:18.279 rocket powerful enough to drop a thermonuclear 00:26:18.279 --> 00:26:20.839 warhead on Washington D .C. or New York City 00:26:20.839 --> 00:26:23.339 without any warning. That's a chilling realization. 00:26:23.700 --> 00:26:26.480 Bernard Baruch, a highly influential economist 00:26:26.480 --> 00:26:29.180 and presidential advisor, wrote an open letter 00:26:29.180 --> 00:26:32.259 capturing the national anxiety. He stated that 00:26:32.259 --> 00:26:34.519 while America had been obsessed with consumerism 00:26:34.519 --> 00:26:36.819 building bigger cars and new household gadgets, 00:26:37.240 --> 00:26:39.259 the Soviet Union had focused on conquering the 00:26:39.259 --> 00:26:41.740 cosmos. He really laid it out there. He wrote, 00:26:42.000 --> 00:26:44.619 America is worried. It should be. The political 00:26:44.619 --> 00:26:47.380 pressure on President Eisenhower becomes unbearable. 00:26:47.880 --> 00:26:49.960 The public is demanding an immediate response. 00:26:50.539 --> 00:26:52.859 So Eisenhower is forced to order the civilian 00:26:52.859 --> 00:26:56.109 vanguard project to rush their timeline. They 00:26:56.109 --> 00:26:58.349 desperately move the launch date up to December 00:26:58.349 --> 00:27:02.690 6, 1957. The stakes couldn't be higher. The entire 00:27:02.690 --> 00:27:05.250 world is watching. Reporters from across the 00:27:05.250 --> 00:27:07.470 globe are gathered at Cape Canaveral. It's live 00:27:07.470 --> 00:27:11.009 on television. The countdown hits zero. The engines 00:27:11.009 --> 00:27:14.529 ignite. And what unfolds is arguably one of the 00:27:14.529 --> 00:27:16.490 most embarrassing moments in American engineering 00:27:16.490 --> 00:27:19.730 history. It was a catastrophic, highly publicized 00:27:19.730 --> 00:27:22.220 disaster. The Vanguard rocket struggled to generate 00:27:22.220 --> 00:27:24.400 thrust. It lifted perhaps three or four feet 00:27:24.400 --> 00:27:26.660 off the launch pad, seemed to hover for a fraction 00:27:26.660 --> 00:27:29.400 of a second, and then the engine lost pressure. 00:27:29.420 --> 00:27:32.119 Oh no. The massive rocket settled back down onto 00:27:32.119 --> 00:27:34.559 the structure, the fuel tanks ruptured, and the 00:27:34.559 --> 00:27:37.339 entire vehicle erupted into a towering fire gall. 00:27:37.559 --> 00:27:40.359 Live on TV. Amidst the flaming wreckage, the 00:27:40.359 --> 00:27:43.079 tiny, grapefruit -sized Vanguard satellite was 00:27:43.079 --> 00:27:45.359 thrown clear, landed on the concrete, and began 00:27:45.359 --> 00:27:47.400 pathetically transmitting its tracking signal 00:27:47.400 --> 00:27:50.500 from the dirt. The global press had an absolute 00:27:50.500 --> 00:27:52.740 field day. The headlines the next morning were 00:27:52.740 --> 00:27:56.420 brutal. They called it flopnik, stayputnik, kaputnik. 00:27:56.539 --> 00:27:59.200 The mockery was intense. The sources mentioned 00:27:59.200 --> 00:28:01.220 that during a session at the United Nations shortly 00:28:01.220 --> 00:28:03.740 after, a Soviet delegate actually approached 00:28:03.740 --> 00:28:06.960 the U .S. representative and smugly offered American 00:28:06.960 --> 00:28:09.740 engineers technical assistance under a Soviet 00:28:09.740 --> 00:28:12.740 program designed for backwards developing nations. 00:28:13.019 --> 00:28:15.240 The level of geopolitical trolling was off the 00:28:15.240 --> 00:28:17.700 charts. It really was. It forced Eisenhower's 00:28:17.700 --> 00:28:20.579 hand. The civilian Vanguard had failed publicly. 00:28:21.119 --> 00:28:23.579 He finally relented and gave Werner von Braun 00:28:23.579 --> 00:28:26.279 the authorization he had been begging for. Von 00:28:26.279 --> 00:28:28.839 Braun's team at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency 00:28:28.839 --> 00:28:32.339 dusted off the military -derived Jupiter -C rocket, 00:28:32.920 --> 00:28:35.339 modified it, and renamed it the Juno -I. And 00:28:35.339 --> 00:28:38.900 they finally succeed. Yes. On January 31, 1958, 00:28:39.200 --> 00:28:41.039 less than two months after the Vanguard Inferno 00:28:41.039 --> 00:28:43.319 von Braun's team successfully launched Explorer 00:28:43.319 --> 00:28:46.970 1 into orbit, America was finally in space. And 00:28:46.970 --> 00:28:49.269 we shouldn't gloss over Explorer 1 because unlike 00:28:49.269 --> 00:28:51.930 Sputnik's simple radio beep, Explorer 1 actually 00:28:51.930 --> 00:28:54.710 conducted groundbreaking science. It did. The 00:28:54.710 --> 00:28:57.450 American payload included a Geiger -Miller tube, 00:28:57.890 --> 00:29:00.250 an instrument designed by Dr. James Van Allen 00:29:00.250 --> 00:29:02.609 from the University of Iowa to measure cosmic 00:29:02.609 --> 00:29:05.589 rays. So it was actually returning data. Real 00:29:05.589 --> 00:29:08.960 scientific data. As Explorer 1 traveled through 00:29:08.960 --> 00:29:12.039 its highly elliptical orbit, the radiation it 00:29:12.039 --> 00:29:14.559 encountered was so intense that it completely 00:29:14.559 --> 00:29:16.960 saturated Van Allen's instrument, causing it 00:29:16.960 --> 00:29:19.799 to read zero. It just broke the scale. When the 00:29:19.799 --> 00:29:21.920 data was analyzed, it led to the discovery of 00:29:21.920 --> 00:29:24.420 what we now call the Van Allen radiation belts, 00:29:25.259 --> 00:29:28.099 massive donut -shaped zones of highly energized 00:29:28.099 --> 00:29:30.440 charged particles that are trapped in place by 00:29:30.440 --> 00:29:32.880 the Earth's magnetic field. It was the first 00:29:32.880 --> 00:29:35.559 major scientific discovery of the space age. 00:29:35.789 --> 00:29:38.349 But despite the scientific triumph of Explorer 00:29:38.349 --> 00:29:40.789 One, the political damage inflicted by Sputnik 00:29:40.789 --> 00:29:42.869 was permanent. The U .S. government realized 00:29:42.869 --> 00:29:44.750 that their current structure, having the Army, 00:29:44.950 --> 00:29:48.170 Navy and Air Force all running competing redundant 00:29:48.170 --> 00:29:50.809 space projects, was incredibly inefficient and 00:29:50.809 --> 00:29:53.089 prone to failure. It was a bureaucratic mess. 00:29:53.450 --> 00:29:56.230 Out of the ashes of the Sputnik panic, Washington 00:29:56.230 --> 00:29:59.890 mandated a massive structural overhaul. In July 00:29:59.890 --> 00:30:03.029 1958, Congress passed the National Aeronautics 00:30:03.029 --> 00:30:05.390 and Space Act, officially dissolving the old 00:30:05.390 --> 00:30:07.650 advisory committees and creating a brand new 00:30:07.650 --> 00:30:10.930 centralized civilian agency to manage the nation's 00:30:10.930 --> 00:30:13.940 space exploration. They created NASA. Which proved 00:30:13.940 --> 00:30:16.259 to be one of the most consequential bureaucratic 00:30:16.259 --> 00:30:19.380 decisions of the 20th century. Why is that? By 00:30:19.380 --> 00:30:21.700 ripping the non -military space efforts out of 00:30:21.700 --> 00:30:24.380 the hands of the warring armed forces and consolidating 00:30:24.380 --> 00:30:26.960 all the top scientists funding and resources 00:30:26.960 --> 00:30:30.079 under one civilian roof, the United States created 00:30:30.079 --> 00:30:33.400 a focused powerhouse. This centralization of 00:30:33.400 --> 00:30:35.500 effort and standardization of goals would eventually 00:30:35.500 --> 00:30:38.299 become the decisive factor in outpacing the fragmented 00:30:38.299 --> 00:30:40.740 Soviet system. OK, so let's assess the board. 00:30:40.900 --> 00:30:43.079 The satellites are whizzing overhead. The legal 00:30:43.079 --> 00:30:45.339 precedent that space belongs to everyone is firmly 00:30:45.339 --> 00:30:48.240 established. NASA has been formed. The tension 00:30:48.240 --> 00:30:50.700 is escalating daily. But satellites are just 00:30:50.700 --> 00:30:53.940 machines. Exactly. You can only launch so many 00:30:53.940 --> 00:30:56.220 metal boxes before the geopolitical theater demands 00:30:56.220 --> 00:30:59.599 a new frontier. To truly prove your nation's 00:30:59.599 --> 00:31:01.960 superiority, you have to do something much more 00:31:01.960 --> 00:31:04.259 difficult and much more dangerous. You have to 00:31:04.259 --> 00:31:06.700 take a living, breathing creature and put it 00:31:06.700 --> 00:31:09.099 into the crosshairs of this orbital chess match. 00:31:09.309 --> 00:31:12.289 Which brings us to the era of firsts and the 00:31:12.289 --> 00:31:15.190 dark illusion of perfection. Before any engineer 00:31:15.190 --> 00:31:17.690 or politician would sign off on risking a human 00:31:17.690 --> 00:31:20.849 life, they had to understand the biological realities 00:31:20.849 --> 00:31:23.390 of the environment. The medical community knew 00:31:23.390 --> 00:31:25.910 almost nothing about how a mammalian body would 00:31:25.910 --> 00:31:28.609 react to prolonged weightlessness or the intense 00:31:28.609 --> 00:31:30.950 cosmic radiation above the atmosphere. They had 00:31:30.950 --> 00:31:32.869 basic questions. Would they be able to swallow? 00:31:33.130 --> 00:31:35.609 Would their hearts fail? So both nations turned 00:31:35.609 --> 00:31:38.609 to animal test subjects. The United States, looking 00:31:38.609 --> 00:31:41.430 for physiological similarities to humans, focused 00:31:41.430 --> 00:31:44.269 heavily on primates. And they started this very 00:31:44.269 --> 00:31:47.109 early. The first mammal in space wasn't launched 00:31:47.109 --> 00:31:49.970 during the Sputnik era. It was way back in 1949. 00:31:50.369 --> 00:31:52.890 Yes. The U .S. launched a rhesus monkey named 00:31:52.890 --> 00:31:56.730 Albert II on a modified captured V2 rocket from 00:31:56.730 --> 00:31:59.940 White Sands on a suborbital trajectory. Just 00:31:59.940 --> 00:32:02.480 to clarify for anyone wondering, suborbital means 00:32:02.480 --> 00:32:05.019 the rocket goes straight up, crosses the battery 00:32:05.019 --> 00:32:07.539 of space, experiences a few minutes of weightlessness 00:32:07.539 --> 00:32:10.799 at the apex, and comes right back down like an 00:32:10.799 --> 00:32:13.599 artillery shell. It doesn't travel fast enough 00:32:13.599 --> 00:32:17.089 horizontally to achieve orbit. Correct. Albert 00:32:17.089 --> 00:32:19.910 II survived the intense g -forces of the launch 00:32:19.910 --> 00:32:22.549 and the brief period of weightlessness, proving 00:32:22.549 --> 00:32:24.369 that a mammal could survive the journey into 00:32:24.369 --> 00:32:27.329 the vacuum. However, he died upon reentry when 00:32:27.329 --> 00:32:29.970 the capsule's parachute system failed, and it 00:32:29.970 --> 00:32:32.910 impacted the desert floor. The Soviet Union took 00:32:32.910 --> 00:32:34.869 a completely different approach to their biological 00:32:34.869 --> 00:32:37.430 testing. Instead of monkeys, they used stray 00:32:37.430 --> 00:32:39.799 dogs gathered from the streets of Moscow. The 00:32:39.799 --> 00:32:42.420 engineers figured that a stray dog who had survived 00:32:42.420 --> 00:32:44.759 the harsh Russian winters was already tough, 00:32:45.160 --> 00:32:47.579 adaptable, and used to extreme stress. And their 00:32:47.579 --> 00:32:50.980 most famous animal pioneer is Laika. Just one 00:32:50.980 --> 00:32:53.440 month after Sputnik 1, the Soviet leadership 00:32:53.440 --> 00:32:55.960 demanded another massive spectacle to coincide 00:32:55.960 --> 00:32:58.160 with the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. 00:32:58.819 --> 00:33:02.160 So November 1957, they launched Sputnik 2 with 00:33:02.160 --> 00:33:04.819 Laika on board. Now for decades, the story of 00:33:04.819 --> 00:33:07.400 Laika was heavily sanitized by the Soviet propaganda 00:33:07.400 --> 00:33:10.190 machine. What's fascinating here is how effectively 00:33:10.190 --> 00:33:13.170 they controlled the narrative. The official narrative, 00:33:13.170 --> 00:33:15.349 pushed by the state media, was that Leika was 00:33:15.349 --> 00:33:18.569 a hero who lived for several days in orbit, providing 00:33:18.569 --> 00:33:21.289 invaluable biometric data to ground controllers. 00:33:21.910 --> 00:33:24.029 They claimed she eventually died peacefully when 00:33:24.029 --> 00:33:26.849 her life support oxygen supply slowly ran out. 00:33:27.170 --> 00:33:29.930 It was presented as a tragic but dignified end. 00:33:30.009 --> 00:33:31.470 But they knew she wasn't coming back, right? 00:33:31.509 --> 00:33:34.329 Oh, absolutely. The Soviet engineers knew the 00:33:34.329 --> 00:33:36.509 spacecraft wasn't designed with a reentry heat 00:33:36.509 --> 00:33:39.069 shield. They lacked the technology at the time 00:33:39.069 --> 00:33:41.789 to bring a capsule safely back from orbital velocity. 00:33:42.150 --> 00:33:44.230 So they knew from the moment of launch that it 00:33:44.230 --> 00:33:47.190 was a one -way trip. But the specific details 00:33:47.190 --> 00:33:49.769 of her death were hidden deep behind that space 00:33:49.769 --> 00:33:52.769 curtain. It wasn't until 2002, long after the 00:33:52.769 --> 00:33:55.210 collapse of the Soviet Union, that the real story 00:33:55.210 --> 00:33:58.089 finally surfaced at a scientific congress. And 00:33:58.089 --> 00:34:00.569 it's incredibly grim. The truth was that Leica 00:34:00.569 --> 00:34:03.589 did not die peacefully days later. She died in 00:34:03.589 --> 00:34:06.130 agony just hours into the flight, roughly during 00:34:06.130 --> 00:34:08.480 her fourth orbit. What actually happened? The 00:34:08.480 --> 00:34:10.440 rush to launch for the political anniversary 00:34:10.440 --> 00:34:13.099 meant the capsule's crude thermal control system 00:34:13.099 --> 00:34:16.420 was woefully inadequate. A piece of thermal insulation 00:34:16.420 --> 00:34:19.239 tore loose during the violent launch. As the 00:34:19.239 --> 00:34:22.019 spacecraft orbited in direct sunlight, the internal 00:34:22.019 --> 00:34:25.340 temperature skyrocketed. Leica died from extreme 00:34:25.340 --> 00:34:28.059 heat exhaustion and sheer panic. It was just 00:34:28.059 --> 00:34:30.699 awful to hear. Decades later, Oleg Gezenko, one 00:34:30.699 --> 00:34:32.820 of the senior Soviet scientists involved in the 00:34:32.820 --> 00:34:35.159 project, publicly expressed his deep remorse, 00:34:35.380 --> 00:34:45.539 stating, It's a heartbreaking reality that underscores 00:34:45.539 --> 00:34:48.159 a recurring theme of this era. the immense pressure 00:34:48.159 --> 00:34:50.099 from the political leadership forcing engineers 00:34:50.099 --> 00:34:52.639 to produce first, regardless of whether the technology 00:34:52.639 --> 00:34:55.199 was actually ready or safe. And this political 00:34:55.199 --> 00:34:57.440 pressure reaches an absolute boiling point when 00:34:57.440 --> 00:35:00.260 we transition to human spaceflight. April 12th, 00:35:00.260 --> 00:35:03.320 1961. The day a 27 -year -old Soviet fighter 00:35:03.320 --> 00:35:06.320 pilot named Yuri Gagarin becomes a global icon. 00:35:06.889 --> 00:35:09.750 Gagarin's flight aboard Vostok 1 is undeniably 00:35:09.750 --> 00:35:11.570 one of the greatest technical achievements in 00:35:11.570 --> 00:35:14.389 human history. He was the first human to cross 00:35:14.389 --> 00:35:17.750 the threshold of space and complete a full 108 00:35:17.750 --> 00:35:20.309 -minute orbit around the Earth. The physical 00:35:20.309 --> 00:35:22.929 courage required to strap into that rocket is 00:35:22.929 --> 00:35:25.349 hard to comprehend. He had no idea what was going 00:35:25.349 --> 00:35:27.929 to happen to his body. Exactly. But it's also 00:35:27.929 --> 00:35:29.730 important to understand the level of control 00:35:29.730 --> 00:35:32.989 he had. The medical doctors were genuinely terrified 00:35:32.989 --> 00:35:35.690 that the profound disorientation of zero gravity 00:35:35.690 --> 00:35:38.750 might cause a human pilot to go insane, suffer 00:35:38.750 --> 00:35:41.610 hallucinations, or become physically paralyzed. 00:35:42.130 --> 00:35:44.590 Therefore, the Vostok capsule was almost entirely 00:35:44.590 --> 00:35:47.150 automated. It was flown by ground control and 00:35:47.150 --> 00:35:49.789 onboard sequencers. Gagarin was essentially a 00:35:49.789 --> 00:35:52.230 highly trained cargo. Though they did give him 00:35:52.230 --> 00:35:54.230 a sealed envelope with a mathematical code to 00:35:54.230 --> 00:35:56.869 unlock the manual controls, just in case the 00:35:56.869 --> 00:35:58.829 automatic systems failed entirely and he was 00:35:58.829 --> 00:36:01.349 facing certain death. True, a small concession 00:36:01.349 --> 00:36:04.349 to the pilot's instinct. Gagarin returns to Earth 00:36:04.349 --> 00:36:07.650 a massive hero. The Soviet Union throws him ticker 00:36:07.650 --> 00:36:10.980 tape parades. He tours the world. But the actual 00:36:10.980 --> 00:36:13.840 spacecraft he rode in, the Vostok, is a masterclass 00:36:13.840 --> 00:36:16.139 in Soviet deception and dual -use engineering. 00:36:16.599 --> 00:36:18.920 The Soviet government went to extraordinary lengths 00:36:18.920 --> 00:36:21.219 to hide what the Vostok capsule actually looked 00:36:21.219 --> 00:36:23.920 like from the global public for years. Why hide 00:36:23.920 --> 00:36:26.239 the very machine that brought you your greatest 00:36:26.239 --> 00:36:28.480 triumph? Because the Vostok capsule wasn't a 00:36:28.480 --> 00:36:31.199 bespoke, purely scientific vessel. It was built 00:36:31.199 --> 00:36:33.460 using the exact same underlying architecture 00:36:33.460 --> 00:36:36.559 what engineers call a spacecraft bus as the highly 00:36:36.559 --> 00:36:40.039 classified Soviet Zenit spy satellites. spy satellite. 00:36:40.239 --> 00:36:42.760 A spacecraft bus is essentially the standardized 00:36:42.760 --> 00:36:45.300 chassis of a satellite containing the power systems, 00:36:45.460 --> 00:36:47.880 propulsion, and structural framework upon which 00:36:47.880 --> 00:36:50.880 you can mount different payloads. Korlev designed 00:36:50.880 --> 00:36:53.179 the Zenit spy satellite to carry high -resolution 00:36:53.179 --> 00:36:55.960 cameras to photograph the U .S. and return the 00:36:55.960 --> 00:36:58.739 film to Earth in a spherical re -entry capsule. 00:36:59.400 --> 00:37:01.460 To save time and money for the human program, 00:37:01.639 --> 00:37:04.369 he simply took that spy satellite chassis pulled 00:37:04.369 --> 00:37:07.230 out the cameras and shoved a life support system 00:37:07.230 --> 00:37:09.590 and a human seat inside. So if they showed the 00:37:09.590 --> 00:37:12.159 world the Vostok... they would be handing Western 00:37:12.159 --> 00:37:15.039 intelligence agencies a detailed blueprint of 00:37:15.039 --> 00:37:17.480 their top -secret orbital reconnaissance platform. 00:37:17.679 --> 00:37:19.619 Exactly. They were so paranoid about this that 00:37:19.619 --> 00:37:22.219 during a major international air show in Tushino 00:37:22.219 --> 00:37:25.760 in 1961, they displayed a fake Vostok spaceship 00:37:25.760 --> 00:37:28.519 to the public. They deliberately left a large 00:37:28.519 --> 00:37:31.300 aerodynamic nose cone attached to hide the true 00:37:31.300 --> 00:37:33.760 spherical shape of the re -entry capsule. They 00:37:33.760 --> 00:37:36.579 even bolted eight fake tail fins onto the booster 00:37:36.579 --> 00:37:39.920 stage, just to hopelessly confuse any CIA analysts 00:37:39.920 --> 00:37:42.429 analyzed. the photographs. The level of misdirection 00:37:42.429 --> 00:37:45.250 is astonishing. Meanwhile, back in Washington, 00:37:45.710 --> 00:37:48.170 the Gagarin flight hits the newly sworn in Kennedy 00:37:48.170 --> 00:37:51.329 administration like a tidal wave. The U .S. is 00:37:51.329 --> 00:37:53.989 scrambling to respond. Less than a month after 00:37:53.989 --> 00:37:57.590 Gagarin's orbital flight on May 5, 1961, Alan 00:37:57.590 --> 00:38:00.269 Shepard climbs into the tiny Project Mercury 00:38:00.269 --> 00:38:03.210 capsule, Freedom 7, and becomes the first American 00:38:03.210 --> 00:38:06.679 in space. Shepard's flight was a vital psychological 00:38:06.679 --> 00:38:08.980 response for the American public, but technologically, 00:38:09.159 --> 00:38:11.159 it's important to differentiate the achievements. 00:38:11.980 --> 00:38:15.039 Gagarin achieved full orbital velocity, circling 00:38:15.039 --> 00:38:17.960 the globe. Shepard's flight was a suborbital 00:38:17.960 --> 00:38:19.900 ballistic trajectory. Like Elbrid this second? 00:38:20.000 --> 00:38:22.659 Yes. His redstone rocket essentially threw him 00:38:22.659 --> 00:38:24.679 straight up over the Atlantic Ocean, and he came 00:38:24.679 --> 00:38:27.239 straight back down about 15 minutes later. However, 00:38:27.480 --> 00:38:29.760 NASA made sure to heavily publicize a key distinction. 00:38:30.110 --> 00:38:32.590 Unlike Gagarin's automated ride, Shepard was 00:38:32.590 --> 00:38:35.010 the first human to take physical, manual control 00:38:35.010 --> 00:38:37.269 of his spacecraft's attitude, its pitch, yaw, 00:38:37.349 --> 00:38:39.829 and roll, while in the vacuum of space. The U 00:38:39.829 --> 00:38:42.090 .S. doesn't actually match Gagarin's orbital 00:38:42.090 --> 00:38:45.630 feet until John Glenn's fight in February 1962 00:38:45.630 --> 00:38:49.269 aboard Friendship 7. But by this point, the U 00:38:49.269 --> 00:38:51.429 .S. has laid their Project Mercury cards on the 00:38:51.429 --> 00:38:54.530 table. They have a solid, well -engineered, functioning 00:38:54.530 --> 00:38:57.500 single -person capsule. And this steady American 00:38:57.500 --> 00:38:59.500 progress starts to make the Soviet political 00:38:59.500 --> 00:39:01.719 leadership incredibly nervous. They couldn't 00:39:01.719 --> 00:39:03.760 stand the steady progress. Right. They can't 00:39:03.760 --> 00:39:06.900 just rest on Gagarin's laurels forever. The premier, 00:39:07.219 --> 00:39:09.659 Nikita Khrushchev, demands more firsts to keep 00:39:09.659 --> 00:39:12.500 the Americans in the rear -view mirror. And this 00:39:12.500 --> 00:39:15.699 demand puts the Voskhod program, which, when 00:39:15.699 --> 00:39:17.820 you read the engineering realities behind it, 00:39:18.219 --> 00:39:20.659 is absolutely terrifying. It is the definition 00:39:20.659 --> 00:39:23.440 of reckless engineering driven entirely by political 00:39:23.440 --> 00:39:26.159 optics. Sergey Korolev was already hard at work 00:39:26.159 --> 00:39:28.360 designing the Soviet Union's next generation 00:39:28.360 --> 00:39:31.619 spacecraft, the Soyuz. Soyuz was brilliant. It 00:39:31.619 --> 00:39:33.599 was designed from the ground up to carry multiple 00:39:33.599 --> 00:39:36.300 cosmonauts, perform orbital rendezvous, and eventually 00:39:36.300 --> 00:39:38.559 go to the moon. That's great. But Soyuz was still 00:39:38.559 --> 00:39:41.280 years away from being flight ready. At the same 00:39:41.280 --> 00:39:44.519 time, NASA had publicly announced Project Gemini, 00:39:44.960 --> 00:39:47.480 an advanced two -person spacecraft that would 00:39:47.480 --> 00:39:50.300 soon begin flying. Khrushchev couldn't stand 00:39:50.300 --> 00:39:52.679 the idea of the Americans launching two men before 00:39:52.679 --> 00:39:55.219 the Soviets did. He ordered Korolev to launch 00:39:55.219 --> 00:39:57.860 a multi -person crew immediately. But Korolev 00:39:57.860 --> 00:40:00.199 didn't have a multi -person spacecraft. He only 00:40:00.199 --> 00:40:03.340 had leftover, cramped, single -person Vostok 00:40:03.340 --> 00:40:05.880 capsules. So Korolev had to perform a terrifying 00:40:05.880 --> 00:40:08.900 mechanical hack. He took a single -person Vostok 00:40:08.900 --> 00:40:11.260 capsule and ripped out the heavy ejection seat. 00:40:11.639 --> 00:40:13.539 Without the ejection seat, there was absolutely 00:40:13.539 --> 00:40:16.039 no way for the crew to escape if the rocket exploded 00:40:16.039 --> 00:40:19.510 on the pad or during early ascent. Then he literally 00:40:19.510 --> 00:40:22.289 crammed three small couches into the tiny spherical 00:40:22.289 --> 00:40:24.670 cabin, mounting them sideways. That's insane. 00:40:24.829 --> 00:40:27.170 This horrifying contraction became Voskhod 1. 00:40:27.469 --> 00:40:30.030 When it launched in October 1964 with three men 00:40:30.030 --> 00:40:32.710 aboard, the Soviet propaganda machine went into 00:40:32.710 --> 00:40:35.829 overdrive. They touted it as a massive technological 00:40:35.829 --> 00:40:38.170 leap, specifically bragging to the world that 00:40:38.170 --> 00:40:40.210 their environmental life support systems were 00:40:40.210 --> 00:40:42.150 so advanced that the cosmonauts were flying in 00:40:42.150 --> 00:40:44.550 a shirt sleeve environment without bulky spacesuits. 00:40:44.809 --> 00:40:46.769 Which was a total lie. It wasn't a luxury, it 00:40:46.769 --> 00:40:49.760 was a desperate physical constraints. Precisely. 00:40:50.099 --> 00:40:52.780 They flew without spacesuits because three inflated 00:40:52.780 --> 00:40:55.119 spacesuits literally could not fit inside the 00:40:55.119 --> 00:41:01.219 cabin. If the panel or a valve had failed and 00:41:01.219 --> 00:41:03.860 the cabin depressurized, all three men would 00:41:03.860 --> 00:41:06.739 have died instantly. The blood in their veins 00:41:06.739 --> 00:41:09.059 would have boiled in the vacuum. They had zero 00:41:09.059 --> 00:41:12.139 backup systems. It was an immense risk taken 00:41:12.139 --> 00:41:16.460 solely to claim the headline. First multi -crew 00:41:16.460 --> 00:41:19.119 flight. It's like entering an F1 race with a 00:41:19.119 --> 00:41:21.420 car that has three people shoved into the driver's 00:41:21.420 --> 00:41:24.019 seat, no seat belts, and no fire extinguishers, 00:41:24.179 --> 00:41:25.900 just so you can say you fit the most people in 00:41:25.900 --> 00:41:28.440 the car. It's madness. If the global public knew 00:41:28.440 --> 00:41:31.019 how close these Soviet missions came to catastrophic 00:41:31.019 --> 00:41:33.280 failure, would they have still seemed like the 00:41:33.280 --> 00:41:35.119 undisputed winners at this stage? They likely 00:41:35.119 --> 00:41:37.139 wouldn't have. But what's fascinating is how 00:41:37.139 --> 00:41:39.599 robust the Soviet illusion of perfection was. 00:41:40.059 --> 00:41:42.380 The world bought it completely. And buoyed by 00:41:42.380 --> 00:41:44.579 that success, the Soviets pushed their luck even 00:41:44.579 --> 00:41:48.059 further with Voskhod 2 in March 1965. Another 00:41:48.059 --> 00:41:50.599 first. The political mandate this time was to 00:41:50.599 --> 00:41:53.380 achieve the first spacewalk or extravehicular 00:41:53.380 --> 00:41:56.179 activity before the American Gemini astronauts 00:41:56.179 --> 00:41:58.880 could do it. Since the Voskhod capsule couldn't 00:41:58.880 --> 00:42:00.940 be depressurized without killing the other crew 00:42:00.940 --> 00:42:04.360 member, Korolev's engineers strapped a collapsible 00:42:04.360 --> 00:42:06.940 inflatable fabric airlock to the outside of the 00:42:06.940 --> 00:42:10.000 hull. Alexei Linov crawled into it, pressurized 00:42:10.000 --> 00:42:12.889 to suit. opened the outer hatch and floated out 00:42:12.889 --> 00:42:15.829 into the void. The photographs of Leonov floating 00:42:15.829 --> 00:42:18.750 over the earth are breathtaking, but the reality 00:42:18.750 --> 00:42:20.909 of what was happening to his body in his suit 00:42:20.909 --> 00:42:23.869 is a nightmare. The environment of space is aggressively 00:42:23.869 --> 00:42:26.559 hostile. When Leonov was outside, the pressure 00:42:26.559 --> 00:42:28.400 differential between the vacuum of space and 00:42:28.400 --> 00:42:31.219 the oxygen inside his suit caused the stiff fabric 00:42:31.219 --> 00:42:34.139 of his spacesuit to balloon outward uncontrollably. 00:42:34.619 --> 00:42:37.579 The suit became completely rigid, like a pressurized 00:42:37.579 --> 00:42:40.500 tire. His hands slipped out of his gloves, his 00:42:40.500 --> 00:42:43.099 feet pulled away from his boots. When it came 00:42:43.099 --> 00:42:45.639 time to end the spacewalk and re -enter the inflatable 00:42:45.639 --> 00:42:48.719 airlock, Leonov realized he physically couldn't 00:42:48.719 --> 00:42:51.340 bend his knees or his elbows to pull himself 00:42:51.340 --> 00:42:54.559 backward into the narrow tube. He was stuck outside 00:42:54.559 --> 00:42:57.599 the spacecraft orbiting the Earth at 17 ,000 00:42:57.599 --> 00:43:00.159 miles per hour. He had to make a decision that 00:43:00.159 --> 00:43:02.780 essentially violated every safety protocol ever 00:43:02.780 --> 00:43:05.400 written. To save his own life, Leonov had to 00:43:05.400 --> 00:43:08.219 reach down to a pressure valve on his suit and 00:43:08.219 --> 00:43:10.760 intentionally vent his vital oxygen out into 00:43:10.760 --> 00:43:14.000 space. He had to dangerously depressurize his 00:43:14.000 --> 00:43:16.739 suit, bringing it down to a pressure level well 00:43:16.739 --> 00:43:19.500 below the safety limits, risking severe decompression 00:43:19.500 --> 00:43:22.199 sickness. The bends where nitrogen bubbles form 00:43:22.199 --> 00:43:25.000 your bloodstream and tissues. Exactly. He bled 00:43:25.000 --> 00:43:27.320 out the air just enough to shrink the suit's 00:43:27.320 --> 00:43:29.260 volume so he could forcefully contort himself 00:43:29.260 --> 00:43:32.239 head first back into the airlock. He was drenched 00:43:32.239 --> 00:43:34.610 in sweat. heart rate spiking dangerously. And 00:43:34.610 --> 00:43:36.070 amazingly, the near -death experience during 00:43:36.070 --> 00:43:38.010 the spacewalk wasn't even the end of their problems 00:43:38.010 --> 00:43:41.730 on Voskhead 2. Not at all. Once Linov was finally 00:43:41.730 --> 00:43:43.989 back inside the main cabin with his commander, 00:43:44.250 --> 00:43:47.170 Pavel Belyev, the capsule's environmental control 00:43:47.170 --> 00:43:50.570 system malfunctioned. It began flooding the tiny 00:43:50.570 --> 00:43:53.989 cabin with pure oxygen, creating an extreme fire 00:43:53.989 --> 00:43:56.809 hazard where a single static spark could have 00:43:56.809 --> 00:43:59.130 incinerated them instantly. It just keeps getting 00:43:59.130 --> 00:44:01.650 worse. Then, during the crucial re -entry phase, 00:44:01.989 --> 00:44:04.369 the automatic landing alignment system failed 00:44:04.369 --> 00:44:07.570 completely. Belyev had to manually orient the 00:44:07.570 --> 00:44:10.139 spacecraft and manually fire the retro rockets, 00:44:10.579 --> 00:44:13.119 which delayed their descent. Furthermore, the 00:44:13.119 --> 00:44:15.360 equipment module failed to detach cleanly from 00:44:15.360 --> 00:44:17.800 the reentry sphere, causing the spacecraft to 00:44:17.800 --> 00:44:19.820 tumble violently as it hit the atmosphere. The 00:44:19.820 --> 00:44:21.989 descent dynamics were so messed up. that they 00:44:21.989 --> 00:44:23.969 entirely missed their landing zone on the steppes 00:44:23.969 --> 00:44:26.849 of Kazakhstan. They overshot by hundreds of miles. 00:44:26.949 --> 00:44:29.929 They slammed down deep inside the dense, frozen, 00:44:30.250 --> 00:44:32.989 snow -covered taiga of the Ural Mountains. The 00:44:32.989 --> 00:44:35.750 capsule was wedged between massive trees. The 00:44:35.750 --> 00:44:38.630 radio communication was broken. The two cosmonauts 00:44:38.630 --> 00:44:40.469 had to spend the night huddled in the freezing 00:44:40.469 --> 00:44:43.090 cold capsule, listening to the howling of wolves 00:44:43.090 --> 00:44:45.769 outside, waiting for ski rescue teams to hack 00:44:45.769 --> 00:44:47.730 their way through the forest the next day. Yet 00:44:47.730 --> 00:44:50.550 the official Soviet news agencies reported the 00:44:50.550 --> 00:44:53.730 entire Voskhod 2 mission as a flawless, majestic 00:44:53.730 --> 00:44:56.630 triumph of socialist engineering. It's staggering. 00:44:57.289 --> 00:45:00.150 But this era of balancing on a night's edge is 00:45:00.150 --> 00:45:02.630 coming to an end. The American engineering machine 00:45:02.630 --> 00:45:06.469 is waking up. Gagarin's flight in 1961 had fundamentally 00:45:06.469 --> 00:45:08.530 altered the political calculus in Washington. 00:45:09.170 --> 00:45:11.289 The United States was tired of playing a dangerous 00:45:11.289 --> 00:45:13.829 game of catch -up on these small, incremental 00:45:13.829 --> 00:45:16.349 benchmarks in low Earth orbit. They realized 00:45:16.349 --> 00:45:18.530 they needed to establish a finish line that was 00:45:18.530 --> 00:45:21.309 so incredibly far away and so immensely difficult 00:45:21.309 --> 00:45:23.489 that it would give their industrial base time 00:45:23.489 --> 00:45:25.949 to build the technology required to definitively 00:45:25.949 --> 00:45:28.210 win. And that brings us to the ultimate high 00:45:28.210 --> 00:45:31.190 ground, the race to the moon. The American decision 00:45:31.190 --> 00:45:33.349 to go to the moon is heavily romanticized today 00:45:33.349 --> 00:45:36.449 as a grand endeavor of human exploration, but 00:45:36.449 --> 00:45:38.809 its origins were deeply rooted in harsh Cold 00:45:38.809 --> 00:45:41.489 War pragmatism and political survival. People 00:45:41.489 --> 00:45:43.630 forget that Kennedy wasn't a space enthusiast 00:45:43.630 --> 00:45:46.500 at first. Before Gagarin flew, President John 00:45:46.500 --> 00:45:48.900 F. Kennedy was actually quite lukewarm on the 00:45:48.900 --> 00:45:51.670 entire concept of human spaceflight. His own 00:45:51.670 --> 00:45:54.750 science advisor, Jerome Weisner, actively opposed 00:45:54.750 --> 00:45:57.530 sending humans into space, arguing it was a colossal 00:45:57.530 --> 00:46:00.170 waste of money better spent on robotic probes. 00:46:00.309 --> 00:46:03.329 In March 1961, when NASA Administrator James 00:46:03.329 --> 00:46:05.289 Webb presented Kennedy with a budget proposal 00:46:05.289 --> 00:46:07.969 to aim for a lunar landing, Kennedy flat out 00:46:07.969 --> 00:46:10.349 rejected it. He thought the price tag was absurd. 00:46:10.949 --> 00:46:13.789 So what changes his mind so drastically? Why 00:46:13.789 --> 00:46:16.070 does he pivot from rejecting the budget in March 00:46:16.070 --> 00:46:18.110 to standing before a joint session of Congress 00:46:18.110 --> 00:46:21.800 in May 1961? boldly committing the nation to 00:46:21.800 --> 00:46:23.820 landing a man on the moon before the decade is 00:46:23.820 --> 00:46:25.960 out. A brutal sequence of political disasters. 00:46:26.380 --> 00:46:28.679 First, Gagarin's orbital flight happened in April, 00:46:28.739 --> 00:46:31.199 which caused a massive resurgence of the Sputnik 00:46:31.199 --> 00:46:33.300 -era humiliation and fear within the American 00:46:33.300 --> 00:46:35.559 public. The Soviets looked invincible again. 00:46:35.619 --> 00:46:38.440 And the second disaster. Just days after Gagarin's 00:46:38.440 --> 00:46:41.440 triumph, the CIA -backed invasion of Cuba by 00:46:41.440 --> 00:46:44.360 exiles at the Bay of Pigs turned into an absolute 00:46:44.360 --> 00:46:47.800 humiliating catastrophe. The Kennedy administration 00:46:47.800 --> 00:46:51.119 was suddenly perceived globally as weak, inexperienced, 00:46:51.360 --> 00:46:54.119 and incompetent. Kennedy desperately needed a 00:46:54.119 --> 00:46:57.039 major, undeniable victory to save face and restore 00:46:57.039 --> 00:47:00.360 the aura of American capability. He sent an urgent 00:47:00.360 --> 00:47:02.460 memo to his Vice President, Lyndon B. Johnson, 00:47:02.679 --> 00:47:04.460 who also chaired the National Aeronautics and 00:47:04.460 --> 00:47:07.039 Space Council, essentially demanding to know, 00:47:07.179 --> 00:47:09.579 is there any space program we can launch that 00:47:09.579 --> 00:47:11.860 promises dramatic results in which we could win? 00:47:12.199 --> 00:47:14.500 And LBJ knows exactly who to ask. He goes straight 00:47:14.500 --> 00:47:16.219 to the chief architect of the American rocket 00:47:16.219 --> 00:47:19.380 program, Fedor von Braun. Johnson tasks von Braun 00:47:19.380 --> 00:47:22.219 with assessing the playing field. Von Braun replies 00:47:22.219 --> 00:47:24.949 with a harsh dose of reality. He tells LBJ that 00:47:24.949 --> 00:47:27.510 because the Soviets possess those massive R7 00:47:27.510 --> 00:47:30.210 cluster rockets, they will easily beat the United 00:47:30.210 --> 00:47:32.369 States in establishing a multi -person space 00:47:32.369 --> 00:47:35.050 station or flying a large crew in low Earth orbit. 00:47:35.610 --> 00:47:37.429 The U .S. just doesn't have the lifting power 00:47:37.429 --> 00:47:40.570 yet. But von Braun had a solution. However, von 00:47:40.570 --> 00:47:43.570 Braun points out a massive loophole. He explains 00:47:43.570 --> 00:47:45.489 that flying all the way to the moon, landing 00:47:45.489 --> 00:47:49.269 and returning, requires a launch vehicle so unfathomably 00:47:49.269 --> 00:47:51.650 huge that neither nation has even begun to build 00:47:51.650 --> 00:47:54.050 it. So aiming for the moon effectively hit the 00:47:54.050 --> 00:47:56.710 reset button on the entire space race. Exactly 00:47:56.710 --> 00:48:00.010 that. LBJ reported back to Kennedy that a lunar 00:48:00.010 --> 00:48:02.409 landing was the absolute only goal far enough 00:48:02.409 --> 00:48:04.710 in the future where the United States had a fighting 00:48:04.710 --> 00:48:07.110 chance to leverage its superior industrial and 00:48:07.110 --> 00:48:10.050 financial resources, build the necessary super 00:48:10.050 --> 00:48:12.070 heavy -lived rocket, which would eventually become 00:48:12.070 --> 00:48:14.690 the Saturn V, and beat the Soviet Union to the 00:48:14.690 --> 00:48:17.730 punch. It wasn't about science. It was a highly 00:48:17.730 --> 00:48:20.389 calculated strategic choice of a finish line 00:48:20.389 --> 00:48:22.730 designed specifically to neutralize the Soviets' 00:48:23.269 --> 00:48:25.849 existing R7 advantage. Kennedy delivers the speech. 00:48:26.309 --> 00:48:28.909 The American machine gears up. The budget flows. 00:48:29.809 --> 00:48:32.230 But how did Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev 00:48:32.230 --> 00:48:35.110 respond to this very public, very direct challenge? 00:48:35.590 --> 00:48:38.730 Officially, he responded with absolute silence. 00:48:39.489 --> 00:48:42.840 The Soviet government adamantly refused to publicly 00:48:42.840 --> 00:48:45.099 confirm or deny that they were engaged in a race 00:48:45.099 --> 00:48:47.840 to the moon. They wanted the flexibility to claim 00:48:47.840 --> 00:48:50.019 they were never trying if the Americans got there 00:48:50.019 --> 00:48:53.300 first. But secretly, behind the closed doors 00:48:53.300 --> 00:48:56.579 of the Kremlin, the USSR was absolutely desperate 00:48:56.579 --> 00:48:59.239 to beat America to the lunar surface. However, 00:48:59.519 --> 00:49:01.760 their efforts were severely undermined by the 00:49:01.760 --> 00:49:03.920 very autocratic political system they were trying 00:49:03.920 --> 00:49:06.599 to prove was superior. This is a fascinating 00:49:06.599 --> 00:49:09.610 paradox. NASA succeeded largely because it was 00:49:09.610 --> 00:49:12.170 this centralized, single -minded entity where 00:49:12.170 --> 00:49:14.610 everyone pushed in the same direction. But the 00:49:14.610 --> 00:49:17.269 Soviet lunar program was a chaotic mess of internal 00:49:17.269 --> 00:49:19.989 fiefdoms and bitter rivalries. It was a bureaucratic 00:49:19.989 --> 00:49:22.469 nightmare that stifled innovation. Instead of 00:49:22.469 --> 00:49:24.750 pooling their finest minds and resources, the 00:49:24.750 --> 00:49:27.449 Soviet leadership fostered competition, essentially 00:49:27.449 --> 00:49:30.250 funding two separate, highly secretive moon programs 00:49:30.250 --> 00:49:33.210 simultaneously. On one side you had Sergey Korolev, 00:49:33.329 --> 00:49:35.329 the seasoned chief designer of the R7, who was 00:49:35.329 --> 00:49:38.070 developing the massive M1— super rocket and a 00:49:38.070 --> 00:49:40.489 modified Soyuz spacecraft for a direct lunar 00:49:40.489 --> 00:49:42.730 landing. And the other side. But on the other 00:49:42.730 --> 00:49:45.590 side, you had Vladimir Chelome, another powerful 00:49:45.590 --> 00:49:48.570 aerospace designer. Chelome had aggressively 00:49:48.570 --> 00:49:51.170 curried favor with Premier Khrushchev, even going 00:49:51.170 --> 00:49:53.449 so far as to hire Khrushchev's son to work in 00:49:53.449 --> 00:49:56.190 his bureau. Chelome was given massive funding 00:49:56.190 --> 00:49:59.260 to develop a competing rocket. the Proton, and 00:49:59.260 --> 00:50:01.780 a different spacecraft intended initially for 00:50:01.780 --> 00:50:04.480 a crude lunar flyby. It's like Ford and Chevy 00:50:04.480 --> 00:50:06.420 building completely different tanks with different 00:50:06.420 --> 00:50:09.860 ammunition for the exact same army, refusing 00:50:09.860 --> 00:50:12.699 to share blueprints and actively trying to sabotage 00:50:12.699 --> 00:50:15.199 each other's funding. That infighting, combined 00:50:15.199 --> 00:50:17.400 with an overall lack of funding compared to the 00:50:17.400 --> 00:50:19.940 blank check given to NASA, ultimately doomed 00:50:19.940 --> 00:50:23.079 their efforts. The Soviet answer to America's 00:50:23.079 --> 00:50:26.699 mighty Saturn V was Korolev's N -1 rocket. On 00:50:26.699 --> 00:50:29.260 paper, the N -1 was an absolute beast. It stood 00:50:29.260 --> 00:50:31.000 roughly the same height as the Saturn V, but 00:50:31.000 --> 00:50:33.179 its conical design was intended to produce roughly 00:50:33.179 --> 00:50:35.760 28 % more takeoff thrust than the American rocket. 00:50:35.960 --> 00:50:38.519 But the N -1 had a fatal fundamental engineering 00:50:38.519 --> 00:50:41.079 flaw at its very base, didn't it? The propulsion 00:50:41.079 --> 00:50:44.239 system. It did. American engineers at Rocketdyne 00:50:44.239 --> 00:50:46.760 had spent years developing the F -1 engine, a 00:50:46.760 --> 00:50:49.679 single, massive, incredibly powerful engine. 00:50:50.179 --> 00:50:52.539 The Saturn V only needed five of them on its 00:50:52.539 --> 00:50:55.639 first stage. Soviet metallurgy and engine design 00:50:55.639 --> 00:50:57.760 couldn't produce a single engine that large without 00:50:57.760 --> 00:51:00.920 it becoming unstable and blowing up. So Korolev 00:51:00.920 --> 00:51:04.090 was forced into a complex compromise. To generate 00:51:04.090 --> 00:51:06.369 the necessary thrust for the N -1, he had to 00:51:06.369 --> 00:51:09.150 mount a staggering 30 smaller rocket engines 00:51:09.150 --> 00:51:12.070 in a ring at the base of the first stage. 30 00:51:12.070 --> 00:51:14.449 rocket engines firing at the exact same millisecond. 00:51:14.599 --> 00:51:16.780 The plumbing alone sounds impossible. It was 00:51:16.780 --> 00:51:19.059 beyond the capabilities of the time. The fluid 00:51:19.059 --> 00:51:22.320 dynamics of pumping fuel into 30 engines simultaneously, 00:51:22.900 --> 00:51:24.940 managing the acoustic vibrations, and dealing 00:51:24.940 --> 00:51:27.159 with a phenomenon called pogo oscillation, where 00:51:27.159 --> 00:51:29.219 the rocket bounces on its thrust like a pogo 00:51:29.219 --> 00:51:31.920 stick, was incredibly destructive. To control 00:51:31.920 --> 00:51:34.380 it, the Soviets developed a complex analog computer 00:51:34.380 --> 00:51:37.619 system called KRD. If one engine failed, current 00:51:37.619 --> 00:51:39.599 D was supposed to automatically shut down the 00:51:39.599 --> 00:51:41.980 opposite engine to maintain symmetry and keep 00:51:41.980 --> 00:51:45.059 the rocket flying straight. But with 1960s computing 00:51:45.059 --> 00:51:47.440 technology, trying to synchronize 30 screaming 00:51:47.440 --> 00:51:50.199 engines was a fool's errand. And the test flights 00:51:50.199 --> 00:51:53.460 of the N1 reflect that harsh reality. They were 00:51:53.460 --> 00:51:56.880 consistently catastrophic. The N1 was never successfully 00:51:56.880 --> 00:52:00.340 flown. It suffered four massive consecutive test 00:52:00.340 --> 00:52:03.519 failures. The most devastating occurred on July 00:52:03.519 --> 00:52:07.639 3rd, 1969. Just weeks before Apollo 11 was scheduled 00:52:07.639 --> 00:52:11.099 to launch, a fully fueled N1 rocket lifted off 00:52:11.099 --> 00:52:14.159 the pad. Just seconds into the flight, a loose 00:52:14.159 --> 00:52:16.280 metal component was sucked into the oxidizer 00:52:16.280 --> 00:52:19.199 pump of one engine. The engine exploded. The 00:52:19.199 --> 00:52:21.619 Core D computer system panicked and mistakenly 00:52:21.619 --> 00:52:23.840 shut down twice. 29 of the 30 engines. They just 00:52:23.840 --> 00:52:26.679 shut them all down. Yes. The 2 ,500 -ton rocket 00:52:26.679 --> 00:52:29.619 lost all thrust, fell back onto the launch complex, 00:52:29.719 --> 00:52:32.159 and detonated. A resulting blast was one of the 00:52:32.159 --> 00:52:34.460 largest non -nuclear explosions in human history. 00:52:34.800 --> 00:52:37.039 It shattered windows miles away and completely 00:52:37.039 --> 00:52:39.500 obliterated the launch facility. That single 00:52:39.500 --> 00:52:41.920 explosion secretly doomed any remaining hope 00:52:41.920 --> 00:52:43.739 the Soviets had of putting a cosmonaut on the 00:52:43.739 --> 00:52:46.500 moon? Meanwhile, the United States is charging 00:52:46.500 --> 00:52:49.530 ahead with the Apollo program. But it's crucial 00:52:49.530 --> 00:52:51.849 to remember that NASA didn't know the N1 was 00:52:51.849 --> 00:52:54.849 failing. The Soviet secrecy meant the U .S. was 00:52:54.849 --> 00:52:56.849 still terrified they might lose the race at the 00:52:56.849 --> 00:53:00.289 last second. In fact, that paranoia fundamentally 00:53:00.289 --> 00:53:02.719 altered the Apollo flight schedule. The mission 00:53:02.719 --> 00:53:05.199 of Apollo 8 is a perfect example of a frantic 00:53:05.199 --> 00:53:08.019 rush born of Cold War fear. Absolutely. During 00:53:08.019 --> 00:53:11.179 the summer of 1968, the lunar module, the actual 00:53:11.179 --> 00:53:14.199 lander, was hopelessly behind schedule. The original 00:53:14.199 --> 00:53:16.619 plan for Apollo 8 was simply to take the command 00:53:16.619 --> 00:53:19.320 module into low Earth orbit for a shakedown cruise. 00:53:19.860 --> 00:53:22.579 But the CIA was heavily monitoring the Soviet 00:53:22.579 --> 00:53:25.519 Zond program. What was Zond? The Zond was essentially 00:53:25.519 --> 00:53:28.159 a stripped -down Soyuz spacecraft designed to 00:53:28.159 --> 00:53:30.719 launch on Chellamay's proton rocket, fly a loop 00:53:30.719 --> 00:53:33.099 around the moon, and returned to Earth. In September 00:53:33.099 --> 00:53:36.860 1968, the Soviets launched Zond 5. It successfully 00:53:36.860 --> 00:53:38.920 flew around the moon and safely splashed down 00:53:38.920 --> 00:53:40.840 in the Indian Ocean. And there were living creatures 00:53:40.840 --> 00:53:43.940 on board that spacecraft. Yes, the first earthlings 00:53:43.940 --> 00:53:46.119 to travel to the moon and back were a pair of 00:53:46.119 --> 00:53:48.280 Soviet step tortoises, along with some fruit 00:53:48.280 --> 00:53:51.199 flies and plants. But the mission caused absolute 00:53:51.199 --> 00:53:54.280 panic in Washington. When U .S. listening stations 00:53:54.280 --> 00:53:56.440 intercepted the radio transmissions coming from 00:53:56.440 --> 00:53:59.420 Zon 5 as it rounded the moon, they heard human 00:53:59.420 --> 00:54:02.500 voices. Wait, human voices? For a few frantic 00:54:02.500 --> 00:54:05.059 days, NASA thought the Soviets had secretly flown 00:54:05.059 --> 00:54:08.139 cosmonauts around the moon. They eventually realized 00:54:08.139 --> 00:54:10.500 it was just a tape recorder testing the communication 00:54:10.500 --> 00:54:13.860 relay, but the threat was clear. The CIA warned 00:54:13.860 --> 00:54:16.059 NASA that the Soviets might try to put a human 00:54:16.059 --> 00:54:18.099 in a Zon and fly them around the moon before 00:54:18.099 --> 00:54:20.699 the end of 1968. So NASA takes an incredible 00:54:20.699 --> 00:54:23.039 gamble. They tear up the flight schedule. They 00:54:23.039 --> 00:54:25.300 decide to take Frank Borman, James Lovell, and 00:54:25.300 --> 00:54:27.639 William Anders, put them on the very first crewed 00:54:27.639 --> 00:54:30.300 flight of the massive Saturn V rocket and send 00:54:30.300 --> 00:54:33.860 them all the way to lunar orbit in December 1968. 00:54:34.400 --> 00:54:36.699 It was an immensely risky acceleration of the 00:54:36.699 --> 00:54:40.059 timeline, but it paid off. Apollo 8 successfully 00:54:40.059 --> 00:54:42.880 orbited the moon, delivering that iconic Christmas 00:54:42.880 --> 00:54:45.840 Eve Genesis broadcast and capturing the famous 00:54:45.840 --> 00:54:49.019 Earthrise photograph. It established a definitive 00:54:49.019 --> 00:54:52.099 American lead, and that momentum carried directly 00:54:52.099 --> 00:54:56.940 into July 1969. Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong, Buzz 00:54:56.940 --> 00:54:59.599 Aldrin, Michael Collins. We all know the story 00:54:59.599 --> 00:55:01.920 of the landing. That's one small step for man. 00:55:02.340 --> 00:55:04.860 But what most people don't know is the wild cinematic 00:55:04.860 --> 00:55:07.280 subplot happening in the background at the exact 00:55:07.280 --> 00:55:10.099 same moment. The Soviet Union did not simply 00:55:10.099 --> 00:55:12.239 concede defeat and watch television. Here's where 00:55:12.239 --> 00:55:14.539 it gets really interesting. In a desperate last 00:55:14.539 --> 00:55:16.300 -ditch attempt to steal the front -page headlines 00:55:16.300 --> 00:55:19.159 away from Apollo 11, the Soviets launched an 00:55:19.159 --> 00:55:22.199 advanced robotic probe called Luna 15. The mission 00:55:22.199 --> 00:55:24.699 objective was audacious. Luna 15 was programmed 00:55:24.699 --> 00:55:27.420 to fly to the moon, land softly, scoop up a few 00:55:27.420 --> 00:55:29.559 ounces of lunar regolith, launch back off the 00:55:29.559 --> 00:55:31.719 surface, and return to Earth just hours before 00:55:31.719 --> 00:55:34.320 the American astronauts splash down. Wow, really 00:55:34.320 --> 00:55:36.340 trying to upstage them. The Soviet propaganda 00:55:36.340 --> 00:55:38.400 goal was to say, look, we retrieved lunar soil 00:55:38.400 --> 00:55:41.440 too, but our superior automated system didn't 00:55:41.440 --> 00:55:44.019 require us to risk the lives of our citizens. 00:55:44.539 --> 00:55:47.639 It's an incredible scenario. Luna 15 actually 00:55:47.639 --> 00:55:50.960 enters lunar orbit just before Apollo 11 arrives. 00:55:51.619 --> 00:55:54.099 You literally have American astronauts and a 00:55:54.099 --> 00:55:57.239 Soviet robotic probe sharing the orbital airspace 00:55:57.239 --> 00:56:00.039 of the moon at the exact same time. The situation 00:56:00.039 --> 00:56:02.619 was so unprecedented that U .S. officials actually 00:56:02.619 --> 00:56:04.800 had to reach out to the Soviets and ask for Lena 00:56:04.800 --> 00:56:08.019 15's orbital parameters to ensure the two spacecraft 00:56:08.019 --> 00:56:10.369 wouldn't accidentally collide. It was one of 00:56:10.369 --> 00:56:13.489 the very first instances of genuine, necessary 00:56:13.489 --> 00:56:15.730 space communication between the two superpowers. 00:56:16.250 --> 00:56:19.050 But the Soviet gamble ultimately failed. Just 00:56:19.050 --> 00:56:21.030 hours before Armstrong and Aldrin were scheduled 00:56:21.030 --> 00:56:22.969 to ignite their ascent engine and leave the lunar 00:56:22.969 --> 00:56:25.809 surface, the Soviet mission control rushed the 00:56:25.809 --> 00:56:28.489 descent sequence for Luna 15. The probe came 00:56:28.489 --> 00:56:30.710 in too fast, crashed into the side of a lunar 00:56:30.710 --> 00:56:33.250 mountain, and was destroyed. The Americans had 00:56:33.250 --> 00:56:36.199 unequivocally won the big race. But here's an 00:56:36.199 --> 00:56:39.059 incredibly provocative historical what -if regarding 00:56:39.059 --> 00:56:41.840 the race to the moon. We view it as this ultimate 00:56:41.840 --> 00:56:44.579 competitive triumph. But was it always destined 00:56:44.579 --> 00:56:47.079 to end that way? There's a moment involving President 00:56:47.079 --> 00:56:49.599 Kennedy that suggests the history of spaceflight 00:56:49.599 --> 00:56:52.119 could have been radically different. This raises 00:56:52.119 --> 00:56:54.139 an important question about missed opportunities. 00:56:54.760 --> 00:56:57.900 Yes, by late 1963, the geopolitical climate was 00:56:57.900 --> 00:57:00.500 shifting. The terrifying reality of the Cuban 00:57:00.500 --> 00:57:03.760 Missile Crisis had sobered both Kennedy and Khrushchev. 00:57:04.500 --> 00:57:06.900 Furthermore, Kennedy was looking at the ballooning 00:57:06.900 --> 00:57:09.599 budget for the Apollo program and realizing it 00:57:09.599 --> 00:57:12.460 was an immense financial burden. In September 00:57:12.460 --> 00:57:15.639 1963, Kennedy stood before the General Assembly 00:57:15.639 --> 00:57:18.500 of the United Nations and actually proposed a 00:57:18.500 --> 00:57:21.800 joint U .S.-USSR mission to the moon. A joint 00:57:21.800 --> 00:57:24.360 mission. He argued that the cost and the duplication 00:57:24.360 --> 00:57:26.960 of effort were absurd. As a grand gesture to 00:57:26.960 --> 00:57:29.280 ease Cold War tensions, he essentially offered 00:57:29.280 --> 00:57:31.679 to call off the race, pool their technology, 00:57:31.900 --> 00:57:34.269 and go to the moon together. How did the Soviet 00:57:34.269 --> 00:57:37.050 leadership respond to an offer like that? Initially, 00:57:37.389 --> 00:57:39.289 Khrushchev's inherent paranoia caused him to 00:57:39.289 --> 00:57:41.469 reject it. He thought it was an American trick 00:57:41.469 --> 00:57:44.070 to steal Soviet rocket secrets. But according 00:57:44.070 --> 00:57:46.809 to later accounts from his son, Sergei Khrushchev, 00:57:47.010 --> 00:57:49.949 the premier eventually reconsidered. He recognized 00:57:49.949 --> 00:57:52.190 the immense economic benefits of sharing the 00:57:52.190 --> 00:57:54.730 cost, and over time, he had developed a cautious 00:57:54.730 --> 00:57:57.210 measure of respect and trust for Kennedy. He 00:57:57.210 --> 00:57:59.309 was reportedly poised to officially accept the 00:57:59.309 --> 00:58:03.019 joint mission proposal in late 1963. But then, 00:58:03.199 --> 00:58:06.619 on November 22nd, 1963, President Kennedy was 00:58:06.619 --> 00:58:09.119 assassinated. Khrushchev did not share the same 00:58:09.119 --> 00:58:11.820 rapport or trust with Lyndon Johnson, and the 00:58:11.820 --> 00:58:14.559 monumental idea of a joint Cold War peace project 00:58:14.559 --> 00:58:18.059 to the moon died in Dallas. It's staggering to 00:58:18.059 --> 00:58:20.139 imagine an alternate timeline where a Saturn 00:58:20.139 --> 00:58:22.320 rocket carried both an American and a Soviet 00:58:22.320 --> 00:58:25.400 to the lunar surface. But history took the competitive 00:58:25.400 --> 00:58:27.809 path. And that hyper -competitive path had a 00:58:27.809 --> 00:58:30.269 very dark, fatal cost. While the moon landing 00:58:30.269 --> 00:58:32.449 is the shining public victory of the era, the 00:58:32.449 --> 00:58:34.510 background of the 1960s space race was marred 00:58:34.510 --> 00:58:37.489 by fatal hubris, rushing, and secret military 00:58:37.489 --> 00:58:39.690 escalations. Let's delve into the darker skies 00:58:39.690 --> 00:58:42.610 of the late 60s. Both nations were pushing nascent 00:58:42.610 --> 00:58:45.650 technology to the absolute physical limits, driven 00:58:45.650 --> 00:58:48.309 by the unforgiving deadlines set by politicians. 00:58:48.699 --> 00:58:52.239 And in 1967, that hubris caught up with both 00:58:52.239 --> 00:58:55.000 programs in horrific fashion. For the United 00:58:55.000 --> 00:58:57.239 States, the tragedy struck on the launch pad 00:58:57.239 --> 00:59:02.139 with Apollo 1. January 27, 1967. A routine, plugs 00:59:02.139 --> 00:59:04.739 -out ground test at Cape Canaveral for the very 00:59:04.739 --> 00:59:07.599 first crewed Apollo mission. Gus Grissom, Ed 00:59:07.599 --> 00:59:09.599 White, and Roger Chaffee are strapped inside 00:59:09.599 --> 00:59:12.619 the command module atop an unfueled Saturn IB 00:59:12.619 --> 00:59:15.210 rocket. To understand the disaster, you have 00:59:15.210 --> 00:59:17.150 to understand the engineering choices regarding 00:59:17.150 --> 00:59:19.849 the spacecraft's atmosphere. To save the immense 00:59:19.849 --> 00:59:22.250 weight of carrying heavy nitrogen tanks, and 00:59:22.250 --> 00:59:24.829 to simplify the plumbing, NASA designed the Apollo 00:59:24.829 --> 00:59:28.329 capsule to operate on a 100 % pure oxygen atmosphere. 00:59:28.789 --> 00:59:30.809 In space, they only needed to pressurize it to 00:59:30.809 --> 00:59:33.210 about 5 psi for the astronauts to breathe comfortably. 00:59:33.610 --> 00:59:35.630 But on the ground during this test, to simulate 00:59:35.630 --> 00:59:37.429 the pressure differential of space and check 00:59:37.429 --> 00:59:39.849 for leaks, they pressurized the cabin with pure 00:59:39.849 --> 00:59:43.480 oxygen to 16 .7 psi, greater than atmospheric 00:59:43.480 --> 00:59:45.619 pressure at sea level, which fundamentally alters 00:59:45.619 --> 00:59:48.750 the chemistry of combustion. Drastically. In 00:59:48.750 --> 00:59:52.389 a hyper pressurized, 100 % pure oxygen environment, 00:59:52.849 --> 00:59:54.789 materials that are normally completely fireproof 00:59:54.789 --> 00:59:58.429 suddenly become explosively combustible. A stray 00:59:58.429 --> 01:00:01.070 electrical spark, likely from a piece of chafed 01:00:01.070 --> 01:00:03.809 wiring near the floor, ignited a fire. In that 01:00:03.809 --> 01:00:06.190 atmosphere, the fire didn't just burn. It propagated 01:00:06.190 --> 01:00:09.150 with the speed and intensity of a bomb. Velcro, 01:00:09.409 --> 01:00:11.750 nylon netting, plastics, everything incinerated 01:00:11.750 --> 01:00:14.590 instantly. The fire swept across the cabin in 01:00:14.590 --> 01:00:16.829 seconds. And the design of the hatch sealed their 01:00:16.829 --> 01:00:18.389 fate. They couldn't just open the door and get 01:00:18.389 --> 01:00:21.269 out. No. They were trapped by a concept called 01:00:21.269 --> 01:00:24.010 a plug door. NASA engineered the hatch to open 01:00:24.010 --> 01:00:26.849 inward. The logic was that in the vacuum of space, 01:00:27.090 --> 01:00:28.769 the internal pressure of the cabin would push 01:00:28.769 --> 01:00:30.989 the hatch tightly against its frame, creating 01:00:30.989 --> 01:00:33.789 a perfect seal. But on the launch pad, with a 01:00:33.789 --> 01:00:36.289 raging fire rapidly increasing the internal pressure 01:00:36.289 --> 01:00:38.869 of the capsule, the astronauts physically could 01:00:38.869 --> 01:00:41.050 not pull the door inward against thousands of 01:00:41.050 --> 01:00:43.769 pounds of force. It was impossible. All three 01:00:43.769 --> 01:00:46.289 men were quickly asphyxiated by toxic gases. 01:00:46.949 --> 01:00:49.449 The disaster forced NASA to completely halt the 01:00:49.449 --> 01:00:52.289 Apollo program for 22 months, totally redesign 01:00:52.289 --> 01:00:54.769 the hatch to open outward in seconds, switch 01:00:54.769 --> 01:00:57.329 to a mixed nitrogen oxygen atmosphere for launch, 01:00:57.710 --> 01:00:59.829 and overhaul their entire culture of quality 01:00:59.829 --> 01:01:02.909 control. It was a devastating blow. But incredibly, 01:01:03.170 --> 01:01:05.289 just three months later, the Soviet space program 01:01:05.289 --> 01:01:07.769 suffered its own fatal catastrophe, driven by 01:01:07.769 --> 01:01:10.070 the exact same kind of political rushing. The 01:01:10.070 --> 01:01:12.539 flight of Soyuz 1 The Soyuz 1 mission in April 01:01:12.539 --> 01:01:15.420 1967 was intended to be a spectacular return 01:01:15.420 --> 01:01:17.880 to dominance for the Soviets. The plan was highly 01:01:17.880 --> 01:01:21.139 complex. Launch Vladimir Komarov and Soyuz 1, 01:01:21.280 --> 01:01:23.500 launch a second Soyuz the next day, dock them 01:01:23.500 --> 01:01:25.860 in orbit, and have two cosmonauts spacewalk between 01:01:25.860 --> 01:01:28.639 the ships. But the Soyuz spacecraft was brand 01:01:28.639 --> 01:01:32.119 new, incredibly complex, and deeply flawed. The 01:01:32.119 --> 01:01:34.179 engineers knew it wasn't ready. They had logged 01:01:34.179 --> 01:01:37.300 over 200 structural and systemic design problems 01:01:37.300 --> 01:01:40.500 during uncrewed tests. But the political pressure 01:01:40.360 --> 01:01:42.940 from the Politburo to achieve a major space spectacle 01:01:42.940 --> 01:01:45.980 in time for May Day was insurmountable. They 01:01:45.980 --> 01:01:48.739 pushed the launch forward anyway. Komarov launches 01:01:48.739 --> 01:01:51.280 alone, and almost immediately the spacecraft 01:01:51.280 --> 01:01:53.340 begins to die around him. From the moment he 01:01:53.340 --> 01:01:55.900 reached orbit, the mission devolved into a desperate 01:01:55.900 --> 01:01:58.739 fight for survival. One of the two primary solar 01:01:58.739 --> 01:02:01.059 panels failed to unfold, leaving the ship starved 01:02:01.059 --> 01:02:03.699 for electrical power. This power shortage crippled 01:02:03.699 --> 01:02:05.900 the environmental control systems and, critically, 01:02:06.380 --> 01:02:09.110 the automated orientation system. The ship began 01:02:09.110 --> 01:02:11.309 to tumble. Mission Control canceled the second 01:02:11.309 --> 01:02:13.449 launch and ordered Komarov to attempt an emergency 01:02:13.449 --> 01:02:17.070 reentry. Komarov was a brilliant pilot. He manages 01:02:17.070 --> 01:02:19.429 to manually align the crippled ship using the 01:02:19.429 --> 01:02:22.130 manual thrusters, holding the orientation steady 01:02:22.130 --> 01:02:24.329 while flying through the Earth's shadow, and 01:02:24.329 --> 01:02:27.510 successfully fires the retro rockets. He survives 01:02:27.510 --> 01:02:29.929 the fiery plunge through the atmosphere, but 01:02:29.929 --> 01:02:32.650 the final failure of Soyuz 1 had nothing to do 01:02:32.650 --> 01:02:35.050 with the electronics. It was mechanical failure. 01:02:35.320 --> 01:02:37.539 As the capsule plummeted toward the earth, it 01:02:37.539 --> 01:02:39.579 deployed its drogue chute, a small parachute 01:02:39.579 --> 01:02:41.900 designed to pull the massive main parachute out 01:02:41.900 --> 01:02:44.639 of its container. But the main parachute refused 01:02:44.639 --> 01:02:47.320 to deploy. The container had become warped during 01:02:47.320 --> 01:02:49.940 manufacturing, pinching the chute tightly inside. 01:02:50.539 --> 01:02:53.019 When Komarov realized he was in freefall, he 01:02:53.019 --> 01:02:55.929 manually triggered the reserve parachute. Tragically, 01:02:56.030 --> 01:02:58.349 the reserve chute deployed but immediately became 01:02:58.349 --> 01:03:00.730 hopelessly tangled with the deployed drogue chute. 01:03:01.110 --> 01:03:03.070 Without a functioning parachute, the heavy descent 01:03:03.070 --> 01:03:05.570 module slammed into the Russian steppe at nearly 01:03:05.570 --> 01:03:08.949 90 miles per hour. Komarov was killed instantly 01:03:08.949 --> 01:03:11.489 on impact. He was the first human to die during 01:03:11.489 --> 01:03:14.090 a spaceflight. Now, I want to pause the narrative 01:03:14.090 --> 01:03:16.449 here for a moment because there is a very persistent, 01:03:17.150 --> 01:03:19.610 dramatic myth surrounding Komarov's death that 01:03:19.610 --> 01:03:21.909 needs to be addressed. You often hear this story 01:03:21.909 --> 01:03:25.269 repeated in pop culture that American NSA listening 01:03:25.269 --> 01:03:28.730 stations in Turkey intercepted his final radio 01:03:28.730 --> 01:03:30.969 transmissions and that as he was plummeting to 01:03:30.969 --> 01:03:33.590 his death, knowing he was doomed, he was crying 01:03:33.590 --> 01:03:36.230 in rage, openly cursing out the Soviet leadership 01:03:36.230 --> 01:03:38.889 and the engineers who built a faulty ship. It's 01:03:38.889 --> 01:03:41.530 an incredibly dramatic narrative, but historical 01:03:41.530 --> 01:03:44.510 analysis of declassified Soviet records, telemetry 01:03:44.510 --> 01:03:47.110 data, and authentic radio transcripts have thoroughly 01:03:47.110 --> 01:03:50.489 debunked it. It is a complete fabrication. Komarov 01:03:50.489 --> 01:03:52.329 remained a consummate professional to the end. 01:03:52.710 --> 01:03:54.869 His final recorded transmissions were calm and 01:03:54.869 --> 01:03:57.510 focused on manual alignment parameters. Furthermore, 01:03:57.710 --> 01:04:00.090 the reality of a parachute failure means he likely 01:04:00.090 --> 01:04:02.349 didn't even realize he was doomed until the final 01:04:02.349 --> 01:04:04.989 seconds of the descent. But the persistence of 01:04:04.989 --> 01:04:07.489 that myth is telling. It reflects the deeply 01:04:07.489 --> 01:04:10.070 cynical, dark atmosphere of the Cold War era, 01:04:10.469 --> 01:04:12.429 the pervasive assumption in the West that the 01:04:12.429 --> 01:04:14.710 Soviet state was carelessly throwing human lives 01:04:14.710 --> 01:04:16.989 away into the meat grinder of political ambition. 01:04:17.289 --> 01:04:20.730 And that cynical atmosphere wasn't entirely unearned. 01:04:20.889 --> 01:04:23.550 Because while humans were dying in flawed capsules, 01:04:23.909 --> 01:04:26.329 the military brass of both nations were actively 01:04:26.329 --> 01:04:29.250 trying to weaponize the very environment of space. 01:04:29.690 --> 01:04:32.449 After losing the race to the moon, the Soviet 01:04:32.449 --> 01:04:35.289 Union executed a major pivot. They decided to 01:04:35.289 --> 01:04:37.909 focus their resources on building long -duration 01:04:37.909 --> 01:04:40.469 space stations in low Earth orbit. They launched 01:04:40.469 --> 01:04:43.630 the Salyut program. Now, to the global public, 01:04:43.909 --> 01:04:46.969 Salyut 1, 2, 3, these were presented with great 01:04:46.969 --> 01:04:49.690 fanfare as peaceful scientific laboratories dedicated 01:04:49.690 --> 01:04:52.769 to astronomy and biology. But underneath the 01:04:52.769 --> 01:04:55.610 civilian Salyut moniker, a highly classified 01:04:55.610 --> 01:04:58.090 shadow program was operating. While some of the 01:04:58.090 --> 01:05:00.449 Salyut stations were genuinely focused on science, 01:05:00.829 --> 01:05:03.869 Salyut 2, Salyut 3, and Salyut 5 were actually 01:05:03.869 --> 01:05:06.869 covers for a military program called Almaz. These 01:05:06.869 --> 01:05:09.670 were highly secretive, crude military reconnaissance 01:05:09.670 --> 01:05:12.550 stations. It's the ultimate act of Cold War misdirection. 01:05:12.650 --> 01:05:14.369 You tell the United Nations, look at our peaceful 01:05:14.369 --> 01:05:17.030 orbital laboratory, while secretly it's a manned 01:05:17.030 --> 01:05:19.630 military spy base equipped with massive telescopic 01:05:19.630 --> 01:05:21.760 cameras capable of reading the license plates 01:05:21.760 --> 01:05:24.000 on cars in Washington. It's putting a sheep's 01:05:24.000 --> 01:05:25.940 costume on a wolf and launching it into orbit. 01:05:26.280 --> 01:05:28.980 And the militarization went far beyond just passive 01:05:28.980 --> 01:05:31.679 observation. The ALMA stations were actually 01:05:31.679 --> 01:05:34.940 armed. Due to Soviet paranoia that American astronauts 01:05:34.940 --> 01:05:37.579 might fly a spacecraft up and try to board or 01:05:37.579 --> 01:05:40.780 sabotage the station, Salyut 3 was equipped with 01:05:40.780 --> 01:05:44.380 a modified Ryder R -23 aircraft cannon mounted 01:05:44.380 --> 01:05:47.179 to its hull. Before the station was deorbited, 01:05:47.440 --> 01:05:49.619 ground controllers actually test fired the cannon 01:05:49.619 --> 01:05:52.199 into the vacuum of space, proving that orbital 01:05:52.199 --> 01:05:54.579 combat was physically possible. Furthermore, 01:05:54.980 --> 01:05:57.539 both nations were actively pouring billions into 01:05:57.539 --> 01:06:00.539 developing anti -satellite weapons, or ASATs. 01:06:00.559 --> 01:06:02.730 They wanted the tactical ability to blind their 01:06:02.730 --> 01:06:04.829 enemy by blowing up their orbital infrastructure. 01:06:05.510 --> 01:06:08.090 The Soviet Union developed the Istrobitov -Sputnikov 01:06:08.090 --> 01:06:11.090 program, which literally translates to satellite 01:06:11.090 --> 01:06:14.530 destroyer. In 1968, they successfully demonstrated 01:06:14.530 --> 01:06:16.889 this capability by launching an interceptor satellite, 01:06:17.190 --> 01:06:20.130 Kosmos -252, which autonomously maneuvered next 01:06:20.130 --> 01:06:22.409 to a target satellite and detonated an onboard 01:06:22.409 --> 01:06:24.989 shrapnel warhead, destroying them both. And the 01:06:24.989 --> 01:06:26.630 United States wasn't just sitting by watching. 01:06:26.809 --> 01:06:29.030 They had their own counter program, Project SAINT. 01:06:29.150 --> 01:06:31.530 Project Saint Satellite Inspector was intended 01:06:31.530 --> 01:06:33.750 to provide the U .S. with a similar capability 01:06:33.750 --> 01:06:36.670 to intercept, inspect, and potentially neutralize 01:06:36.670 --> 01:06:39.829 serviet satellites. While less is publicly known 01:06:39.829 --> 01:06:42.070 about its specific mission profiles, and it was 01:06:42.070 --> 01:06:44.050 eventually canceled due to budget constraints 01:06:44.050 --> 01:06:46.750 and shifting strategic priorities, the intent 01:06:46.750 --> 01:06:50.250 of both nations was crystal clear. Space was 01:06:50.250 --> 01:06:52.929 no longer just a scientific frontier. It was 01:06:52.929 --> 01:06:55.030 actively being prepared as the next battlefield. 01:06:55.389 --> 01:06:57.550 Which makes the diplomatic maneuvers of the late 01:06:57.550 --> 01:07:00.849 1960s feel incredibly cynical. Because right 01:07:00.849 --> 01:07:03.289 in the middle of all this secret military escalation, 01:07:03.650 --> 01:07:05.630 right after the Soviets successfully blow up 01:07:05.630 --> 01:07:08.110 a satellite in orbit, and while the US is drawing 01:07:08.110 --> 01:07:10.909 up blueprints for space interceptors, diplomats 01:07:10.909 --> 01:07:13.090 from both nations sit down at the United Nations 01:07:13.090 --> 01:07:17.030 in 1967 and sign a grand peace treaty. The Outer 01:07:17.030 --> 01:07:19.750 Space Treaty. The Outer Space Treaty is a fascinating, 01:07:19.889 --> 01:07:22.429 highly pragmatic document. On the surface, it 01:07:22.429 --> 01:07:25.489 sounds incredibly mobile. It explicitly bans 01:07:25.489 --> 01:07:27.829 the placement of nuclear weapons or other weapons 01:07:27.829 --> 01:07:30.010 of mass destruction in Earth orbit on the Moon 01:07:30.010 --> 01:07:32.989 or any other celestial body. It forbids any nation 01:07:32.989 --> 01:07:35.090 from claiming sovereignty over space, declaring 01:07:35.090 --> 01:07:37.849 it the province of all mankind. But considering 01:07:37.849 --> 01:07:40.070 they were actively building space cannons and 01:07:40.070 --> 01:07:42.170 interceptor missiles at the exact same time, 01:07:42.969 --> 01:07:45.610 isn't the treaty just an exercise in profound 01:07:45.610 --> 01:07:48.480 hypocrisy? It's hypocrisy driven by the terrifying 01:07:48.480 --> 01:07:51.300 logic of mutually assured destruction, or M .A 01:07:51.300 --> 01:07:54.300 .D. Neither Washington nor Moscow actually wanted 01:07:54.300 --> 01:07:57.039 the other to park a thermonuclear bomb in orbit 01:07:57.039 --> 01:07:59.699 directly over their capital city because it would 01:07:59.699 --> 01:08:02.079 reduce warning times from 30 minutes to zero. 01:08:02.539 --> 01:08:04.719 That was an unmanageable existential threat. 01:08:04.969 --> 01:08:07.530 The treaty banned WMDs because it was in both 01:08:07.530 --> 01:08:09.929 of their survival interests to do so. But notice 01:08:09.929 --> 01:08:12.349 the glaring loopholes in the text. It did not 01:08:12.349 --> 01:08:14.730 ban conventional weapons like cannons or kinetic 01:08:14.730 --> 01:08:17.310 interceptors. It did not ban spy satellites. 01:08:17.430 --> 01:08:20.289 It did not ban the militarization of space. Both 01:08:20.289 --> 01:08:22.449 sides mutually agreed to keep the nukes out of 01:08:22.449 --> 01:08:24.529 orbit so they could safely continue to spy on 01:08:24.529 --> 01:08:26.630 and threaten each other with conventional orbital 01:08:26.630 --> 01:08:29.289 weaponry. It's a very dark, practical kind of 01:08:29.289 --> 01:08:32.510 piece. A true sporn of terror. But amidst all 01:08:32.510 --> 01:08:35.050 this human paranoia and militarization in low 01:08:35.050 --> 01:08:38.109 Earth orbit, the robotic programs of both nations 01:08:38.109 --> 01:08:41.750 were achieving feats of pure, unadulterated exploration 01:08:41.750 --> 01:08:44.600 deeper in the solar system. while humans race 01:08:44.600 --> 01:08:47.560 to the moon, machines race to the planets. And 01:08:47.560 --> 01:08:50.579 in this arena, the Soviet Union achieved spectacular, 01:08:50.880 --> 01:08:54.079 albeit less publicly celebrated, successes. NASA 01:08:54.079 --> 01:08:56.260 focused heavily on Mars, sending the Mariner 01:08:56.260 --> 01:08:58.579 flybys and eventually executing the stunning 01:08:58.579 --> 01:09:02.199 Viking 1 and 2 landings in the mid -1970s. But 01:09:02.199 --> 01:09:04.720 the Soviet Union set its sights on Earth's evil 01:09:04.720 --> 01:09:08.229 twin, Venus. The Venera program stands as an 01:09:08.229 --> 01:09:11.149 astonishing technical triumph of deep space engineering. 01:09:11.390 --> 01:09:13.289 Because landing on Venus is infinitely harder 01:09:13.289 --> 01:09:15.970 than landing on Mars. Venus is a literal hellscape. 01:09:16.170 --> 01:09:18.250 It is arguably the most hostile environment in 01:09:18.250 --> 01:09:19.970 the inner solar system. The surface temperatures 01:09:19.970 --> 01:09:22.270 hover around 900 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough 01:09:22.270 --> 01:09:24.989 to melt lead. Worse, the atmosphere is incredibly 01:09:24.989 --> 01:09:27.250 dense, composed mostly of carbon dioxide laced 01:09:27.250 --> 01:09:30.149 with sulfuric acid clouds. The atmospheric pressure 01:09:30.149 --> 01:09:32.590 at the surface is 90 times greater than on Earth. 01:09:32.789 --> 01:09:35.149 To put that in perspective, being on the surface 01:09:35.149 --> 01:09:37.939 of Venus feels like being almost 3 ,000 feet 01:09:37.939 --> 01:09:41.079 underwater in Earth's oceans. It crushes standard 01:09:41.079 --> 01:09:44.079 spacecraft like empty soda cans. And that's exactly 01:09:44.079 --> 01:09:46.479 what happened to the early Soviet probes. They 01:09:46.479 --> 01:09:49.140 were crushed into scrap metal high in the Venusian 01:09:49.140 --> 01:09:51.140 atmosphere before they ever got close to the 01:09:51.140 --> 01:09:54.279 ground. But the Soviet engineers were relentless. 01:09:54.520 --> 01:09:57.340 They kept iterating, essentially designing their 01:09:57.340 --> 01:10:00.039 space probes to act like deep -sea bathyspheres. 01:10:00.460 --> 01:10:03.319 Finally, in 1970, the heavily armored Venera 01:10:03.319 --> 01:10:06.460 7 probe survived the grueling descent. It touched 01:10:06.460 --> 01:10:08.680 down and transmitted temperature data from the 01:10:08.680 --> 01:10:10.399 surface of another planet for the very first 01:10:10.399 --> 01:10:13.109 time in human history. Later Venera missions 01:10:13.109 --> 01:10:15.670 even managed to return the first eerie color 01:10:15.670 --> 01:10:17.350 photographs from the surface before the heat 01:10:17.350 --> 01:10:19.609 and pressure inevitably destroyed their electronics. 01:10:20.350 --> 01:10:22.729 It demonstrated a continued aggressive Soviet 01:10:22.729 --> 01:10:25.470 commitment to exploring the cosmos, proving their 01:10:25.470 --> 01:10:27.510 engineering prowess remained formidable long 01:10:27.510 --> 01:10:30.729 after Apollo 11. But as we push through the 1970s, 01:10:31.010 --> 01:10:33.609 the exorbitant blank check budgets of the space 01:10:33.609 --> 01:10:35.869 race, combined with the shifting political winds 01:10:35.869 --> 01:10:38.689 of the Cold War, begin to force a massive change 01:10:38.689 --> 01:10:41.649 in strategy. The era of outspending each other 01:10:41.649 --> 01:10:44.569 indefinitely was coming to a close. We enter 01:10:44.569 --> 01:10:47.109 a period of detente, characterized by handshakes 01:10:47.109 --> 01:10:49.829 in orbit and the final lingering echoes of the 01:10:49.829 --> 01:10:52.970 Cold War rivalry. Detente was a period of deliberate 01:10:52.970 --> 01:10:55.390 relaxing of political tensions between the United 01:10:55.390 --> 01:10:58.130 States and the Soviet Union. Leaders like Richard 01:10:58.130 --> 01:11:00.409 Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev recognized that the 01:11:00.409 --> 01:11:03.369 nuclear arms race and the space race were economically 01:11:03.369 --> 01:11:06.409 unsustainable. They needed a powerful, highly 01:11:06.409 --> 01:11:09.270 visible symbol to demonstrate this new, thawing 01:11:09.270 --> 01:11:11.960 relationship to the world. and what better stage 01:11:11.960 --> 01:11:14.359 for a grand gesture of cooperation than the very 01:11:14.359 --> 01:11:17.000 arena where they had fought so bitterly. This 01:11:17.000 --> 01:11:19.380 political mandate led to the Apollo -Soyuz Test 01:11:19.380 --> 01:11:23.880 Project, or ASTP, which culminated in July 1975. 01:11:24.119 --> 01:11:27.000 The plan was elegantly simple on paper. launch 01:11:27.000 --> 01:11:29.279 an American Apollo spacecraft with three astronauts, 01:11:29.539 --> 01:11:32.000 launch a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft with two cosmonauts, 01:11:32.020 --> 01:11:34.779 and have them meet and dock in orbit. But technologically, 01:11:34.859 --> 01:11:37.159 it was a colossal engineering nightmare. It was. 01:11:37.399 --> 01:11:39.819 These two spacecraft were born of entirely different 01:11:39.819 --> 01:11:42.060 engineering philosophies and were fundamentally 01:11:42.060 --> 01:11:44.880 incompatible. They operated on different electrical 01:11:44.880 --> 01:11:47.420 voltages. They used completely different communication 01:11:47.420 --> 01:11:50.020 frequencies. Even the physical docking mechanisms 01:11:50.020 --> 01:11:53.100 were inherently opposed. The Apollo used a probe 01:11:53.100 --> 01:11:55.539 and drobe system where one ship was the active 01:11:55.539 --> 01:11:57.880 male component and the other the passive female. 01:11:58.560 --> 01:12:00.800 The Soviets understandably refused to let the 01:12:00.800 --> 01:12:02.960 American ship be the active partner piercing 01:12:02.960 --> 01:12:05.920 their passive ship, viewing it as symbolically 01:12:05.920 --> 01:12:08.579 subservient. So they had to invent an entirely 01:12:08.579 --> 01:12:11.720 new androgynous docking mechanism where both 01:12:11.720 --> 01:12:14.699 sides were equal. But the biggest hurdle wasn't 01:12:14.699 --> 01:12:17.140 mechanical, it was atmospheric. going back to 01:12:17.140 --> 01:12:19.720 the Apollo 1 issue. Precisely. The Apollo still 01:12:19.720 --> 01:12:22.260 operated on a low pressure, pure oxygen environment 01:12:22.260 --> 01:12:26.020 of about 5 psi. The Soviet Soyuz, however, operated 01:12:26.020 --> 01:12:29.000 on a standard sea level mixture of nitrogen and 01:12:29.000 --> 01:12:32.960 oxygen at roughly 14 .7 psi. If they had simply 01:12:32.960 --> 01:12:34.880 docked the ships and opened the hatches, the 01:12:34.880 --> 01:12:37.100 rapid change in pressure and gas mixture would 01:12:37.100 --> 01:12:38.779 have caused the American astronauts to suffer 01:12:38.779 --> 01:12:41.279 severe decompression sickness, the bends, or 01:12:41.279 --> 01:12:43.659 worse. So how did they solve it? It required 01:12:43.659 --> 01:12:46.680 incredible engineering diplomacy. The U .S. agreed 01:12:46.680 --> 01:12:49.579 to design and launch a separate cylindrical docking 01:12:49.579 --> 01:12:52.300 module. One end of the cylinder fit the standard 01:12:52.300 --> 01:12:54.960 Apollo mechanism. The other end featured the 01:12:54.960 --> 01:12:57.460 newly designed universal androgynous adapter 01:12:57.460 --> 01:13:00.460 to mate with the Soyuz. But crucially, this module 01:13:00.460 --> 01:13:03.119 also served as an airlock. The astronauts would 01:13:03.119 --> 01:13:05.500 move into the module, seal the Apollo hatch behind 01:13:05.500 --> 01:13:07.579 them, and then slowly adjust the pressure and 01:13:07.579 --> 01:13:10.300 gas mixture inside the cylinder to match the 01:13:10.300 --> 01:13:13.119 Soyuz before opening the final hatch. It was 01:13:13.119 --> 01:13:16.460 a tedious but brilliant solution. So when we 01:13:16.460 --> 01:13:19.220 analyze this moment, what does it all mean? The 01:13:19.220 --> 01:13:21.899 iconic image of American astronaut Thomas Stafford 01:13:21.899 --> 01:13:24.619 and Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, the exact 01:13:24.619 --> 01:13:27.439 same man who nearly died on that first spacewalk 01:13:27.439 --> 01:13:28.979 reaching through the hatch and shaking hands 01:13:28.979 --> 01:13:32.340 in 1975 is beautiful. But considering the backdrop, 01:13:32.340 --> 01:13:34.760 it feels less like a genuine warm friendship 01:13:34.760 --> 01:13:38.020 blossoming in space and more like two rival corporate 01:13:38.020 --> 01:13:40.300 CEOs whose companies are bleeding money who've 01:13:40.300 --> 01:13:42.600 been forced by their board of directors to merge 01:13:42.600 --> 01:13:44.539 and are now gritting their teeth and smiling 01:13:44.539 --> 01:13:49.890 for the PR cameras. pragmatic view of the event. 01:13:50.210 --> 01:13:53.149 The ASTP was undeniably a highly orchestrated 01:13:53.149 --> 01:13:55.470 political stunt driven by earthbound diplomacy. 01:13:56.189 --> 01:13:58.550 But its long -term importance shouldn't be minimized 01:13:58.550 --> 01:14:01.069 by its political origins. Even if the smiles 01:14:01.069 --> 01:14:03.149 were forced for the cameras, the engineering 01:14:03.149 --> 01:14:05.369 cooperation required behind the scenes was very 01:14:05.369 --> 01:14:08.069 real. American and Soviet engineers had to visit 01:14:08.069 --> 01:14:10.109 each other's secret facilities. They developed 01:14:10.109 --> 01:14:12.630 a universal docking standard that changed spacecraft 01:14:12.630 --> 01:14:14.609 design. They learned how to link their mission 01:14:14.609 --> 01:14:17.289 control centers and communicate. That mechanical 01:14:17.229 --> 01:14:20.210 and diplomatic groundwork forged in 1975 laid 01:14:20.210 --> 01:14:22.149 the absolute foundation for the international 01:14:22.149 --> 01:14:24.569 cooperation we see today. But detente doesn't 01:14:24.569 --> 01:14:28.050 last forever. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan 01:14:28.050 --> 01:14:30.630 happens, tensions flare up again in the 1980s, 01:14:30.649 --> 01:14:34.109 and we see one final massive echo of the classic 01:14:34.109 --> 01:14:36.989 space race paranoia. The United States shifts 01:14:36.989 --> 01:14:39.250 its focus from expendable rockets to developing 01:14:39.250 --> 01:14:42.430 the space shuttle. The stated goal is reusability. 01:14:42.569 --> 01:14:44.689 a space truck designed to make reaching a low 01:14:44.689 --> 01:14:47.130 -Earth orbit routine and lower the cost of deploying 01:14:47.130 --> 01:14:50.130 satellites. History shows that the shuttle program 01:14:50.130 --> 01:14:53.430 had its own tragic systemic flaws. The complexity 01:14:53.430 --> 01:14:55.949 of reusability proved far deadlier and astronomically 01:14:55.949 --> 01:14:58.510 more expensive than NASA hoped, resulting in 01:14:58.510 --> 01:15:00.470 the devastating losses of Challenger and Columbia. 01:15:01.130 --> 01:15:03.310 But how the Soviet military leadership reacted 01:15:03.310 --> 01:15:05.289 to the development of the space shuttle is fascinating. 01:15:05.479 --> 01:15:08.119 The Soviet military brass looked at the blueprints 01:15:08.119 --> 01:15:10.100 and capabilities of the American space shuttle 01:15:10.100 --> 01:15:13.199 and grew intensely paranoid. They didn't believe 01:15:13.199 --> 01:15:16.039 NASA's civilian space truck narrative for a second. 01:15:16.560 --> 01:15:19.760 They saw a massive winged vehicle capable of 01:15:19.760 --> 01:15:22.020 carrying heavy payloads maneuvering in orbit 01:15:22.020 --> 01:15:24.420 and returning to a precise landing on Earth. 01:15:24.939 --> 01:15:27.310 To the Soviet mindset, This wasn't a science 01:15:27.310 --> 01:15:30.329 vessel. It was a highly advanced military space 01:15:30.329 --> 01:15:32.289 bomber. They believed the Pentagon could use 01:15:32.289 --> 01:15:34.470 the shuttle to swoop down into the upper atmosphere, 01:15:34.609 --> 01:15:36.789 drop a nuclear weapon directly on Moscow with 01:15:36.789 --> 01:15:39.329 zero warning time, and use its wings to glide 01:15:39.329 --> 01:15:42.010 back into the safety of orbit. So relying on 01:15:42.010 --> 01:15:44.010 classic Cold War logic, if the Americans are 01:15:44.010 --> 01:15:45.869 building a space plane, the Soviets must build 01:15:45.869 --> 01:15:48.270 one too, regardless of the cost. Thus begins 01:15:48.270 --> 01:15:52.260 the Baran program in 1974. If you look at a photograph 01:15:52.260 --> 01:15:54.880 of the brand spacecraft, it looks like an absolute 01:15:54.880 --> 01:15:58.319 carbon copy of the U .S. space shuttle. And aerodynamically, 01:15:58.399 --> 01:16:01.399 it largely was. The Soviet engineers pragmatically 01:16:01.399 --> 01:16:03.760 figured, why spend billions reinventing the wheel 01:16:03.760 --> 01:16:05.739 and doing wind tunnel tests when the Americans 01:16:05.739 --> 01:16:07.640 have already finalized the aerodynamic shape, 01:16:08.079 --> 01:16:10.140 they stole the external design, but under the 01:16:10.140 --> 01:16:12.720 hood, the engineering was entirely different. 01:16:13.220 --> 01:16:15.340 Unlike the American shuttle, which used its own 01:16:15.340 --> 01:16:18.220 massive main engines for liftoff, the Buran orbiter 01:16:18.220 --> 01:16:20.699 had no main launch engines. It was essentially 01:16:20.699 --> 01:16:23.359 a heavy glider strapped to the side of a colossal 01:16:23.359 --> 01:16:26.699 expendable super rocket called Energia. Furthermore, 01:16:26.920 --> 01:16:29.020 the Soviet avionics were in some ways superior. 01:16:29.439 --> 01:16:31.340 The Buran was capable of launching, orbiting, 01:16:31.520 --> 01:16:34.279 and landing completely autonomously without a 01:16:34.279 --> 01:16:36.760 human pilot on board. But the U .S. intelligence 01:16:36.760 --> 01:16:38.659 community realized the Soviets were stealing 01:16:38.659 --> 01:16:41.420 their data and they played a very sneaky, damaging 01:16:41.420 --> 01:16:43.800 trick, didn't they? They executed a brilliant 01:16:43.800 --> 01:16:47.140 counterintelligence operation. The CIA and the 01:16:47.140 --> 01:16:50.060 FBI became aware that Soviet spies were acquiring 01:16:50.060 --> 01:16:52.319 technical documents regarding the shuttle's design. 01:16:52.699 --> 01:16:55.220 Instead of just blocking the leaks, they actively 01:16:55.220 --> 01:16:58.020 fed the Soviets highly complex disinformation. 01:16:58.539 --> 01:17:01.300 Specifically, they altered the mathematical formulas 01:17:01.300 --> 01:17:03.420 and metallurgical data regarding the shuttle's 01:17:03.420 --> 01:17:06.479 thermal protection system, the thousands of delicate 01:17:06.479 --> 01:17:08.779 silica tiles required to keep the ship from burning 01:17:08.779 --> 01:17:17.350 up during reentry. dead ends. Exactly. It caused 01:17:17.350 --> 01:17:20.130 massive delays and cost overruns. The Burhen 01:17:20.130 --> 01:17:22.569 program ballooned to become the largest, most 01:17:22.569 --> 01:17:25.369 expensive single program in the entire history 01:17:25.369 --> 01:17:28.189 of the Soviet space effort. And in the end, it 01:17:28.189 --> 01:17:31.529 only flew into orbit once. In November 1988, 01:17:31.949 --> 01:17:34.590 an uncrewed Burhen launched, completed two orbits 01:17:34.590 --> 01:17:37.310 of the Earth, and executed a flawless automated 01:17:37.310 --> 01:17:40.310 landing in heavy crosswinds. But it was never 01:17:40.310 --> 01:17:43.010 reused. The staggering financial burden of the 01:17:43.010 --> 01:17:45.170 Energia Burhen program combined with the rapidly 01:17:45.170 --> 01:17:47.850 failing Soviet economy was simply too much to 01:17:47.850 --> 01:17:50.329 bear. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, 01:17:50.789 --> 01:17:53.029 the Buran program collapsed with it. The orbiters 01:17:53.029 --> 01:17:55.590 left to rust in abandoned hangars. So the Soviet 01:17:55.590 --> 01:17:57.770 Union falls, the hammer and sickle is lowered, 01:17:58.149 --> 01:18:00.739 and the Cold War effectively ends. The newly 01:18:00.739 --> 01:18:02.939 formed Russian Federation inherits the space 01:18:02.939 --> 01:18:05.279 program, shifting their focus toward their highly 01:18:05.279 --> 01:18:08.239 successful modular space station, Mir. And in 01:18:08.239 --> 01:18:10.500 the 1990s, with the geopolitical rivalry gone, 01:18:10.939 --> 01:18:12.880 the US and Russia finally circle back to the 01:18:12.880 --> 01:18:15.819 promise of that 1975 handshake. They agree to 01:18:15.819 --> 01:18:18.119 the shuttle Mir program, where American space 01:18:18.119 --> 01:18:20.000 shuttles docked with the Russian station, which 01:18:20.000 --> 01:18:21.739 eventually leads directly to the creation of 01:18:21.739 --> 01:18:23.340 the International Space Station we have today. 01:18:23.520 --> 01:18:25.920 Which naturally brings up the grand debate among 01:18:25.920 --> 01:18:28.079 historians that our analysis highlights. Who 01:18:28.079 --> 01:18:31.039 actually won the space race? If you view the 01:18:31.039 --> 01:18:33.460 entire era purely through the lens of John F. 01:18:33.600 --> 01:18:35.880 Kennedy's challenge the race to land a human 01:18:35.880 --> 01:18:37.880 on the moon and return them safely, the United 01:18:37.880 --> 01:18:41.380 States is the undisputed singular victor. The 01:18:41.380 --> 01:18:43.979 Apollo program was the ultimate demonstration 01:18:43.979 --> 01:18:47.420 of transparent democratic industrial might. Right. 01:18:47.760 --> 01:18:49.779 But as aerospace historians frequently point 01:18:49.779 --> 01:18:52.319 out, if you zoom out and look at the era as a 01:18:52.319 --> 01:18:54.939 broad spectrum, of aerospace capabilities, the 01:18:54.939 --> 01:18:57.960 Soviet Union dominated almost every single incremental 01:18:57.960 --> 01:18:59.659 benchmark. They launched the first satellite, 01:18:59.840 --> 01:19:02.119 the first animal, the first human, the first 01:19:02.119 --> 01:19:05.399 woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova. They executed 01:19:05.399 --> 01:19:07.500 the first spacewalk. They built the first space 01:19:07.500 --> 01:19:09.859 station. They achieved the first soft landing 01:19:09.859 --> 01:19:12.739 on Venus and the first robotic lunar sample return. 01:19:13.300 --> 01:19:15.399 The sheer magnitude of the American victory with 01:19:15.399 --> 01:19:17.819 Apollo 11 tends to overshadow the historical 01:19:17.819 --> 01:19:20.779 reality that the USSR was actively leading the 01:19:20.779 --> 01:19:23.020 pack, setting the pace, and driving the agenda 01:19:23.020 --> 01:19:25.520 for a vast majority of the race. It's an incredible 01:19:25.520 --> 01:19:29.000 complex legacy. OK, let's pull all these threads 01:19:29.000 --> 01:19:31.899 together. We started this journey standing in 01:19:31.899 --> 01:19:34.619 the ashes of World War Two, looking at captured 01:19:34.619 --> 01:19:37.279 Nazi V2 rockets that were explicitly designed 01:19:37.279 --> 01:19:40.479 to obliterate cities. We watched those weapons 01:19:40.479 --> 01:19:43.979 evolve into towering, terrifying ICBMs designed 01:19:43.979 --> 01:19:46.159 to threaten the entire globe with thermonuclear 01:19:46.159 --> 01:19:49.119 annihilation. And yet... Through a bizarre alchemy 01:19:49.119 --> 01:19:52.539 of human ambition and fear, those very same engines 01:19:52.539 --> 01:19:55.340 of destruction were repurposed. They became the 01:19:55.340 --> 01:19:57.640 launch vehicles that allowed human beings to 01:19:57.640 --> 01:19:59.520 step onto the surface of the moon, that sent 01:19:59.520 --> 01:20:01.539 robotic emissaries into the crushing atmosphere 01:20:01.539 --> 01:20:04.279 of Venus and the frozen deserts of Mars, and 01:20:04.279 --> 01:20:06.279 that eventually allowed us to live continuously 01:20:06.279 --> 01:20:09.479 in orbit on the ISS. It is the ultimate historical 01:20:09.479 --> 01:20:12.079 paradox. The greatest collaborative, peaceful 01:20:12.079 --> 01:20:14.279 scientific achievements of the late 20th and 01:20:14.279 --> 01:20:16.399 early 21st centuries were not born of peace. 01:20:16.619 --> 01:20:18.779 They were birthed directly from the intense paranoia, 01:20:18.979 --> 01:20:21.140 the existential fear, and the bitter ideological 01:20:21.140 --> 01:20:23.479 rivalry of the Cold War. The rockets were built 01:20:23.479 --> 01:20:25.640 to carry bombs. We just decided to put people 01:20:25.640 --> 01:20:28.399 on them instead. And this isn't just dusty history. 01:20:28.590 --> 01:20:31.470 It affects you, the listener, right now, today. 01:20:31.909 --> 01:20:34.130 Every single time you pull out your phone and 01:20:34.130 --> 01:20:36.449 use the GPS to navigate to a new coffee shop, 01:20:36.970 --> 01:20:38.989 every time you rely on satellite internet or 01:20:38.989 --> 01:20:41.229 check a global weather forecast to see if a hurricane 01:20:41.229 --> 01:20:44.310 is forming, you are directly benefiting from 01:20:44.310 --> 01:20:46.630 orbital technology that was forged in the fiery 01:20:46.630 --> 01:20:49.989 furnace of the U .S.-Soviet space race. The invisible 01:20:49.989 --> 01:20:51.989 infrastructure of our modern connected world 01:20:51.989 --> 01:20:54.369 was built by engineers who were desperately trying 01:20:54.369 --> 01:20:58.810 to outsmart a geopolitical enemy. empty, romantic 01:20:58.810 --> 01:21:01.949 void. It is an active, heavily utilized, essential 01:21:01.949 --> 01:21:04.130 layer of human civilization, and we owe that 01:21:04.130 --> 01:21:06.430 entirely to the sheer momentum generated by this 01:21:06.430 --> 01:21:08.729 era. But the history we've discussed leaves us 01:21:08.729 --> 01:21:11.270 with a final, highly provocative thought that 01:21:11.270 --> 01:21:14.770 feels incredibly relevant today. The geopolitical 01:21:14.770 --> 01:21:18.090 landscape is shifting again. In the 2020s, aerospace 01:21:18.090 --> 01:21:20.529 analysts are explicitly declaring that a new 01:21:20.529 --> 01:21:23.729 space race has begun. Russia recently launched 01:21:23.729 --> 01:21:26.770 the Lunar 25 mission, attempting to return to 01:21:26.770 --> 01:21:29.260 the lunar South Pole. The United States is heavily 01:21:29.260 --> 01:21:31.840 pushing the massive Artemis program intent on 01:21:31.840 --> 01:21:34.060 establishing a permanent crewed base on the moon. 01:21:34.460 --> 01:21:38.020 And now you have a completely new element. Billionaire 01:21:38.020 --> 01:21:40.279 backed private aerospace companies entering the 01:21:40.279 --> 01:21:42.659 fray, launching their own mega rockets and claiming 01:21:42.659 --> 01:21:44.659 their own territory. The players have changed. 01:21:44.859 --> 01:21:46.500 The commercial motivations are different. But 01:21:46.500 --> 01:21:48.640 the fundamental arena, the desire to control 01:21:48.640 --> 01:21:50.899 the ultimate high ground remains exactly the 01:21:50.899 --> 01:21:53.970 same. Which begs a fascinating question. Did 01:21:53.970 --> 01:21:56.289 the space race ever actually end with that forced 01:21:56.289 --> 01:22:00.010 handshake in 1975? Or did it just go dormant, 01:22:00.270 --> 01:22:02.770 resting briefly, waiting for the political tensions 01:22:02.770 --> 01:22:04.609 and the commercial ambitions of a new century 01:22:04.609 --> 01:22:07.770 to reignite the engines? We started this deep 01:22:07.770 --> 01:22:10.109 dive, looking at the moon as a Cold War battleground. 01:22:10.550 --> 01:22:12.270 The next time you walk outside at night and look 01:22:12.270 --> 01:22:15.029 up at that glowing sphere, ask yourself, whose 01:22:15.029 --> 01:22:17.369 flags will be planted there next, and what kind 01:22:17.369 --> 01:22:19.739 of rivalry will it take to put them there? Keep 01:22:19.739 --> 01:22:22.079 looking up, keep questioning the narrative, and 01:22:22.079 --> 01:22:23.319 we'll see you on the next deep dive.