RedHanded - ShortHand: The Space Race

Episode Date: July 17, 2026

The idea of human beings floating in space used to feel as likely as time travel. But after WWII, the world’s two strongest superpowers had to find a way of outdoing each other that didn’t involve the total eradication of the human race. So they decided to race to the stars instead.Here’s how that ideological moonshot became a reality.--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

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We're going to space. Something I have always wanted to do. But I'm scared to do. Would you still do it? Yeah. Yeah. I would do it. What would be your upward budget limit?

Oh, I've got pay for it. Yeah. Oh, fuck. No, that's... No, that's needs a free lunch, my friend. Oh, somebody was just going to Katie Perry me. No. I just gave me...

I thought I was going to be the next Lauren Sanchez and marry Jeff Bezos and get to go up in that fucking... What was it? Blue Horizon? Is that what it was called? Oh, no. I don't know. But no, then everyone will just hate me on the internet. You can do it in secret.

I can do it in secret. But you have to pay for it. Or you can do it for free, but everybody knows. Oh, I do it for free. Okay. And I should be like, fuck you. I went to space, bitches. No, oh my God.

If it was free, I'd totally go. Paying for it. I don't know. It's a bit tricky right now. But yeah. I would love to go. I'd love to see the earth rise. Well, apparently it's quite common for people who have actually been,

to space to become like disillusioned yes but really hardline environmentalists they're like I've seen it I've seen how amazing it is I've seen it in its entirety isn't that interesting I'd feel like what would different personalities become if they went to space because I suspect some people also might become quite nihilistic because you're like I'm into space like none of this fucking matters

but just a blob in nothing I mean I already feel like that and I haven't been to space quite or Would you become like a super believer in something because you're like it was so magical? This must be divine. I don't know. It's interesting. It's interesting what would happen to you. So do you think you would become more nihilistic?

Don't think that's possible. I don't know what I'd become. Just be like, cool. Dick. Anyway, we're only having this conversation because of the space race. When two rival camps of human beings don't like each other, Usually they go to water hash it out. It's always been that way, ever since homo sapiens started throwing rocks at each other to secure the darkest cave or whatever.

That is, except for a few decades in the 20th century when weapons got so advanced that the world's two strongest superpowers had to find some other way about doing each other. And they chose to do that by going to space. In the 50s, this idea was frankly pure insanity, the idea of going to space had it. The very concept that a human being could stand on the moon felt about as realistic as time travel or teleportation.

And now, here were the US and the USSR sworn ideological enemies of the highest order, entering into the world's most consequential pissing contest, saying that they could shoot a man into space and get their flag on the moon. Or they didn't, and Kubrick filmed the whole thing in a bunker in New Mexico.

go. This is the shorthand. World War II was the biggest war there had ever been. More advanced warfare, using more troops across more of the world than any conflict in history. And by 1942, it was getting down to the wire. So both sides decided that if they were going to win it, it had to be by developing a bomb so enormous, so landscape-ruiningly catastrophic. that the enemy would have no choice but to surrender. You've seen Oppenheimer, the war ended, the Americans won,

but after the war ended, the atomic bombs still existed. Before 1945, wars could only be fought over long, protracted campaigns, with bombs and gunfire hurled at the other side in strategic ways for years until one side admitted defeat. After 1945, we lived in a world, in which a head of state could destroy an entire city at the touch of a button. So the world had a big meeting, and everyone promised each other that they'd never, ever use them.

Just because the goodies won doesn't mean that the world was now all buddy-buddy. The US and Soviet Union both considered themselves to represent the new post-war world order, and they were vying for dominance. So not wanting their enemies to have more bombs than them, even if they weren't really allowed to use them, they both scrabble to build and stockpile as many nuclear weapons as possible. Now the unfortunate truth was that during the war,

Germany had been way ahead of us and long-range missiles. The Nazis had been pummeling us with V2 missiles for years while the US was still scrabbling to get them off the ground. So after the war, the US launched Project Paperclip. Project Paperclip brought 1,600 former 9,000 Nazi engineers, scientists and technicians over to American soil and put them to work for the US survey.

On the other side of the Iron Curtain, the Soviets had got their hands on some V2s and got to work tinkering with them. And all of this missile tinkering gave both sides an idea. What if they pointed all the missiles they now had straight up? Neither side was actually going to nuke each other, although it got pretty close. because despite hating each other's guts, they knew that nuking their enemy ensured getting nuked right back, essentially guaranteeing the end of humanity,

which eventually they decided nobody really wanted. So, being functionally defanged, this meant that to show their superiority, they were going to have to get creative, and they had to dominate symbolically instead. They each had to prove to the rest of the world, that they were the one true superpower capable of unfathomable

cutting-edge science and therefore showing their own respective plans for society worked. So they competed to prove their technological and intellectual superiority by becoming the first nation to put a human into space.

If the competition to conquer space is indeed a race, then the 29th of July 1955 was the starting pistol. Because that was when the US announced to the world that it intended to launch the first artificial satellite into space. And by the way, just so everybody knows, a satellite is just any object that orbits a planet all-star.

Four days after that announcement, the Soviet Union responded, saying that they were going to do it first, so there. And then, they fucking did. The first leg was most certainly won by the Soviet Union, and Sputnik 1 became the first Earth-orbiting satellite in history. True to form, the Soviets were pretty secretive about their plans until they happened, so it was a surprise blow to the US. And that was the 4th of October in 1957. But this particular race was a marathon, not a sprint,

and the Dick's swinging advancements had only just begun. The first few years of the space race was defined by each side trying to outdo the other with firsts like first satellite, first man in space, first woman in space, first spacewalk, etc., first dog, everyone forgets about the dog. Oh. And Sputnik was a very strong start for the Soviets. And if you haven't listened to the podcast series, the last Soviet, by the way. Do so, but it's not to do with the space race, so I'm not going to explain it.

The US, meanwhile, didn't even have a successful launch until the following year. Needing to get its head down, the US government set up the National Aeronautics and Space administration, otherwise known as NASA. And the next big step up was sending life out there. Humans were going to take some time. So they started smaller.

So yeah, we are going to talk about Laika, I'm afraid. But it is probably the only Bummerino of this episode. Maybe, no promises. Both sides wanted to send a live animal into space. But

Which animal? Well, you already know that because we've just talked about it. But after some thought, Soviet scientists believed that picking one of the many stray dogs that roam the streets of Moscow was a no-brainer. Why? Well, a homeless Russian dog was pretty used to enduring freezing, harsh conditions and long periods of hunger.

Plus, dogs are obedient. So they put a few candidates through a series of tough endurance trials and medical examinations. One of these saw a dog being put in increasingly smaller cages for periods of up to 20 days to see how it would cope with life in a tiny space capsule. When some dogs stopped urinating or defecating, the Soviets gave them laxatives.

Their conditions just kept getting worse. Dogs were put into centrifuges to mimic the noise and movement of a powerful rocket launch. Their pulses doubled and their blood pressure skyrocketed. But one three-year-old terrier mix stayed relatively calm throughout. They called her Lyca, and she was selected to go into space. Before the launch, Vladimir Yazdowski, the leader of the Soviet space mission,

took her home to play with his children. He wrote, Leika was quiet and charming. I wanted to do something nice for her. She had so little time left to live. And that's because there wasn't enough oxygen or food on board to last the journey. and the technology to re-enter the atmosphere hadn't been developed yet, so Leica was never meant to come back.

On the 3rd of November 1957, Leica was led into a spacecraft called Sputnik 2. Sputnik had an oxygen generator, a heat-activated fan to regulate the temperature, and enough food to keep Lika alive for seven days. The launch was trumpeted as a huge success. Sputnik 2 entered low orbit and Lika survived to orbit the Earth at least four times. But then, within seven hours of liftoff, Lyca died of overheating and panic.

But this wasn't actually known for years. The official account reported was that she survived for six or seven days, before eating food deliberately poisoned by the Soviets to euthanize her before her oxygen supply could run out. Still, either way, the craft stayed up there for another five months after Lyca's death, having orbited the earth two and a half, thousand, thousand times. And Lyca's remains, along with Sputnik too, disintegrated as they re-entered the Earth's atmosphere. So, whilst the Russians chose dogs for their obedience and hardiness, the US went a little more synonymian. A total of 32 primates have been sent to space by the US over the years, from rhesus macaques to squirrel monkeys, but mostly chimpanzees.

just six months after Leica, a chimpanzee called ham became the first hominoid in space. And while we're on animals, the French space program, which I didn't know it existed until right now, sent its first animal into space on the 18th of October, 1963. And can you guess which animal the French went for? A snail. A frog.

No. A garlic baguette. No, it's a cat. It's called Felicity. And Felicity spent five minutes in weightlessness at an altitude of a hundred miles. And in true feline form, then landed safely. She was killed two months later, though, so the scientists could have a look at what happened to her brain.

Got it. Anyway, enough dead animals. Thanks very much. After a few small wins from the US, including the first ever communication satellite and first picture sent back from space. The USSR scored a series of absolute screamers. In September 1959, their Luna 2 craft landed on the surface of the moon.

Luna 3 then managed to orbit the moon and photograph its far side. On Sputnik 5, the Russians managed to send two dogs and a bunch of plants up as well. And this time, they all actually came back alive. And then, the big one. On the 12th of April, 1961, 27-year-old pilot Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. The Vostok 3KA space capsule was launched from Bacchanor Cosmodrome, orbited once around the Earth, and 108 minutes later, Yuri parachuted to the ground in Saratov Oblast in the west of Russia.

The US sent their first man into space a month later. and even then, Curie Redstone 3 spacecraft only lasted for 15 minutes, and it didn't even orbit the earth. The US were clearly losing. It was time to bring out the big guns, which is slightly unfortunate a phrase to use to introduce JFK. Guns plural is the key part. Kennedy started his run as president in 1961, just a couple of months before Lyca went up. up, so peak space race. And after a bruising start for the US, JFK

wanted to know what they could conceivably beat the Soviets at. So he sent off his vice president Lyndon B Johnson to talk to leaders in NASA, industry and military. And Johnson reported back that with a massive effort

the US could conceivably beat the Soviets at getting someone to land on the moon. Although it was quite literally a bit of a moonshot. Very ambitious, but it was kind of the next thing. And since neither side had a rocket even nearly powerful enough yet, it was quite a level playing field.

Every US mission from that point on had that end goal insight, putting a US astronaut on the moon before the end of the decade. On the 12th of September, 1962, JFK revealed the US's ambitious space exploration, program to a crowd in Texas saying we choose to go to the moon. But then he was assassinated by the CIA the next year, also in Texas. And if you think I'm lying, you can go and listen to the two-parter that we just did on his assassination. While the US beavered away on the moon, the USSR sent the first civilian and first woman into space.

26-year-old engineer Valentina Tereshkova. She spent three days in space and orbited the earth 48 times. Then in March 1965, they achieved the first spacewalk. Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov opened the door to his capsule and hung suspended in the deep and endless emptiness of space. I would love it.

And this is a great point to remember that these were not the extant, phenomenally advanced rockets that we have now. All of these people were going up in rattling adapted missiles that had no guarantee of success. And there is no better way to understand that than by doing a little Google

of Alexei Leonov's unbelievably basic space suit. It literally looks like a dressing gown with a helmet. It looks like what kids who are playing space race at home, would make with belongings in their house. Absolutely. It's made of nylon, and wearing this, Alexei went into space in it

for 12 silent minutes. His suit ballooned up, and he got the buttons. But otherwise, it came back fine. Big moves by the Soviets. But then, the US started creeping ahead. It landed the first satellite on Mars. which returned with the first ever images of the planet's surface.

Then the US's Apollo 8 became the first human crude spacecraft to reach the moon, orbit and then successfully return back to Earth. And then just a few years later, the big one. On the 16th of July, 1969, with 723 million people watching around the world, Apollo 11 left Earth. for the moon. On board were Neil Armstrong, Edwin Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins. And while poor old Mike stayed on board, Neil and Buzz took a smaller capsule down to the

surface of our moon and took one small step down onto the surface. While there, they used a film camera to take some of the most astonishing photographs ever taken. The most important being, the one of Earth from the surface of Earth. the moon. The whole thing was not just a political bombshell, but a philosophical one. After a century of upheaval, it reframed our idea of ourselves as a species. Man had walked on the moon, and compared to the vastness and wonder of space, our problems suddenly seemed a bit small fry. In May 1972, the Cold War powers negotiated an easing of hostilities, and in 1975, the US and the USSR launched their first cooperative mission.

Two spacecrafts named Apollo and Soyuz set off from their respective countries and met in space. They docked to each other, and the craft's two commanders Tom Stafford and Alex Salinov exchanged the first international and intergalactic handshake. It was the full, final, symbolic end to the space race. So, come on then. Who won? Most people agree that it was the moonwalk that really clinched it for the US. This was a race for prestige and spectacle, and it doesn't get better on those measures than the entire world watching you plant a big US flag on the moon.

But really, that was more of a big bold comeback after a decade of Soviet domination in space travel. Most of the pioneering achievements were done first by the USSR. But in the end, they just didn't have the hardware to pull. off the moon landing. And they never established a national space agency. Just wasn't as intense a priority. At least that's what they'll say, because they lost.

Space exploration and experimentation continued. And in 1998, the International Space Station was set up for cross-country collaboration all the way up there. Over the years, more countries expanded their own space programs. And as of today, more than 80 countries have a space program. You might be surprised to learn that the UAE has sent a probe to Mars, and Israel has crash landed on the moon. And we're running out of time, but please, please, please, please, please,

Google the Zambian space program. Essentially in the 60s, when Zambia first gained independence, a science teacher promised to beat both the US and the USSR to the moon. Training included rolling his astronauts down a hill in an oil drum and teaching them to walk on their hands, which he believed was the only way that humans could walk on the moon. Oh my God. The picture of the Zambian space suit. It looks like there's a horror movie called The Void, which is questioningly worth your time or not.

And it basically looks like what they wear in it. It looks like what they wear at the nuclear power plant and the Simpsons. Yes. Yes. Have you seen the Olympic swimmer who is from Guinea and he's. had to practice in a hotel swimming pool and no one he'd ever met could swim. And he goes to the Olympics and the other two swimmers false start. So he wins and it's the slowest hundred metres in Olympic history. Oh my God, that's adorable.

I know. Good for him. Good for them. Good for them. So anyway, for all the prestige and chess beating involved in the space race, you can be forgiven for being slightly sore about it. Trillions of dollars and lots of the world's best scientists were hoovered up for glitzy adventures in space. Well, I guess you could say they could be curing cancer or working to eradicate hunger and poverty.

But then, you know, you have to be fair that the experimentation involved in space travel has given us a lot. Firstly, communication. The Earth is now surrounded by a network of satellites that give us broadband GPS, weather data, and Uber-Aids. All of that is thanks to the tech developed in the space race. And there have been huge leaps in medicine as well, thanks to space travel too. the image processing now used in cat scans and radiography were both developed for deep space imaging and are extensively used in treating cancer. And NASA innovations have helped create more functional and dynamic artificial limbs. So now what?

Well, the competition hasn't really ended. It's just turned into a new space race between Russia, the US and China. But this time it's less about showing what we can do and more about claiming it all for ourselves. I was listening to this on Radio 4 but last week. Deposits of metal oxides were recently found in the moon's craters and it's believed to also have reserves of silicon, titanium and loads of rare earth metals and lots of really important gas that is really difficult to mine on Earth.

The moon's just got fucking loads of it and it's cool. So all of those things are really vital in the manufacture of our modern technology. and potentially nuclear fusion, which is better than fission because there's no waste product. What you need for nuclear fusion is helium three, and we just don't have that much of it down here, but the moon is full of it. Let's go get that ship. Well, that's the problem. Who can have it? Who does it belong to?

Who's going to get there first? Who's going to colonize the moon and drill it? So, yeah, someone. going to get it. Who's going to get it? It's the big question. So, yeah. Oyang Xiyang, China's chief scientist in China's lunar exploration program, believes that if helium-3 is found to be confirmed on the moon and that we can mine it,

humanity's energy demand would be solved for about 10,000 years. Well, we better fucking get it before Oyan's Oyan. Can we? We better. Space race. Part two. So yeah, quite literally the race is on. And since the cost has come down and satellites are much smaller and easier to deploy,

private companies have also joined the party. Like we said, lots of countries now have a space program. That's mostly because they don't want to get left behind. When no universally agreed upon laws governing what people can do out in space, it is a free-for-all. And if you don't have a program, well, you don't get a say. The International Space Station was built as a symbol of cooperation between nations but since war broke out in Ukraine

that collaboration is hanging by a threat. Now power blocks are back to hard-nosed competition. So, depressingly, let's finish up back where we started with the world at war. Both Russia and China are testing and experimenting on space-based weapons. That could attack other nations' satellites to ready themselves for a conflict on an interplanetary scale. If the UK satellites were taken out,

the country would lose an estimated one billion pounds per day. GPS and internet would disappear. Ships would drift off course without a clue where they're going. And that is a very real possibility. Russia already have turned off our gas once of times. But wait, it's not all completely awful. if somehow they all chose to play nicely, it could go very well for everybody.

Space scientists are still having incredible breakthroughs all the time in medicine and clean energy, and if the US and China and Russia somehow reached a point where they could agree to work together, the sky could be the limit. I just don't hold out much hope for that. No, me either. Neil deGrasse Tyson was on something,

I can't remember what, And they were asking, you know, are we going to put men on Mars? Like, how far away is that as a possibility? And he was like, oh, we could do it. If it becomes a political, important thing to do, then it will happen. But unless it does, it won't. And I just don't think any nation is going to hand over the potential for limitless, clean energy to somebody else, are they? Like, it's just not going to fucking happen.

and it's going to be whoever figures it out first. Yeah. And then they will have all of everything forever. And we're not even in the fucking running. We don't deserve to be. I disagree. I fucking wish. I mean, the best we can hope for it is that the US does it.

And it's like, here you go. Here you go, little... Bitch? Bitch, yeah. How fucking sad. How fucking sad indeed. Anyway, on that note, we'll leave you at that. And we'll see you next week for another.

short hand. Goodbye. Bye.