Stuff You Should Know - How the Space Race Worked

Episode Date: June 5, 2014

In the 1950s and 60s, the United States and the Soviet Union battled it out to see who would dominate the race for outer space. The Soviets got out to an early lead, but the U.S. would ultimately win. Learn all about the Space Race in this week's episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Munga Shatikler and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too.

Just a Skyline drive on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, it's Chikis from Chikis and Chill Podcast and I want to tell you about a really exciting episode. We're going to be talking to Nancy Rodriguez from Netflix's Love is Blind Season 3. Looking back at your experience, were there any red flags that you think you missed? What I saw as a weakness of his, I wanted to embrace. The way I thought of it was whatever love I have from you is extra for me. I already love myself enough.

Do I need you to validate me as a partner? Yes. Is it required for me to feel good about myself? No. Listen to Chikis and Chill on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast.

I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry laughing at me, and this is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast. That's right. Welcome. Welcome everyone. That was one of the best fall starts we've ever had. It was like four in one.

That was weird. Jerry hit record and Josh went, Chuck. That was a false start. You've got to welcome people to the podcast. I forgot. Hey. Hey, man. Your shirt is taking me back, man.

Oh, yeah? It's taking me back to July 20, 1969, exactly five years and 360 days before my birth. Oh, wow. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Yeah, I just calculated that really quickly. Yeah, that was pre-Chuck as well, believe it or not. No.

Yeah, I was born in the 70s. I know. Is it 70 or 71? 71. Nice. I remember. 71. I do remember all the space race stuff, though, from being young.

Yeah, I remember. Like the tail end, obviously. For sure. Well, we'd already won when I was around. Yeah, we'd kind of already won since I was around, but it was still like a big deal. It's still doing the victory laps, basically. Yeah. When I was around, it was space shuttle, space shuttle, space shuttle.

And as an adult, I've now seen two of the space shells in person. Launches are just like in the hangar. Decommissioned ones in the hangar. That's pretty cool. It's very cool. Yeah. Yeah, they're really neat. I've never seen one.

You definitely should. There's one at the New Aaron Space Museum at Dulles Airport. Okay. I think that's Enterprise, maybe, or Endeavour. And then you can also see one at Cape Canaveral, Kennedy Space Center, which I highly recommend to anyone who's even remotely interested in space exploration or the history of space. Kennedy is the place to go. It is awesome.

I've been to and can recommend the Naval Air Station Museum in Pensacola, Florida. Okay. And I've been to Huntsville. Have you been to space camp? No. I'm in. That's where space camp is, right, Huntsville? I think so.

I don't know if it's... Did you just sit outside the chain link fence and look inside? Yeah, that movie. Did all the privileged kids you got to go? That movie was big. I never saw it. Yeah. I mean, I was at the right age where a movie about kids in space was kind of perfect.

So what's at Huntsville, then, is it like just the... that's like the rocket place. That's where they did the original stuff, right? I think Huntsville's before Kennedy. We should know this stuff. I think it was in conjunction with it, if not before it, but yes. So it was a space center, and I think it still is. Marshall is in Huntsville. It's getting onto a great start.

Anyway, you like space. I like space. We're not like space junkies or anything like that. We don't like intravenously inject space. No, like Tom Hanks. Right. You know, we never produced a mini-series about it or anything like that. But you know, it's an interesting thing.

I think after researching how the space race worked, it occurred to me that there's at least two other episodes that we should do. How the moon landing worked, what he did, did they fake the moon landing, which was a pretty good one. Yeah, that's old. But we should do one like assuming that it actually happened. Which it did. And then the International Space Station, or just space stations in general, like the

history of them, like Skylab, and Mirror, you know, the ISS. Totally should. Okay, so we'll do those people. We have committed ourselves, like John Kennedy committed America to put a man on the moon by the end of the 60s. So we're going to do our podcasts on space stations. Yeah. So like I said, you took me back to July 20, 1969.

So let's take everybody back. Do you want to get in the way back machine? Oh man. Yeah. Yeah. Blow the dust off this thing. And did you leave like a half eaten cheeseburger in here or something? It is funky.

Yeah. I thought that might keep. It's not keeping very well. Sorry. There's a mongoose in here. We can just go back in time to when that burger was fresh. Oh, good thinking. Were you sure with me?

Yeah. We obviously only wanted half. Well, that's why we all know we're kidding because Chuck didn't leave behind a half eaten cheeseburger. That's silly. Okay. So Chuck, here we are. I assume this is, yeah, it's July 20th, 1969.

Sweet. And we're going to listen in as you and I do a dramatic reading of the transmission between mission control and the lunar landing module and I'll be mission control. And I'll be eagle. Okay. 30 seconds in parentheses of fuel remaining. Contact light. Okay.

Engine stop. Dissent engine command over right off. We copy you down eagle. Houston Tranquility Base here. The eagle has landed Roger Tranquility. We copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again.

Thanks a lot. It's Miller time. Yeah, it is. We're all wearing short sleeve shirts with ties. We're all cool under pressure. We got flat tops. And a lot of people don't know. I didn't know actually until I read this that when the landing module for Apollo 11, the

first time human set foot on the moon, then we know of, there was a really tense moment where they were about to run out of fuel as they were trying to land. That's what that 30 seconds thing was from and had they run out of fuel, all three or all two astronauts aboard who landed would have died. Yeah. I mean, they basically had to do it manually. Yeah. They took over.

That's why they had, as Tom Wolf put it, the right stuff. Great, great book. Great, great movie. I've never read the book, but the movie is amazing. So good. If you're out there and well, if you're a fan of space, then you've seen the right stuff. So that just reminded me, remember when I told you about Garbage Pales Stew?

Yeah. So I guess it must have been for my dad's birthday or something. My family rented the right stuff and we made Garbage Pales Stew. Oh, that was part of the thing? Yeah. Every year? No, just once. Okay, just once.

Yeah. Yeah. We didn't like my dad that much. Yeah. We got a listener mail from someone in Michigan that did the garbage. Awesome. I did not see that one. So it must have been a Midwestern thing.

Okay, good. So I'm not insane. And neither is my father. No, but see the right stuff, people. Really, really great movie. It is. It encapsulates the Mercury program and the Mercury 7 and plus leave on helmets in it. Is that right?

Yeah. The late great. Who did play? He was not one of the Mercury 7. He was... He got cut? You're cut? No, I don't think he was even an astronaut in training.

I think he was just part of the support military crew. I can't remember exactly. It's been a while. Yeah, that's an odd cameo. It wasn't a cameo. It was a genuine part. Right, but I mean like why leave on helmet? He acts.

Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, he was in coal miner's daughter and stuff and he was in that Marky Mark movie a couple of years ago. Shooter? Shooter? Sniper? Whenever he was a sniper. Okay.

Are we done? Yeah. RIP. We got way off. Anyway, when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, Buzz Aldrin was close on his heels. That ended effectively a more than a decade of what was known as the space race. Yeah, very exciting time in the United States. People were way, way into it.

Yeah, it was like... People cared. Yeah, it was like how the voice is viewed now. Oh boy, that's sad. You know? Yeah, I guess. I've never seen that show in life. If it really happens.

Nice one. So the space race was this kind of this. We should define it. It was this Cold War byproduct of the tensions between the US and the USSR, which were competing for utter dominance over the world, one way or another. And out of that quest for dominance came an uneasy balance, a polarization. And you're either with one side or against them. There was very few neutral states.

And from this came kind of just a constant challenge. Each country drove the other to try to advance technologically, economically, in just every single way. And it was kind of a really fruitful time, especially if you are into the whole military industrial complex gig. But from this competition, we reached the moon. The Soviets ended up building a mere space station. Like everything we know about space came out of this race, this tension between the US

and the USSR. Yeah. And it was, it's pretty neat. Like the early space programs were, it was all brand new. So it wasn't like, let's see how much work we can get done up there. It was, let's see if we can get up there. Let's see if this guy won't die if we shoot him up there. Yeah.

And it was like logical steps. Like, can we put a ship up there? Can we put a ship with a jump? Can we put a ship with a human? Yeah. Can we put two humans? How long can they stay? Right.

Can they dock with other ships and meet other astronauts? Can we actually trick them into drinking tank? Yeah. Exactly. And then eventually, we feel like we can get up there. Now we need to start accomplishing some things besides just getting up here. That's right. I mean, they brought back lunar rocks and things.

Don't get me wrong. They had goals aside from hitting a golf ball on the moon. But I just find it really remarkable that it's in logical that it was all just a series of steps. And each time we tried to one up one another, it was progress for the world. Yeah, exactly. For mankind, if you will. Yeah.

And it's really difficult to overstate the effect that that rivalry had. I mean, we'll kind of see that, you know, if one achieves something, the other one is like, we've got to top you somehow by tenfold. Yeah. You send the man, we send the woman. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

That was a good one. Like it was a lot of, everyone's trying to get a first in there. Exactly. I thought you were doing Sean Connery doing the, you know, they bring a knife, you bring a gun. No. If you thought that was my Irish accent, then I'm worse than I thought. Maybe I just, I'm not hearing right.

So the space race put us into space, everything we now understand and know and have in space and a lot of stuff on earth is directly related to the space race. And the space race, we trace back to the Nazis. Yeah. It's funny. The space race was between the U.S. and Russia, but it was really Germany. Yeah. That kind of started everything.

During World War II, Nazi Germany had a world-class rocket program led by a guy named Werner von Braun. Yeah. And von Braun at some point during World War II, I guess, saw the writing on the wall and he came up with the V2 rocket, which was the scourge of Britain. Yeah. It was the first ballistic missile and ballistic missile means it's not steered. It's fired on a trajectory and then just regular forces of nature and mechanics run the show.

Right. As opposed to a cruise missile, which is steered. But it could hit London from like a launch pad around the Baltic Sea. If they did their calculations correctly. Right. Yes. So von Braun had developed the V2 rocket and at some point during World War II, I guess he saw the writing on the wall that he and he lost faith that the Germans were going to

win. So he got together some of his fellow rocket scientists, literal rocket scientists, and said, hey, let's surrender to the Americans. I'll bet you if we come to them and bring some knowledge and schematics and stuff, yeah, that they'll just totally ignore the whole Nazi thing. And they were right. Yeah. Yeah.

And Hitler pouted and died. Yes. And then we got these dudes Van Braun in particular and took them to White Sands, New Mexico and said, you now work for us. And they said, great, because you guys got better food and cool cars and yeah. And hot women. Yes. There's like everything you need in New Mexico, land of plenty.

You ever been to White Sands? No, I haven't. It's pretty cool. Van Nostrom went or no, he went to the Trinity testing site. It's not White Sands. No. I don't think so. No.

So White Sands relocated to Huntsville, though, in Marshall. Right. Yes. So I was right by calling it Marshall. Yes. Marshall Space Flight Center. So the Soviets did the same thing, they poached a bunch of Nazi rocket scientists and created their own program under the leadership of a very talented and apt Russian named Sergei

Korolev. Yeah. And so basically it was Von Braun versus Korolev, teams of Nazi scientists working in the USSR and the USA, working with obviously American colleagues, Soviet colleagues. And Germany is like, what about our space program? They were like, you're lucky we even let you have a flag right now. And that was the start of the space race. That's incorrect.

There was a program developed, a rocket program developed, another rocket program developed. And at the time, both of these nascent US and Soviet rocket programs, they were designed to blow each other up. But at some point, the scientists said, hey, how about rather than pointing them over Earth, how about up, let's shoot these things up and see what we can do? Yes, like maybe carry a satellite into outer space. Eisenhower, and this jumping ahead a little bit, he also had the foresight to say, you know what, space is fun and all, but we can use this for military purposes.

So he started a couple of national security programs, one for the military potential of using these rockets, and the other one with the CIA to say it was called the National Reconnaissance Office, and that was secret until the 90s. Yeah, is it still around? I don't think so. It's a code named Corona, and that was Eisenhower saying, well, if we can get satellites up there, maybe we can start spying on the Russians with these satellites. So I was kind of surprised to learn that intelligence was behind some of this that early on.

Oh, yeah? Yeah. So the beginning, what's called 1957, it was the international geophysical year, and that was when a bunch of scientists got together and said, hey, let's get together from all over the world and let's all do some, put our heads together to do some serious studying of our planet. Isn't that neat? Yeah, it's super neat.

So, okay, well, like we've got these governments, these incredibly powerful governments behind us, let's see if we can use it for some good. Like, yes, we'll create their spy satellites and whatnot, but let's also see if we can funnel some of that funding toward space exploration, putting satellites into orbit. Let's see what we can do. And they did. And as a result, both the United States and the USSR, as a result of this international geophysical year, said we're going to be the first to launch a satellite in orbit.

And the race was on. That was the beginning. What was that, 1957? That's right. And one thing is clear, if you know anything about the space race, is that the U.S. was getting their butts kicked in the early part of that game. Yeah. Like if this is a four-quarter game, I would say the first, at the half time, they were

probably losing. About the half. Somewhere in the half. Well, they started to come back and maybe change momentum around the half. Okay. They definitely lost all of the first quarter. Okay. But if this is basketball, they had to run late in the second quarter, maybe to get fans

fired up. Yes. Exactly. The Soviets definitely were winning early, though, with their Sputnik 1, which means traveler in Russian, and they launched that on October 4, 1957. So they were the first ones to launch a satellite in this space. That's right. They scored that first point.

They did. It was a big one. Well, it was a big one. They seemed to want to do things a little more robustly than Americans. Americans seemed to be a little more conservative, like with how many rockets can we put on? How fast can it go? What should the payload be? Right.

And the Russians were pushing the boundaries a little, or sorry, the Soviets, but they were Russian. Yeah, Ruskies. Yeah. But they had a payload much larger than the Americans were willing to try. Right. They were far behind about four months later, January 31, 1958. We launched our Explorer 1.

Right. And actually, we launched Explorer, which is finally attached to a Juno rocket, which was Von Braun's design. And the reason we didn't launch one first was because, for some reason, America had decided to go with a different rocket design and ignored Von Braun's. Oh, really? And space experts, historians say we most likely would have gotten one up there before the Soviets had we just stuck with Von Braun's design because it would have been ready earlier

and it proved that it could have worked. So we could have beaten them, but we didn't. And that's actually the first point scored by the Soviets. So after that, it was like, okay, well, what's next? What's the next logical step from there? Start NASA. Yeah. I guess so.

We need a bureaucracy here. Yeah, in 1958, Congress passed the Space Act and that's what created NASA. And the Soviets created their space program, Roscosmos, and said, let's do this in earnest. And it's pretty interesting when we're going to go over some of the differences here. It's interesting to see this early, some of the different approaches, just some of the basic approaches to what each nation thought was like the way to go. So here's one of them. The Soviet rockets, like I said, were more powerful.

So right off the bat, they were using more juice. Right. The Soviets were using what are called Vostok rockets early on in the beginning of the program. And the Americans were using Redstone and Atlas rockets. Yeah. And this is when we started the Mercury program, like we referenced in the right stuff. The Mercury 7, Scott Carpenter, heroes, Gordo Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Shira, Alan Shepard, and Deke Slayton.

Those were some brave, like they would be the guys today that are wearing like those wing suits and jumping off mountains. Yeah. You know, they were the early, what do you call those, thrill seekers, what's the word for them? Thrill seeker. Okay. Early thrill seekers.

No, extreme. That's what I was looking for. Oh, Mountain Dew. Code Red. Mountain Dew. Go ahead. So, I was going to say, you can kind of like the programs were started and finished roughly at around the same time.

Yeah. So, you have the Mercury program going on in America initially, and at the same time the Soviets are carrying out their Vostok program. Vostok. Okay. So, another difference is that the Soviets were like everything that they did, super secret about it all. And it was tough to, you know, you couldn't turn on the TV and get a lot of information

about the cosmonaut of the month. Which by the way, I was like, how do you pronounce that in Russian? And apparently it's very close. It's kuzmenoth. Oh, really? Yeah. Noth. Noth.

Huh. Noth. Well, you know, I was curious about the word not as a suffix, and apparently that came from the Greek. For sailor. Yeah, like nautical. So, they're space sailors essentially. Don't you think it would radically alter our view of space and the International Space

Station and everything? If everyone were called cosmonauts or astronauts, if they, you basically took away any kind of national or ethnic identity once you got out in space, like everybody was an astronaut? Oh, yeah. I thought you were going to say if they use sailor instead of naut, and it was astrosailor, cosmosailor. Or everybody was a dream sailor once you got out in space? No, I think you're totally right.

I mean, I think that's like naming your teams. It is, because like even now, China sends taikonauts in there into space. So, you can say, just by reading a news report, you know who's up there. Yeah. There's a taikonaut, a cosmonaut, and an astronaut. Well, you're totally right. That's no accident. No.

So divisive. It is. Well, it was a space race. Yeah. It's not a shuttle relay. It's true. And not space shuttle, you know what I mean? I knew it, you man.

Okay. I hope so. I hope so. So, the Soviets were secret. The Americans were not. We proudly broadcasted our successes and failures for the world to see. And there were some failures. There were.

We should say that when the USSR launched Sputnik, we had not one, but two major failures. Yeah. The kind where the rocket will go up and then just come right back down and explode on the launch pad kind of failures. And there were dubbed things like Flopnik and Kaputnik, and it was very demoralizing for America. Yeah. Or a pre-launch test catching fire and losing three of our astronauts, including Gus Grissom.

Well, that was the beginning of the Apollo program. Yeah. But that one didn't even, that was on the launch pad. That was a test, was that televised? I don't know about that. But they still don't know what caused the actual fire. But the 100% oxygen chamber did not help. No, they used to pump 100% oxygen rather than an air mixture.

I think now it's like 34% aboard like the ISS. But they would have 100% oxygen and there was extremely flammable. And yeah, during a test, I think in January of 1967, the capsule caught fire and killed all three astronauts inside. Within like five minutes, the fire burned itself out and they were dead. Wow. Luckily, they supposedly died from smoke inhalation. Which is what, quicker?

Yeah. Like they were dead before they were inflamed. Yeah. Wow. But I don't know. Well, and the Soviets were the actual, the first ones to learn that pure oxygen wasn't a good idea. And they didn't tell us that.

No. Obviously. No, because their program wasn't secret. Yeah. But one of the other differences I thought was pretty interesting was that the Soviets used a spherical capsule in which the cosmonaut just rode along and they ejected and parachuted out and the capsule crashed into land, whereas we had our funny shaped capsule that the astronauts actually drove.

So they were pilots and they splashed down into the sea, still in the capsule. So again, two completely different approaches and I just find it interesting that, you know, the Americans are like, no, we want our pilots to fly and fly into the ocean because it's a soft place to land. Right. And then, you know, it worked. Didn't somebody, I think one of those guys, Jeff Bezos or somebody like that, found one of the original mercury capsules at the bottom of the ocean.

Oh, really? Uh-huh. Interesting. Yeah. Isn't that neat? That is neat. You know, because of a spherical spacecraft, it can enter the atmosphere just however it wants to.

Right. Whereas you've got to kind of nail that with the mercury capsule, the conical. You couldn't just go in there like upside down. Yeah, you have to use your boosters to thrust into place and adjust your yaw and all that stuff. Real pilots, dude. Yeah. Well, it's like Apollo 13.

That was one of their big concerns, was being accurately angled to reenter the atmosphere else they were in big trouble. That was scary. That was such a good movie, too. Yeah. That was good. The vomit comet. Yeah.

You remember that? That's what they used for? To train. And to shoot. That's how they simulated. Oh, did they? That's poor guys. Yeah.

I'd still love to write on that thing. I bet it's awesome. Have you ever seen that footage of those girls like on the vomit comet or something similar? Girls? Yeah. There's three girls in a seat and one of them throws up and it just goes right back into her face and just kind of hovers there. Ah.

Have you not seen that? No. I got to send that to you. Is it real? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Man, it is gross.

What are they doing putting girls in the vomit comet? What? No. I mean, not like seven-year-old girls. Oh. Women. Women. Oh, okay.

We heard from our feminist listeners and they said girls is better than females. Oh, yeah. Girls is acceptable. I'm just going with that. No, no, no. I'm still amazed that people just say female if they're not talking about like a study or something. You know, I've been listening out for that and anyone say that?

It's actually very, very common. Really? Female, male. Yeah. Interesting. It's very common. You've done your own. An impromptu survey.

Yeah. Just by being alive, man, being awake. Yeah. No. And it wasn't like the vomit comet. Like, I don't think it was the one that like Ron Howard wrote on. It was a ride at Disney. It's basically, it looks a lot like a light aircraft that's doing a nosedive.

But they're basically weightless for a second. Wow. So it's obviously not a light aircraft, but it just looks small. That girl just pukes in her own face. It is so gross. All right. So just to clear it up, Chuck wasn't saying that women should not be allowed in vomit comets.

And Josh wasn't saying that the women in the vomit comets were seven-year-olds. Right. Okay. I think that was well put. Thank you. So the Soviets scored the second point as well. Second touchdown. This is a big one.

In April 12th, 1961, they actually put Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into space. And he was the first man in space and the first man to orbit the earth. And there was egg on the face of the U.S. at that point. Yeah. We've done 14-nothing. Yeah. I think if you could like give him a couple of touchdowns for that one, you should. 21-nothing?

Yeah. All right. I mean, like Yuri was the first person in space. And again, apparently, America could have been the first. But it's actually better that, I guess, Von Braun said, we need to schedule one more test and not 100% certain about putting a human in here. And they added one more test, which pushed Alan Shepard's Freedom 7 flight back by a couple of months, which put it a month after Yuri Gagarin's flight.

So we could have done it, but even if we had, the Russians still would have basically beaten us. They would have gotten at least some points, even for being second, because Alan Shepard's flight was basically shot up into a suborbital position and came right back down. It was a 15-minute suborbital space flight. Which you can do now if you've got like a hundred grand. Pretty much. Yeah.

What Yuri Gagarin did was he shot up into actual earth orbit and orbited the earth, the entire earth once. And then came back down 108 minutes later. So 15 minutes. That's definitely two touchdowns. Yeah. Straight up and down. Yeah.

In 15 minutes. Or up, full orbit of the earth, and back down 108 minutes. I mean, it's actually good that we came second in that anyway. Yeah. True. And that, Chuck, that lit the fire beneath America's bottom. Yeah. Like we got to get going.

Yeah. Because think about it. I mean, like... We're down three touchdowns. Who wrote this one? Craig Freud and Rich. Yeah. The doc.

Right. He points out like this is the time of the, this followed the McCarthy trials. Yeah. People did not like the Soviets. America really wanted to dominate, and we were getting our butts kicked publicly by the USSR. Yeah. And it was demoralizing, but rather than let ourselves get beat down, Kennedy got with

NASA and said, what can we do to beat these guys? We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. This is a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

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And so tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. That's right. Because not only with those two things were they beating us, but they at one point during this time had more hours in space, uh, this one rocket than all of ours put together. Yeah.

So we were getting trounced bad. So they were basically just doing like victory lap after victory lap. Like they would send guys up and orbit the earth one after the other. Yeah. At the end of the, um, the Vostok, uh, program, which was their first program, I believe, yes, their first program by the time they finished it. They had not only sent the first man into space, they sent the first woman into space, uh, Valentina Tereshkova, and she orbited the earth 48 times in Vostok six during the

mercury program. I think the best we came up with was Gordon Cooper doing 22 times around the earth. So they were just crushing us, um, and just racking up the points left and right. That's right. So America says, you know what? We should develop something, a new program. And that's how it works. You know, they have a program.

It does what it does over a period of years, then they retired that they start up a new one there. The new program was the Gemini program and the Soviets started the, uh, Vostok program. Yes. It's a tough one. A little bit. And they again got out to a little early lead with that program because they were the first to send a multiple cosmonauts up.

Yeah. They got three into Vostok one and then had a spacewalk before we did, uh, Alexi Leonov and Vostok to March 18th, 1965. So they're still, they're still beating us at this point. They are, but by this time, just a couple of weeks after Alan Shepard's first flight and while we're still just reeling from the, uh, the, the Yuri Gagarin flight, um, Kennedy came out under the news and said, you know what, we're going to be the first to put a man on the moon and we're going to do it before the decades out.

He kind of declared that the finish line almost to, like whoever does this and it's going to be us, uh, will win. And this is a substantial goal to set. I mean, like we'd been beaten twice. And like you said, trounced, um, by the Soviets. And now we're suddenly saying like, Oh yeah, let's go to the moon. Let's see who's first to the moon. And, uh, that set the foundation for everything to follow.

That began the Gemini program, which like you were saying, the mercury program, each program was designed to kind of prove that we could do a certain step. The mercury program proved that a human being could go into space and safely come back down. Yeah. Could orbit the earth. These next two programs, I guess the next Soviet program, what is it again? Uh, wash God. Yeah.

That one proved that a person could survive out in space outside of a space capsule or space transport. Yeah. Um, and the Americans had Gemini, which ultimately bridged the gap between mercury program and the Apollo program, which would put us on the moon. And both the Vauxhall and the, uh, Gemini programs were like putting multiple people in space together to work and do neat stuff. Yeah, that's right.

And, uh, so with Jim and I early on, we were like, all right, you guys are beating us to the punch. You're getting people up there and you can fly around the earth a bunch of times. You got the quantity part down, but we're going to focus on quality here in the US and learn how to do things up there like change orbits. Can you do that? Rusky? Yeah.

And they said, and yet, and so all of a sudden we were flying around up there changing orbits. Um, rendezvousing with other spacecraft docking with rockets and you can fly around the earth as much as you want. But we're actually putting, uh, putting our work into practice, like, you know, what's it going to take to get on the moon, send someone up there for two weeks and dock with someone else. Right. Change orbits, fly that thing around.

Yeah. And we were able to do that successfully. And that's when we started pulling ahead because the Soviets were just doing laps around the earth. Well, they, they were doing some other stuff. They did do like space walks and stuff like that, but yeah, it was, these two programs are where we started to pull away. And um, it was that Gemini program that we used to prove that we could do things like

spend two weeks in space, which is how long it would take, like you said, to go to the moon and back. Yeah. And they, the Soviets were doing a lot of unmanned missions at the time, uh, or sending animals up there, data gathering, stuff like that. Yes. And there were a lot of animals sent to space that, that perished. That never came back.

No. Or that came back in as fireballs and said, I went to this museum, um, you mean I did in, in LA, it's called the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Yeah. I've heard of that. You should go. It is the most unique peculiar museum you will ever go to in your life. But one of the exhibits is a hall of portraits of Soviet space dogs.

Oh, really? Pretty neat. Interesting. Yeah. And sad cause they all ended up dead, huh? Yeah. It's, uh, sad, but the tone of them more is, uh, national pride. Gotcha.

You know, like these dogs gave their life for the advancement of, uh, humans. Yeah. But I mean, like if you, if you step back and really think about it, these portraits are very much like human portraits, like the dogs are like looking up, right, uh, you know, into the future with their chin raised and like their, their breasts, you know, proud. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, that's the way they're done.

It's neat. Well, what they're looking at is a dog treat. I doubt they're staring into space. But the effect. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, that's pretty neat. I'm going to check that out.

Oh, you need to go, man. Go with a child's heart. Well, I have no choice then. Okay. That's the only heart I have. Nice job. Uh, all right. So where were you?

Well, Project Jim and I, we have a little bit of momentum. We, we have what it takes. We have the right stuff, if you will, right to make it to the moon and to walk around up there. Uh, and that is when Apollo one caught fire, uh, which was a pretty big setback in January of 1967. Yeah. I mean, like not only did we lose like three of our great astronauts, these guys were

some of the originals. Um, I imagine that it scared the living daylights out of all the other astronauts and all of the people in mission control and NASA and Americans, like, uh, you know, this is, everybody knew it was dangerous, but now it was proven like it's deadly space. This is a deadly endeavor that we're undertaking here. Yeah. They knew that they knew how dangerous it was. Yeah.

That's why all their wives were just, you know, no, no, I don't mean them. I mean, more like the American public. Oh, yeah. Like, yeah, you're right. Yeah. We're losing people now. These aren't like dogs. Yeah.

Like these are three guys, you know, yeah, totally. And people that America had grown to love, you know, like national heroes at this point. Right. Like the voice. You gotta quit saying that. And so, uh, after the fire, actually they disassembled the launch pads, but left the posts as a permanent memorial to the Apollo one astronauts. Yeah.

And rebuilt launch pads elsewhere. Yeah. Wow. Uh, all right. So at this point, the Soviets are, uh, concentrating on, like I said, unmanned spacecraft. They're like, all right, you can go walk on the moon, but we're going to send, uh, we're going to orbit the moon at least. And we're going to develop some docking systems and, um, seeing how long we can stay up there.

Other David Blaine esque feats of strength. Right. Which is kind of neat. Like at some point around 1967, 68, the Soviets said, it's obvious the Americans are going to make it to the moon. We're not going to send a man to the moon right now within time to be first. Yeah. We're going to pursue some other stuff that the Americans aren't doing.

They're like, what's the big deal about the moon anyway? Right. And it turns out that kind of right kind of, um, but humanity as a whole benefited from that decision. Oh yeah. Because the, while the Americans were perfecting what the Americans were perfecting things like space shuttles and that kind of stuff, things that came directly out of the Apollo program and the lunar landing and just that, that science, the Russians were like you said

experimenting with things like docking systems, space stations, they ended up building the mirror. Yeah. And so after the sky lab, yeah, we had sky lab in the 70s, which again, go to the national air and space museum. There's two. There's one at Dulles and then there's one like on the mall in DC. Yeah.

I think I've seen that one. Yeah. It's like when it's one of the main Smithsonian museums. Yeah. They have like a model of sky lab that you can walk through. It's so 70s. Rific. It's awesome.

Yeah. Yeah. So we were experimenting with space stations, but at the same time, it was very apparent after, well, it wasn't the end of the Cold War. This was before the end of the Cold War, but after we won, after we landed on the moon. Yeah. Apparently, the Soviets and Americans said, Hey, let's see if we can work together. And they actually did in a very symbolic, but also technically proficient manner.

The Soyuz Apollo mission of 1975. Yes, and we'll talk more about that right after this break. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cold classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

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Man, that music just got me fired up. I know. Wow. We already won even. Yeah. That was our first time. All right. So we left off, you were talking about the, the joint Apollo Soyuz test project, um,

which was a really big deal to get together on this. And I'm, I'm kind of surprised even back then that they had the foresight to work together. You know? Yeah, but we still weren't like great friends's nation in the early seventies. No. And space was still a huge question as to whether or not it could or should or would be weaponized too. Yeah, exactly.

The two dominant superpowers on the planet to get together was a big deal. Yeah. And that happened in 1975. They literally got together in space when an Apollo craft carrying three of our astronauts hooked up and docked with the Soyuz spacecraft with two cosmonauts. And they spent a couple of days, uh, you know, working and probably getting to know one another. Yeah. Maybe drinking vodka.

Yeah. The product. We're not so different. We like to go to space and get drunk. Exactly. It's the best. I like Tang. You like Tang.

Right. Let's put some vodka in it. Exactly. So that was a big deal. And, um, at least from that, it proved that we could work together. Our space agencies could work together. And, um, it led to this, this age of cooperation that grew directly out of the rivalry. Yeah.

Um, and like we said, the Russians were kind of paying attention to living for the duration in space. Yeah. The other thing was the space shuttle. Yeah. We basically had like some cars that we could drive to the moon or space and back. Yeah. Um, and we kind of put the two together.

Um, the Russians had the Mir space station and in the nineties, their crews had worked in the eighties or nineties. I don't remember that their crews, at least one crew had spent more than a year in space. Yeah. That was huge. It's super huge because part of the goal with all of these is, can we one day build live in space? Right.

Period. And so ultimately this led to this joint cooperation led to the international space station, uh, in the nineties. Yep. And if you go up to the international space station, you're going to see Russians and you're going to see Americans. Yeah. And they're all up there working together still.

Oh, but Chuck, that is possibly changing. Yeah. I guess I should have said had been working together nicely like good neighbors because is it Russia trying to like evict us now? Well, they're basically saying like, Hey, you guys can't get up there anymore because and we're not going to give you a ride. No, well, no, they will give us a ride, but it's $71 million a ride now. What?

Yeah. Wow. And, um, at the very least it's humiliating that Americans are having to hitch a ride from Russians. Yeah. We were basically extorting money from us. So is this all at the root of it? Is it like just tensions between Putin and the U S?

Yeah, it all came from the Ukraine stuff. Yeah. And one of the first Russians to be sanctioned was the head of the Russian space agency. So they were like, Oh, really? Gotcha. You know, that's that space station up there. Like you guys are in trouble now. So I wonder is it not going to be the international space station anymore?

I think what Russia is basically saying is watch what happens when we stop giving you guys ride, right? And then we say, you know what, let's just let the space station fall out of orbit. Wow. So we'll still have a space flight program, a human space flight program. You guys won't because the international space station is the only piece of human space flight equipment that the United States has because the space shuttle program was scrapped. Right.

Wow. So the space shuttle was scrapped. Like you said, Bush before he left office sort of had to read a directive for NASA moving forward that is moot now because Obama scrapped a lot of it. Bush wanted to go back to the moon, basically. And even some of the people within NASA said it's like Apollo on steroids. And do we really need to go back to the moon? Like what can we gain from that at this point?

So Obama scrapped it and redirected NASA's funding toward more rocket technology research. Like how can we fire rockets farther and can we refuel them in flight? And not just for military but maybe this stuff can be useful, you know, in the space program as well. Right. So that is the current space program, but there's a new space race. Yeah. Ish.

China. Yeah. Has come along and very methodically and ploddingly has followed and met its space goals. 2003, put its first man in space. Did you say they were taiko nuts? Taiko nuts? Taiko nuts. Taiko nuts.

Yeah. Yeah, one of the, I read an article about China's space race and they said so far their space program is roughly equivalent to the U.S. and Soviet space programs circa mid-60s. I saw that too, yeah. So they're clearly behind, but apparently they are making a lot of headway in a short amount of time. Plus, they have the luxury of not having to invent items like microchips from scratch. Right.

That people, the Russians and the Americans in the space race had to do. The fact is though, if you read anything about China and its space ambitions and the United States and the state of its current space program, you basically find you're sitting around reminiscing about the golden days of Tang and Guest Grissom. Really? Yeah, China's basically going to dominate space. They're poised to dominate space. They very cleverly have started a space station program that will come online the same time

that the ISS, the International Space Station, makes its fiery arc into the Pacific somewhere I read. Yeah, the ISS is going to come down sometime after 2016, probably 2020, and the United States will have no presence in space any longer. China will be the only game in town with a space station. And I feel like, I don't know that this is true, but I feel like in something like space, space exploration, that's kind of something that you have to build on momentum. Once you use momentum, you really are set back.

All of these people who are working for NASA or who have been laid off recently as they age out and retire, and all of that cumulative knowledge and organizational memory is lost. So even if we come to five years from now and say, whoa, we're a space faring nation, we need to get back out there, we've lost quite a bit already. Not to mention in the ensuing five or ten years where we start to lose exponentially more. Yeah, it takes a while to ramp that back up. And I agree.

My fear is this, that we're going to take our typical, or what's come to be, our typical kleptocrat view of things and just let private business handle it. We'll just let SpaceX handle it for America. They're addicted to money, so in their pursuit of money, we'll benefit as a nation. Well that hasn't necessarily worked out for us with housing markets and stock markets and dangerous chemicals and that kind of thing. So while I do think that the true space race right now is between private industry amongst itself and private industry and China, I don't think that as a nation, by sitting back and

just leaving it to private industry and virtually withdrawing our federal dollars from space exploration, that the United States is going to benefit in any way, shape, or form. Well yeah, especially when you hear Aston Kutcher is going up on Virgin Galactic. How's that helping us? It's not. Angelina Jolie's up there though. That's what matters. This urges you.

Doesn't it? You know, I mean, I think it's neat, but it's one of those private space travel for the super rich. It's just like another thing for the super rich, like owning a yacht. How does that benefit me that if you've got several hundred thousand dollars, you can take a suborbital flight, which is basically like a tourist. That's not advancing. I don't think that's advancing our space exploration at all.

Just leave it to business. You'll see. And that's not to say that SpaceX or any of the private space industries aren't working to do things beyond send movie stars and rich people to space. No, they're working to send the rest of us to space too. It's just the rich people and movie stars are the ones who will have the money to hit that first price point. But surely they're doing other things too though, like research or are they not?

That's what I need to look at. I would imagine that probably most of the goals of anything like SpaceX or any company like that is to make money from space. So I would guess mining, basically selling services to space agencies. Colonizing and selling moon condos. Sure. Like India, Iran, these countries have space programs as well and are entering space themselves. SpaceX can go basically contract for them.

Yeah, they're doing stuff, but they're not doing stuff necessarily just for the pursuit of science. Right. For the US even. Yeah. I got a couple of things before we finish. Let's do it. There's some inventions that sometimes are mistakenly attributed to NASA, which aren't

necessarily true, but our favorites in space. Yeah, Velcro is the one I've always heard. That's wrong. Is it? Yes. I've been in the 1940s by a hiker who noticed that little birds were stuck to his socks and wondered how they stuck. I've heard that story.

Look closely. This is a true story. Look closely and saw that birds have little hooks and the socks have little loops and that gave rise to Velcro. And Velcro is used a lot by NASA, so it's often wrongfully attributed to NASA. All right. This is a fun game since you know this stuff. Okay.

How about M&Ms? No. The popular candy that melts in your mouth and not in your hands. No. They also don't squish around in space. The candy coated shell makes it great for space travel. But not invented for space. No.

What about the joystick? Yes. Okay. That is the direct result of the space race and the space programs. What about GPS? Yeah. Okay. Because you can't spell global positioning satellite without...

Positioning. Yeah. Without satellite. It's a system, isn't it? GPS is a system. Yeah. It's a satellite. Yeah.

So we also have the space race... You just watch that one. We also have the space race to thank for satellite TV. What about smoke detectors in your home? Yes. Because of space program? Space. Yeah.

What about Tang? So supposedly... And the Dippin' Dots. The freeze-dried... The Dippin' Dots, I don't know, man. It's powerful. That's supposed to be like the outer space ice cream. That's what the astronauts had.

Supposedly, but I don't know if it was developed by NASA for them. Okay. Tang, no. It was already around. Yeah. Freeze-dried foods... The freeze-drying process was already around to freeze-dry blood to save for later. But then NASA adopted it to start freeze-drying food.

So technically, you can thank NASA for freeze-dried food. Yeah. And while Tang was not invented by the space program, it was definitely heavily marketed as being tied to the space program. Yeah. And it was a big deal. Like it was... Like people gave it to their kids because they thought it would make them...

Go into space. Yeah. Like stronger and smarter and... Little astronaut. Yeah. Pretty much. What are some other... I have one more for you.

Have you ever heard there's like this urban legend that the American space program and the Soviet space program both had this problem? The Americans, they needed to be able to write in space, but if you use a pen... Oh, yeah. The Soviets are functioned by gravity, and if you're in zero gravity, you can't use a pen. Yeah. Seinfeld had an astronaut pen.

Right. Yeah. So supposedly, NASA spent millions of dollars in coming up with a zero-G pen while the Soviets had a much better idea. Pencil? Pencil. Was that really? Yeah.

Wow. So apparently, that's an urban myth. Both programs used pencils to start. But the Apollo 1 fire showed that you don't want anything that's even remotely flammable like a wooden pencil aboard your spacecraft. That makes sense too, sure. So NASA started using mechanical pencils, which were a couple hundred dollars a piece they were way overpaying for.

And then a man by the name of Fisher, who owned Fisher Pen Company, used his own millions of dollars to create a pressure-functioning pen rather than gravity-functioning pen, a space pen, which he in turn sold to the U.S. space program and eventually the Soviet space program for just a few dollars each. So the millions of dollars space pen is a myth. That's your Paul Harvey moment. Right. It's better than a sputnik moment.

You know me, I like pencils. And hey, shout out to our buddy, David Rees, who wrote the quintessential books, How to Sharpen Pencils. Yeah. Book. Yeah. Not books. But if you want to know about sharpening pencils.

That's the way to go. There's a book, and he will explain that. And he's a great, funny guy, then a friend, so. Yeah, he's a good guy. I just like to plug that. He's got a new show coming out. On what? That GEO.

Oh, yeah? Yeah. What's it about? It's called Going Deep with David Rees, where he, each episode is like how to open a door, how to make ice, how to swat a fly, where he goes deep into the how-to's of very mundane tasks. Nicely done, Rees. Yeah.

I can't wait to see it. Yeah, for sure. You got anything else? I got nothing else. So if you want to know more about space race, you can type space and race in the search part, house-to-force.com. And if this fascinated you, you should go back and listen to our Was the Moon Landing a Hoax episode, and our episode, Did Reagan Star Wars Program and the Cold War.

Both of them excellent, excellent episodes we've done. And you can find them both at stuffy-should-know.com, slash podcasts, slash archive. And we did a very special television episode about the private space race. So one of our 10 TV episodes, Stuffy-should-know, featured John Hodgman. And the gist of the episode is we have been invited to do some training for private space place. Spacex. Yeah, it's Spacex.

Yeah. And it's a fun episode, so you can get that on iTunes and Google Play and Amazon. Or you can stay up until four in the morning and watch it on science. Maybe. Yeah. Maybe they do show them late night, yeah. Oh, like regularly? Yeah.

Oh, cool. For weirdos. I'll have to watch those. If you already said all that, I think it's time, buddy, for listening to mail. Okay, I'm going to call this breastfeeding from Becky. Hey, guys. I'm a newer fan. I'm so glad to found y'all.

I discovered your shows while looking for ways to spend the vast amount of free time I have during my day now. My husband and I just had our first child, Penelope. Do you have free time? Well, you know, raising a kid. Sure. Not free. I wouldn't call it free time.

I agree. I've discovered that breastfeeding is very time-consuming. I think she means while she's breastfeeding is not a lot else you can do. Oh, I got you, okay. I'm basically forced to sit around for long stretches of time and able to do anything besides think, read, or listen to podcasts. I feel as if our daughter has already left some bounds ahead of all the other four month olds out there.

And this is a while ago, so she's even older than that. Why? She's educated about how meth and crack cocaine work, sign language, human cannonballs, amputation, castration, diplomatic immunity, et cetera. The list is growing longer as we work through the archives. It made me wonder if you ever thought about doing a show on breastfeeding. I thought at first it would be a super weird experience, but I've come to really be fascinated by the process.

And let's be honest, it's something with which the vast majority of humans have had firsthand experience. So we didn't do breastfeeding, did we? No. We totally should though. That's a huge hornet's nest too. Oh yeah? Yeah.

Well, let's step right into it. Let's do it. That's from Becky, breastfeeding Becky. Thank you, Becky. Thanks, Becky. If you want to suggest an episode, we are always up for that. We love great suggestions like Becky's. You can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K podcast.

You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. And last but not least, you can hang out with us at our home on the web, the coolest location on the internet. It's called stuffyshouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe.

You can find in major league baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me. And my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And a frost of tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.