Dun, Dun, Dun: When Sputnik Shook the World

WEBVTT
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I need my intro music fade in. Something tense and cinematic.
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Dun, dun, dun! Tense and cinematic. Okay, you want to start anytime soon?
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October 4th, 1957. It's a Friday night. Americans are going about their evenings.
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Watching TV, pushing TV,
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Wow, that's actually kind of eerie. Eerie from eerie? Eerie.
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Keep eerie strange. I don't know why I'm singing now. Can we please carry on?
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You didn't even open your monster yet. I know.
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That little beep was Sputnik. A 23-inch metal ball hurls around Earth at 18,000
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miles per hour, and it changed everything.
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Welcome to Time Tellers, where history becomes personal. I'm Renee.
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And I'm Dan, and today we're going to space. I mean, kind of.
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Metaphorically, we are staying in these chairs. Speak for yourself.
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I've been training. You have not.
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I've been eating freeze-dried ice cream. Same thing. Totally.
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Today we are talking about the space race. That wild decades-long competition
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between the United States and the Soviet Union to see who could stake a claim
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in the heavens first. It's got everything, folks.
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Politics, science, tragedy, triumph, and some of the most audacious human achievement in history.
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Now, fair warning up front. This is an overview episode. We're covering the
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full arc of the space race from Sputnik to the moon landing,
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and that means we're moving fast. A lot of incredible stories are going to get
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one sentence that deserves an entire episode.
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Which is actually by design because, and we're very excited about this as mentioned
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earlier, we are planning a full deep dive series dedicated entirely to the Apollo program.
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Individual missions, the people behind them, the near disasters, the science, all of it.
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So think of today as the trailer. We're setting the stage so that when we get
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into Apollo specifically, you already understand the world it was born into.
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Consider this, your space race primer.
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It's also one of the most dramatic stories of the Cold War.
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And when you really dig in, it's way more complicated and more human than the
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textbooks ever let on, like all history.
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To understand the space race, you have to understand where it came from,
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and it came from the ashes of World War II.
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Yes. Specifically from a castle in Germany called—I'm not going to try to pronounce
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it, but you'll be able to read it.
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Where a team of— From the Monday? Sure. Where a team of Nazi scientists had
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been developing the most terrifying weapon the world had ever seen, the V-2 rocket.
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The V-2. Oh, I do know this one. Yes, I do, because I know way too much about
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World War II. Those were the rockets Hitler was launching at London, right?
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Exactly. The V-2 was the first long-range ballistic missile.
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It traveled faster than the speed of sound, hit without any warning,
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and there was absolutely nothing you could do to stop it.
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Over 3,000 of them landed on London and Antwerp, and the man behind them was
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a 30-something engineer named Wernher von Braun.
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Hmm, I have heard that name before many a time. You have.
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He becomes one of the most important people in the story. He also is one of
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the most morally complicated figures.
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Von Braun was a rocket genius. He was also a member of the Nazi Party and the SS.
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And his rockets were built using forced labor from concentration camps.
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People died building them.
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That's heavy. And yet, he became a hero of American space exploration.
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Yes, he did. He does. And that tension never fully goes away.
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When Germany fell, both the Americans and the Soviets were racing to grab German
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rocket scientists and their technology.
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The U.S. got Von Braun and most of his team under a secret program called Operation
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Paperclip, which we also had an episode on.
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First season, I think? I don't remember. I don't remember. Are we on our third
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season yet? I don't even know.
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No, I call that the seasons I have starting in July. Oh, okay. That's right. Okay.
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The first one in July will be season three. Gotcha. We're going by a school
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district calendar. No, I'm going by when we started. Okay.
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Okay. The Soviets got the factories and the technical documents and their own
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brilliant engineer, a man named Sergei Korolev.
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He's the less commonly known name, especially for Americans.
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Most people don't, and that's by design. For decades, the Soviet government
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kept his identity completely secret.
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He was just referred to as the chief designer. They were terrified the U.S.
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Would try to assassinate him. They thought we'd assassinate a rocket scientist?
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Renee, this was the Cold War. People were paranoid about everything.
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Hmm. Fair enough. So you've got von Braun on our side, Korolov on theirs,
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two geniuses, two superpowers, two massive egos at the national level.
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This is basically the world's highest stakes science fair. That is actually
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a perfect way to describe it.
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So back to October 1957.
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Sputnik launches and America loses its mind. How bad was the panic?
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Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson said it felt like, and I'm paraphrasing
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here, a shotgun blast of humiliation.
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The idea that the Soviets had the technology to put something into orbit meant,
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by extension, they had the technology to put a nuclear warhead anywhere on Earth.
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So it wasn't just about space, it was about missiles.
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Exactly. Orbit a satellite, you can orbit a bomb. Americans started building
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backyard bomb shelters.
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Congress went into emergency sessions. the word Sputnik entered the American
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vocabulary overnight as shorthand for crisis.
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And then the Soviets did it again a month later, didn't they?
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Yep, with the very original Sputnik 2. 2!
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November 3rd, 1957. And this time they sent up a passenger. Laika the little dog.
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Laika. A stray they'd found on the streets of Moscow. She became the first living
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creature to orbit Earth.
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And she didn't make it back, right?
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That still ticks me off a little bit. It makes me sad.
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She didn't. The mission was never designed for her to return.
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The Soviets didn't reveal that publicly for decades.
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They claimed she'd been humanely euthanized before her oxygen ran out.
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The truth was that she died from overheating a few hours into the flight when
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the thermal control system failed.
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That's heartbreaking. She had no idea she was making history.
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She's actually still up there, technically. That's true.
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Her orbital trajectory decayed in 1958 and she re-entered the atmosphere.
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But for a moment, she was the loneliest creature in the universe.
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Okay. I need a second. That's tragic. Okay.
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What did America do? We panicked. Yeah. Yep.
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Then we tried to launch our own satellite on live television. It was called Vanguard.
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On December 6, 1957, cameras rolling, the rocket rose about four feet,
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lost thrust, and fell back down a spectacular fireball on the launch pad. On live television.
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On live television, the press called it Flopnik, Kaputnik, and Staputnik.
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Those are great, and we totally deserve that. A little bit, yeah.
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It wasn't until January 31st, 1958, that Von Braun's team finally got Explorer
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1 into orbit. We were in the race, but we were already behind.
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Now the question shifted from satellites to something far more daring.
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Could you actually put a human being up there? And key, very important part, survive.
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A key part of the question, yes.
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In April 1959, NASA announced the Mercury 7.
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Seven military test pilots selected from a pool of 500 candidates to become
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America's first astronauts.
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John Glenn, Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper,
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Wally Shara, and Deke Slayton.
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The Mercury 7. I feel like these guys were very celebrated, like instantly famous.
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Overnight celebrities. Life magazine paid them for exclusive rights to their personal stories.
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They were handsome, brave, crew-cut American heroes at exactly the moment America needed them.
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There was a whole mystique around them, the idea of the right stuff,
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this unspoken quality of cool competence under pressure.
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But the Soviets beat us again, didn't they?
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April 12, 1961. Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space.
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He orbited the Earth in 108 minutes, landed in a field in Russia,
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and became the most famous person on the planet.
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What was he like as a person? Did you know him? Have you met him?
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I know how old you are. You're older, so have you.
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By all accounts, genuinely charming and humble. He was the son of a carpenter
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and a milkmaid from a tiny village.
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The Soviets couldn't have cast a better hero if they tried.
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He toured the world after his flight, and crowds turned out everywhere. Paris, London, Cairo.
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Even people who hated the Soviet Union loved Gagarin. I often wonder if his
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backstory was actually factual at all, or if it's just what the Soviets made
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up to make him look extra good.
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Wow. And, of course, the United States responded by?
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Three weeks later, Alan Shepard made it into space on a 15-minute subordemoral
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flight. Not in orbit, just up and back down.
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America's very careful not to oversell it. That's like winning the silver medal
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and calling it a comeback.
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Exactly. But here's where things get interesting. Fourteen days after Gagarin's
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flight, a young president stood up in front of Congress and made one of the
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most audacious promises in political history.
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Was that JFK? Was that JFK? Yes.
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You gave me the caffeine. Finally, if we are to win the battle that is now going
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on around the world between freedom and tyranny,
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the dramatic achievements in space which occurred in recent weeks should have
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made clear to us all, as did the Sputnik in 1957,
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the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere who are attempting
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to make a determination of which road they should take.
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Since early in my term, our efforts in space have been under review.
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With the advice of the Vice President, who is Chairman of the National Space
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Council, we have examined where we are strong and where we are not,
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where we may succeed and where we may not.
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Now it is time to take longer strides, time for a great new American enterprise,
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Time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement,
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which in many ways may hold the key to our future on Earth.
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I believe we possess all the resources and talents necessary,
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but the facts of the matter are that we have never made the national decisions
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or marshaled the national resources required for such leadership.
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We have never specified long-range goals on an urgent time schedule or managed
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our resources and our time so as to ensure their fulfillment.
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Recognizing the head start obtained by the Soviets with their large rocket engines,
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which gives them many months of lead time,
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and recognizing the likelihood that they will exploit this lead for some time
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to come in still more impressive successes, we nevertheless are required to
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make new efforts on our own.
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For while we cannot guarantee that we shall one day be first,
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We can guarantee that any failure to make this effort will make us lost.
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We take an additional risk by making it
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in full view of the world but as shown by the feet of astronaut shepherd this
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very risk enhances our stature when we are successful but this is not merely
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a race space is open to us now and our eagerness to share its meaning is not
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governed by the efforts of others.
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We go into space because whatever mankind must undertake, free men must fully share.
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I therefore ask the Congress, above and beyond the increases I have earlier
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requested for space activities, to provide the funds which are needed to meet
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the following national goals.
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First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal,
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before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.
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No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind or
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more important for the long-range exploration of space, and none will be so
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difficult or expensive to accomplish.
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We propose to accelerate the development of the appropriate lunar spacecraft.
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We propose to develop alternate liquids and solid fuel boosters.
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Much larger than any now being developed, until certain which is superior.
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We propose additional funds for other engine development and for unmanned exploration,
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explorations which are particularly important for one purpose which this nation
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will never overlook, the survival of the man who first makes this daring flight.
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But in a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moon.
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We make this judgment affirmatively. It will be an entire nation,
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for all of us must work to put him there.
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John F. Kennedy, May 1961.
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In his speech to Congress, yes. And here's what makes this extraordinary.
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At the time he said it, NASA had put one man in space for 15 minutes.
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They had never attempted an orbit, let alone a trip to the moon.
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The technology to get there didn't exist. The rockets didn't exist.
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The spacesuits didn't exist. And he was saying, we'll do it in nine years.
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Was he just bluffing?
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Partly, it was a political calculation. Kennedy understood that the Soviets
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had a head start on near-Earth orbit. But going to the moon was so ambitious
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that it had essentially reset the competition.
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By picking a destination that nobody had reached yet, he leveled the playing field.
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Hmm, that's actually really smart. And also, he knew he only had at most two
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terms, so if it didn't work, there wasn't anything he could do about it.
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He also said something in a private memo that reveals his true motivation.
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He told his advisors he wasn't interested in space for his own sake.
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He wanted a space program that would demonstrate American superiority,
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which as a historian is fascinating.
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The entire Apollo program, one of humanity's greatest achievements,
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was fundamentally driven by propaganda.
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Does that make it less impressive?
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I've thought about that a lot. I don't think so. Whatever the motivation,
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the science was real, the engineering was real, and the human courage was absolutely real.
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Also, Kennedy, unfortunately, didn't even live to see it. He didn't.
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He was assassinated in November 1963.
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The program continued under Johnson, and then Nixon would be president when
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it finally succeeded. But it was always called Kennedy's moonshot.
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Because he started it. The idea of it. Okay, this is the moment where I have
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to remind you that this is an overview, because what we're about to cover in
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the next few minutes, Apollo 1, Apollo 11, the missions in between,
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each one of these deserves its own episode.
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And they're going to get one. But for now, we're sketching the outline.
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Save the date, listeners. Apollo's series is coming.
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Before we get to the triumph, we have to talk about the cost. January 27, 1967.
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Astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chafee are inside the Apollo 1 capsule
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on the launch pad during a routine ground test.
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No fuel, no rocket ignition, a simulated countdown.
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And then something went very wrong. A fire broke out inside the capsule.
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The pure oxygen atmosphere that NASA used made it spread with terrifying speed.
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The hatch design was designed to open inward, which meant the pressure of the
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fire made it impossible to open. All three men died within minutes.
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On the ground, not even in space. On the ground, in front of the launch team,
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there was nothing anyone could do.
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It remains the worst disaster in American spaceflight history in terms of lives
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lost per mission. What happened afterwards?
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NASA stopped. For 20 months, there was no crewed launches.
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They completely redesigned the capsule, new hatch, new materials,
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less flammable atmosphere.
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Some engineers later said the fire, as horrible as it was, forced them to fix
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problems that would have killed astronauts in space where there'd be no chance
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of survival. It may have saved the program.
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That's a terrible silver lining.
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The worst kind, but it's real.
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July 16th, 1969, Apollo 11 lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center.
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Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins, and the world holds its breath.
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Okay, I know this part, but tell it anyways, because it deserves to be told.
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And that's what we do here on Time Tellers.
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We tell stories of history. Go ahead.
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Four days later, the lunar module named Eagle separates from the command module
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and begins its descent to the surface.
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And almost immediately, alarms start going off. Alarms? During the landing?
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1202 alarm. The onboard computer was overloading. Nobody in mission control
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had ever seen it in a real flight.
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A 26-year-old software engineer named Jack Garman had stayed late to compile
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a list of computer alarms and what to do about each one.
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He was the one who knew, on the spot, under pressure, that a 1202 was okay.
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The landing could continue. A 26-year-old kid saved the moon landing.
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One of the many unsung heroes in this story. Then, as the Eagle descended,
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Armstrong looked out the window and realized they're heading for a boulder field.
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He took manual control and flew the lander, basically on fumes, to find a clear patch.
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They landed with 17 seconds of fuel remaining.
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17 seconds, folks.
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Stanley Kubrick could have framed that better. 17 seconds, and then Armstrong's
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voice crackled over the radio.
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And everyone in mission control just exploded. Tears cheering cigars. Charlie Duke, the,
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got on the radio and said, and this is his actual quote, Roger Tranquility.
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We copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue.
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We're breathing again. Thanks a lot.
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That is so human. I love that.
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Six and a half hours later, at 10.56 p.m. Eastern Time on July 20th,
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1969, Neil Armstrong stepped off the ladder and onto the lunar surface.
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Half a billion people, a fifth of the entire human population,
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watched it live on television.
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One small step for man, one giant leap of mankind.
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I'm going to step off the limb now.
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That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
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He intended to say one small step for a man.
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The A got lost in the transmission. He was annoyed about that for years.
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That would annoy me, too.
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He was annoyed. He just became the first human being to walk on the moon,
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and he was annoyed at one dropped article, understandably. He was a perfectionist.
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Buzz Aldrin stepped out shortly after and inscribed the view as magnificent
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desolation, which is a much better quote, honestly.
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Magnificent desolation. Okay, Buzz. The Soviets never attempted a crude lunar landing.
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Their program had been dealing with disasters of their own. Their giant moon
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rocket, the N-1, exploded on the launch pad multiple times.
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After Apollo 11, they quietly pivoted to space stations and claimed that had
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always been their real goal.
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Sure was. Whatever they say. No, I'm just kidding.
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And America landed on the moon five more times after Apollo 11,
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the last being Apollo 17 in December of 1972.
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Twelve humans have walked on the lunar surface, all of them American,
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all of them men, and then we just stopped.
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Why, we figured out how to go to the moon, and then we just quit.
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Public interest faded faster than anyone expected. By Apollo 13,
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which had a near-disaster mid-mission, that we will absolutely be doing a full episode on.
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The networks had stopped carrying the live broadcasts. The political motivation disappeared.
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Once we'd won, Congress cut NASA's budget, and the Vietnam War was devouring
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national attention and money.
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That's a little depressing. We have the technology to get to the moon, and we just got bored.
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Or other things became more important. Human nature. But here's the thing, Renee.
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The space race, for all its Cold War nationalism, gave us something that transcended politics.
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Satellite communications, GPS, memory foam, scratch-resistant lenses,
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the technology behind digital cameras, water filtration systems,
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all of it traces back to NASA research from this era, and most importantly,
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freeze-dried ice cream.
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So, the space race is why I can get directions on my phone.
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In a very real way, yes. Okay, Kennedy, fine.
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So, the space race. Two superpowers, one moon, an almost incomprehensible amount
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of human ingenuity, bravery, and loss.
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And, of course, a little dog named Laika, who deserves her own monument somewhere.
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There actually is a monument to her in Moscow, outside the military research
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facility where the program is based. a small statue of a dog on top of a rocket. Good.
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She earned it. And look, we know we flew through a lot today. That was intentional.
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This episode was always meant to be the foundation. Because coming up, we're going deep.
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We're planning a full series on the Apollo program specifically.
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Mission by mission, person by person, the engineers, the astronauts,
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the families waiting at home, the moments that almost ended everything.
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There's so much story left to tell.
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Apollo 1, Apollo 13.
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The moonwalks, the ones people have forgotten, we're doing all of it.
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So if today got you hooked, just wait out and check our Hidden Figures episode to hold you over.
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Dan, any final thoughts on today?
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I think what gets me about this story every time is that it happened so fast.
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From that first beep of Sputnik to a human being standing on the moon was 12 years.
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12 years of impossible engineering political pressure genuine sacrifice and
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12 years of humans refusing to accept that the impossible was in fact impossible.
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That's why we do this show honestly history isn't just dates and facts it's
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people who make decisions brilliant ones and terrible ones under pressure and
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those decisions echo they really do thanks for listening to Time Tellers everyone,
00:23:21.890 --> 00:23:25.650
If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review, share it with your friends,
00:23:25.690 --> 00:23:29.330
or just tell someone one fact you learned today and where you learned it from.
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History spreads one conversation at a time.
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Until next time, keep asking questions. And keep looking up. Bye!