Who Won the Space Race? - Cold War DOCUMENTARY

there is perhaps no greater story in the Cold War than that of the Space Race the mental image that is conjured is one of two sides in frantic competition to achieve Landmark although somewhat arbitrary and certainly not mutually agreed on goals although the space race is often seen as the greatest scientific competition ever waged a new Battlefield in a war of ideology the greatest achievement that the Space Race possibly accomplished was the furtherance of international cooperation and dayon I'm your host David and today we are going to look at the path taken from the fear created by Sputnik all the way to a handshake Among the Stars that transcended ideology this is the Cold War it is of great urgency and importance to our country both from consideration of our Prestige as a nation as well as military necessity that this challenge Sputnik be met by an energetic program of research and development for the conquest of space it is accordingly proposed that the scientific research be the responsibility of a national civilian agency these are the words of Hugh Dryden an American scientist and civil servant who few people have ever heard of but who is also considered the founding father of what is perhaps the best known US government agency in the world the National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA Dryden published his statement on January 14th 1958 roughly 4 months after the Soviet Union had placed Sputnik the first man-made satellite into Earth orbit Dryden at the time was the director of the national advisory committee for Aeronautics NAA a government funded Research Institute that had been established in 1915 to help push forward us aeronautical research which was then in its infancy in his capacity as director Dryden and others were lobbying the Eisenhower Administration to create a national body to coordinate us aeronautical and space research exploration rather than keeping everything under the direction of the Department of Defense where the Army Navy and Air Forces each ran programs running in parallel to each other and often feuding over things like funding 15 days after dryden's statement the US jet propulsion laboratory working with the Army ballistic missile agency and its key scientist and totally not Nazi fer Von Brun launched the first American satellite Explorer 1 using the Jupiter C rocket juno1 America finally had a satellite in space but this was a hollow Victory the Soviets had already launched the far larger and more sophisticated Sputnik 2 less than a month after their first satellite an attempt to launch Explorer 1 in December 1957 aboard a US Navy developed Vanguard rocket which we discussed in a previous video had ended in failure when the rocket blew up on the Launchpad thus in light of perceived Soviet superiority in scientific Acumen and organizational ability the Eisenhower Administration was quite receptive to dren's arguments Eisenhower's own scientific adviser James Killian had written a memo in December 1957 on the organizational alternatives for space research and development this document essentially argued that while the military should continue to develop ballistic missile Tech technology the primary lead in space exploration should be a civilian-led research agency which would coordinate with the military it's worth noting that Killian was a Critic of Senator Joseph McCarthy's investigation of the scientific community and would later state that actions by the military under the guise of rooting out suspected Communists including revoking the security clearance of the father of the atomic bomb Robert Oppenheimer had a chilling effect on scientific research in the US as a whole one would think Eisenhower himself a career military man you will recall would sign with the military but well you would be wrong Eisenhower although a believer in a strong military was skeptical of the military's ability to effectively manage research and development programs based on this in April 1958 Eisenhower delivered an address to the US Congress calling for the NAA to be reformed as NASA and given Primacy in coordinating all us space programs the military would maintain their own programs but these would become much more focused on the service branches specific needs and benefit from NASA's overall Research into rocketry in general as a result of this shift plans like the Air Force's lunex project which had sought to establish a 21-man lunar Base by 1968 or project a119 another Air Force project which looked to test a nuclear bomb on the moon were abandoned in fact the National Aeronautics Space act which Eisenhower signed on July 29th 1958 expressly stipulated quote the Congress hereby declares that it is the policy of the United States that activities in space should be devoted to Peaceful purposes for the benefit of all mankind now while the Americans reorganized their space program the Soviet Union was already pressing ahead with their next major goal of space exploration man flight human space flight at the time was largely theoretical and it was uncertain if living creatures could even survive the acceleration of a rocket launch this question led to perhaps one of the saddest and certainly more ethically dubious experiments in space flight history remember when I mentioned Sputnik 2 well in addition to other scientific instruments that craft carried a biological sample to test the ability of living things to survive both launch as well as orbit the biological sample was a dog prisoned Leica she had been a stray picked up in the streets of Moscow Soviet scientists believed that Moscow Strays were particularly Hardy animals since they lived in a city that saw extreme temperature fluctuations having myself once adopted a stray from the streets of that City I can agree that they are wonderfully adaptable but no creature should have been deliberately subjected to what came next Leica took flight on November 3rd 1957 and although the capsule contained food and water there was no plan to recover the spacecraft Leica was expected to die in orbit and indeed sadly she did after 4 days likely from overheating as some of the capsules installation had torn loose during takeoff raising the interior temperature to over 40° C like a sad story exemplifies how ethical considerations are often put aside in the pursuit of Rapid technological advancement ol gazenko the Soviet scientist who selected and trained Leica late in his own life life expressed deep regret at how she was used by the Soviet space program Leo was commemorated in the Soviet Union appearing on stamps and even the Soviet conquerors of space monument and she continues to be honored by the scientific community at large despite the cruelty of the method leica's flight did prove that living things could survive in space and as a result both the United States and the Soviet Union aggressively pushed ahead with their manned rocket program after much Del operation both sides settled on recruiting Pilots usually military Pilots for their astronaut and cosmina programs respectively the Americans specifically chose to recruit test pilots men who had already shown a willingness to climb into untested aircraft which was a good decision because the American rocket program was facing a number of issues as NASA was getting off the ground it chose to adopt the US Army's Redstone Rocket for its first Mann flight problematically however however a number of test launches failed spectacularly leading many in the press and government to ask why American Rockets always blew up while Soviet Rockets seemed to have no trouble launching into space in actual fact the Soviets did experienced several launch failures but the highly secretive Soviet space program only reported these successes for the Soviet part they were also busy creating a core of wouldbe Space Explorers opting for Soviet Air Force pilots because these men were seen as having the relevant experience and skill to successfully survive space flight and operate under high G forces from a pool of 200 candidates 20 were selected and on June 29th 1960 the group moved to their new permanent base at zeleni now known as Star City which Remains the site of cosmina training to this day even as they recruited potential Pilots the Soviets were moving ahead rapidly with the development of their launch vehicle the VTO capsule was developed as a dual use surveillance satellite named zenet and as a manned launch vehicle it was to be launched on a modified R7 intercontinental ballistic missile known as the VTO K dual use of military technology remained a critical aspect of securing Communist Party support for the Space Program Soviet Premier Cruz chff although mindful of the propaganda value of the Space Program always had an eye on its military application and despite some notable examples largely let the program run autonomously giving Sergey COV a fairly free hand Soviet scientists carried out a number of test flights again containing biological samples but this time designed to return to Earth the most successful of these was on August 19th 1960 when a capsule carrying two dogs Dela and sta 40 mice two rats and a wide assortment of plants launched and then returned to Earth after a day spent in orbit following this on March 9th 1961 another successful launch tested the capsule with a full-size test dummy named Ivan Ivanovich who was successfully ejected from the capsule on its return to Earth yes you did hear that right in order to increase the likelihood the pilot would return safely VTO was designed for the pilot to eject will still 7 km above the ground the Americans meanwhile were beginning to catch up seven Astron were selected dubbed the Mercury 7 after the project named Mercury and NASA was now pushing ahead with the Mercury Redstone Rocket a successful test launch on the 31st of January 1961 carried a chimpanzee made ham into space and returned him safely NASA continued to test the Mercury Redstone even as it worked with the American Military and Private Industry to build more capable launch Vehicles now one of the advantages enjoyed by the Soviets was their higher tolerance for risk with any potential failures out of the public eye they could immediately use their intercontinental ballistic missiles as human launch Vehicles the US however was well aware that for the public watching American astronauts being caught in an exploding rocket would be extremely unpopular and would seriously hurt us Prestige as well as their ability to continue to secure political support and funding so while NASA had selected the ICBM Atlas for its next iteration of rockets the initial launch would need to be made on the by now far more reliable Redstone the Redstone launch would be suborbital as opposed to orbital flight as the pilot would fly past the Carmen line but then begin his descent rather than traveling around the earth orbital flight would need to wait for the far more powerful atas rocket to undergo further testing so as the Americans refined their systems the Soviets were ready to go we should note here though that if their attempt to launch a man into orbit failed they would merely try again indeed the Soviets had already had their first casualty senior Lieutenant Valentine bondeno who was killed on March 23rd 1961 in a horrific training accident when a fire started in a pressure chamber bondeno both burned to death and suffocated as the fire ate up all his oxygen in the chamber while other staff watched helplessly unable to open the door for half an hour due to the difference in air pressure bondeno was 24 years old the youngest of the cosmonauts the Soviet government attempted to erase any record of bondarenco even removing him from official photographs it would not be until the reforms of glos that the full details of his death were brought to light but bondo's death and other setbacks did not deter the Soviets and on April 12th 1961 Soviet cosm Yuri gagaran prepared to launch into orbit the 27-year-old gagaran had up to this point lived an eventful life the son of collective farmers who resided in gajat near smolin had survived the Nazi occupation and after the war apprenticed as a steel worker before joining the Air Force Lieutenant General Nikolai kamanin who had overseen the VTO training program ranked kagarin as the most capable candidate and thus he was selected to be the first man in space good Garen was also deemed the most politically suitable coming from the right background neither gagaran nor kov slept the night before the flight but at 607 UTC the VTO engines roared to life and goov radioed gagaran good luck to which Gagarin replied some version of Bali let's go it took 10 minutes for the craft to reach orbit and after a roughly 45-minute trip around the world the Retro Rockets fired and Gagarin began re-entry his spacecraft despite losing radio contact functioned as planned and in southern Russia near the small town of Angel a young girl and her grandfather looked up to see a man in an orange jumpsuit descending via parachute the man after he landed informed them he was a Soviet Citizen and needed to find a telephone to call Moscow gagaran and the Soviet Union's success captivated the world the United States caught in second place again rapidly pushed ahead with its own planned launch and on May 5th 196 1 less than a month after gagarin's flight Alan Shepard a former Naval aviator and test pilot launched from the new US primary launch site at Cape Canaveral Florida aboard the Mercury Redstone 3 christened Freedom 7 the flight lasted 15 minutes 22 seconds and the first spacecraft traveled 486 km from its launch Point touching down in the Atlantic Ocean America had put a man in space but it would be another eight months before the first American orbited the Earth the Soviets launched a follow-up mission to gagarin's flight on August 6 1961 Vu 2 flown by Gman Tito to show that their man launches were repeatable the US also launched a follow-up suborbital flight on July 21st 1961 flown by Virgil Ivan Gus Grom this Mission Illustrated the risk of splash down Landings when the capsule due to a misstep by Grom sank Grom managed to exit the castle before this happened and was rescued but it was a close-run thing finally on February 20th 1962 after another series of test flights John Glenn a former Marine Aviator launched aboard the Mercury Atlas 6 to the Cry of godspeed John Glenn offered over the radio by his backup Scott Carpenter Glenn's more powerful Atlas rocket roared into the heavens achieving three orbits around the earth before safely returning splashing down in the North Atlantic so it was that less than 60 years after the first powered aircraft had been born Aloft in Kitty Hawk North Carolina humans had truly slipped the sirly bonds of Earth and danced above the clouds on Wings of Fire but there was more Yet to Come As new goals were set looking not at Earth's orbit but Earth's closest Celestial neighbor the moon as well as Beyond to see what truly lay out in the darkness of space for the United States there was a singular goal a challenge to the nation laid down by a new Young president but for the Soviet Union there was no such singular task for them to work towards no unifying goal and this is where the argument comes from that the race to the moon was a race with only one contestant where the other supposed Runner of the race was working towards something else now that being said on September 12th 1962 President John Kennedy gave speech at R University in Houston we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy but because they are hard because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills because that challenge is the one that we are willing to accept one we are unwilling to postpone and one we intend to win of course Kennedy would sadly not live to see whether or not the US Space Program Rose to the challenge he laid out as about a year later in another Texas City Kennedy would be struck dead by a lone gunman yet before the end of that decade an American would indeed set foot on the moon creating one of the most iconic moments in human history but how to go about doing this was unclear both in terms of planning but also in terms of its very practicality early learner Landing Concepts like the Air Force 1958 lunex project used single stage to orbit systems which would break Earth's gravity land on the moon and then return all using a single rocket this was found to be impractical as actual rocket science continued to develop from a largely theoretical to a practical discipline NASA scientists began to develop mathematical formulas that allowed them to calculate how much fuel was required to get a man to the moon and more importantly bring him back from the Moon there is something worth directly mentioning here although NASA had begun to work with companies such as IBM to develop electronic computers to assist in calculations much of the complex mathematics was done by hand and largely by women called computers because they computed things most notable of these was Miss Katherine Johnson an African-American woman working at NASA's offices in Virginia over her career first with Thea and then NASA Johnson established a reputation of Excellence so much so that she was asked to verify the calculations of digital computers and John Glenn prior to his first launch refused to fly until Johnson had signed off on the calculations Johnson and her colleague story is told in the 2017 movie hidden figures in case all this rings a bell but you couldn't remember why while electronic computers would grow more effective over time employees like Johnson many of the women and people of color would make major contributions to the space program as the US began to work through the theoretical requirements for a mission to the Moon it was established that three things were required one was to test New Concepts including the ability to conduct an orbital rendevu between two vehicles the second was to develop a more powerful rocket at this point the US was still using Rockets originally developed to launch missiles which had the power to reach the Soviet Union but a mission to the moon or missions deeper into the the cosmos would need Rockets designed for that purpose the third identified necessity was to use unmanned craft to gain a better understanding of space the moon and destinations further beyond in order to address the first set of challenges the US began to utilize the ongoing Mercury and then gemin programs as a test bed for New Concepts as well as a way to better understand a human's ability to work and live in space like the Soviets the initial follow-up launch to the successful or oral flight of John Glenn which saw us astronaut Scott Carpenter orbit the earth in a similar manner was designed to show the Mercury launches were repeatable following this NASA launched longer and longer missions with Gordon Cooper flying the final Mercury capsule on May 15th 1963 orbiting the Earth 22 times and spending a total of 1 day 10 hours 19 minutes and 49 seconds in space Mercury having served its purpose was rapidly supplanted by the geminy program which was able to launch two astronauts into orbit at once it too became a test bed for new systems some notable Milestones from the gmany program included gmany 3 on March 23rd 1965 which was the first US spacecraft to change its orbit using thrusters gmany 4 which saw astronaut Ed White on June 3rd 1965 become the first American to walk in space a feat that came a few months after Alexi leonov had ACC the same task followed by gin 6A 7 and 8 which practiced orbital rendevu and docking as a side note these test flights were crucial to identify a number of issues it was during gmany 6A and gemman 7 that NASA established spacecraft could not fly at each other like aircraft but rather needed to calculate to adjust their orbits gemman 7 a 14-day endurance Mission also Illustrated the shortcomings in NASA's design of the spacecraft Plumbing this this was something Ed White had already noted when he prolonged his space walk far longer than was intended simply because he didn't want to get back into the cramped capsule the gimy program only lasted for about 2 years between 1964 and 1966 but helped lay the foundation for the Mann Moon missions project Apollo and to carry Americans to the moon on the wings of Apollo NASA was hard at work developing a new rocket along with a whole family of systems to enable crew to fly to the moon the Saturn rocket family began its development at the Marshall space flight center in Huntsville Alabama under the direction of Walt Disney's favorite not a Nazi burner Von Brun the Saturn rocket family was derived from earlier Rockets developed for the US military but it was different from its predecessors in that it was designed to primarily be a heavy lift vehicle launching payloads into high Earth orbit or beyond Earth trajectories the Saturn 1's first test was on October 2 7th 1961 and development continued throughout the 1960s with the first Saturn 5 rocket launching on November's 9th 1967 it's worth noting that the testing of the Saturn 5 was greatly accelerated by NASA especially the deputy director of operations George Miller who approved all op testing which allowed all stages of the Saturn 5 to be tested in parallel to each other rather than testing one at a time in order to support the Apollo program n was also expanding it employed directly or indirectly over 400,000 people it also expanded its launch infrastructure and constructed a ground control station in Houston Texas no problems yet Houston but Apollo wasn't the only iron in NASA's proverbial fire even as NASA astronauts were learning how to work in space and the Saturn rocket and the rest of the Apollo components were undergoing development NASA was pursuing a number of unmanned scientific missions and testing the efficacy of satellite Communications NASA had already begun onm exploration as early as 1958 with its Explorer Program which mainly focused on Earth satellites explorer was followed by the Pioneer program which sought to explore the moon and other planetary bodies and then the Mariner program which was meant to send robotic probes to the inner solar system we won't go through all these missions as it is quite lengthy but suffice it to say these missions many he done in cooperation with academic and international organizations created massive amounts of new scientific data and helped to drive further developments in NASA's technology this included the miniaturization of electronics helping to reduce the overall mass of each payload making it far easier to launch them into space and go further faster okay so while all this was going on you would expect that the Soviets would be hard at work on their own lunar program trying to beat the Americans to the moon this was a race after after all right well you would in fact be wrong as I mentioned earlier the US took great pains to coordinate all the different facets of its Space Program into one guiding body NASA under the tenure of director James Webb and George Müller as the head of office of man space flight zeroed in on the singular goal of a man moon mission and then worked towards it the Soviets on the other hand had never centralized their space program instead a number of different design bureaus operated their own pet projects and getting them to cooperate was rather like trying to h cats the driving force behind the Soviet space program was still Sergey galov who had overseen the success of the VTO program and continued to see successes including Alexi leonov's a forementioned spacewalk as well as the launching of the first female cosmina Valentina teres kova during the VTO 6 mission gof was also the primary advocate for the direction of the Soviet space program which he for saw establishing a man orbital space station and then Landing a man on the moon it took until 1964 however for COV to convince the Soviet government to commit to this plan well after the development of Apollo was underway Soviet development was further slowed by political infighting and favoritism Vladimir cheleni an ally of kof was given the task of developing a man rocket to the moon and his inexperience slowed the pace of production the soviet's goal was to land on the moon in 1968 the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution but the technology didn't look to be ready in time kolov persisted though and with kof's fall in 1964 he was able to consolidate his authority as director of the man Soviet program although not the overall space industrial complex but then tragedy struck in 1966 kolov underwent surgery but died nine days later suffering complications from colon cancer and heart disease without his driving force and vision and lacking solid political buyin the Soviet program began to suffer and nowhere was this more evident than the development of the Soviet lunar rocket the N1 like the Saturn 5 was designed to be a super heavy lift vehicle but development which had begun in 1956 did not really begin in Earnest until 1965 and was then hampered by technical problems this included a debate over what kind of fuel to use as some Soviet designers advocated utiliz hypergolic fuel which was easier to store and ignite but extremely toxic vat silly Mission replaced kov as head of the okb-1 design Bureau but lacked his predecessor's knowledge Authority and Leadership skills the N1 continued to suff problems and although it was tested four times it never actually flew moreover Mission Under Pressure to push ahead with space exploration approved the launch of the new soos spacecraft without it having been fully tested resulting in the death of Vladimir kov after this incident Mion developed a severe drinking problem and most Soviet plans for a manned mission to the Moon never made it off the drawing board which in the long run may have actually been the best for everyone in an effort to catch up to the Americans the Soviets had planned to launch a two-man spacecraft with a single seat lunar lander that a cosmonaut would Space Walk too you can imagine the number of things that could go wrong especially as the cosmina was is expected to repeat the process upon redocking with the craft while also hauling lunar soil and rock samples the Soviet lunar program would be quietly canceled in 1976 though it had never really been feasible after the failure of the N1 instead of pursuing a lunar program then the Soviets pushed ahead with the development of the so capsule and unmanned probes though most of these programs like the vanera missions would not come to Greater prominence until later the secret of the overall Soviet program gave the impression the race was still underway even if it wasn't really a race at all but back on the other side of the Atlantic and Pacific not everything was going swimmingly with the American program either on February 21st 1967 what was supposed to be a dress rehearsal for Apollo's first manned orbital flight ended in tragedy when a fire in the cabin of the Apollo spacecraft killed American astronauts Gus Gom Ed White and Roger B Chas fet tragically the astronauts might have survived had the ground crew been able to rapidly open the sealed hatch the fire led to a 20-month delay in the Apollo program and the development of new Safety Systems and safety protocols including things like explosive bolts yet NASA pushed ahead and between December 21st and 27th of 1968 Apollo 8 became the first American spacecraft to leave low earth orbit and conduct a successful flyby of the Moon although they did create a bit of controversy over the reading of the first 10 verses of the Book of Genesis as they did so incidentally the Soviets had beaten the Americans to be the first to circle the moon with living creatures and then have them return safely to Earth the September 1968 zond 5 Mission sent a pair of tortoises named number 22 and number 37 around the moon and then back home again Apollo 8 and other test missions proved the viability of hollow's complex Flight Plan the rocket would launch enter orbit turn and rev with their Lemar Lander module called the LM and then fly to the moon where it would detach the lamb which would land after a short stay on the moon the astronauts would lift off from the lamb and rendevu and dock with the Command Module and the astronauts would return to earth that is a very basic way of putting it and at every step there was the potential for Miss Mission failure due to both human and mechanical error still Apollo 10 successfully accomplished each of these steps short of lunar descent and landing in May 1969 on July 20th 1969 Apollo 11 with the crew of Neil Armstrong Edwin Eugene Buzz Aldren and Michael Collins successfully entered lunar orbit Armstrong and Aldren descended in the LM and in one of the most watched moments of the television history Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon speaking out loud the words we all know so well one small step for man one giant leap for mankind for an amazing step-by-step breakdown of the Apollo 11 Mission I highly recommend the BBC World Service Podcast 13 minutes to the moon so the Americans had seemingly won the Space Race the question then became well what next well Apollo missions continued but faced some difficulties Apollo 12 which launched November 16th 1969 was struck by lightning causing a severe electrical short and almost caused the astronauts to abort their mission however one flight controller John Aaron cly gave the astronauts instructions on how to correct the problem earning Aaron the coolest title one can ever achieve steeli missileman and Aaron needed those nerves again when in April 1970 Apollo 13 suffered a severe malfunction later determined to be an explosion in an oxygen tank Apollo 13 wasn't able to land on the moon but NASA with the whole world watching successfully brought its three astronauts home safely Apollo 13 Illustrated the potential dangers of space flight but also the seemingly diminishing return on investment the Apollo program was having Apollo 13 incidentally also resulted in a fantastic 1995 Tom Hanks movie of the same title which is well worth watching even today the Saturn 5 rocket the rocket that took men to the Moon moon was a magnificent machine but it was extremely complex with its massive stages manufactured in three different locations across the US before being shipped to Florida for final assembly before launch the Nixon Administration eager to cut costs had already begun to encourage NASA to invest in less expensive spacecraft even though this would mean abandoning the moon ultimately 12 humans would walk on the moon and their Journey would spark our Collective imaginations but also give us greater appreciation for our place in the universe one photo of Apollo 11 taken by Michael Collins shows the LM Eagle ascending towards the Command Module with Earth in the background Collins would later remark how strange it was when he realized every person who existed or had ever existed was in front of him except himself now we should talk about the politics of space because yes there is politics even in space or about space in this case as I mentioned earlier in the episode at the start of the Space Race there were efforts by both sides to militarize like so many things during the Cold War both sides viewed it as a means to demonstrate the superiority of their system of capitalist democracy or Marxist leninism depending on which side of the curtain you happen to be on however that doesn't mean that the Nations or leaders Saw the space race as a zero Sun game rather both sides recognize the potential utility of space and the shared interest in keeping it largely demilitarized as we've seen the Eisenhower Administration was keying to ensure the US space program was civilian Le and Congress passed legislation to this effect the USSR while continuing to award funding to design bureaus for space projects that had military applications also refrained from putting the Space Program under formal military control additionally relations between the United States and the Soviet Union remain cous with both sides publicly congratulating each other on their achievements this set the tone for the Diplomatic reaction to Yuri gagarin's flight in 1961 first Niki kov sought to frame gagarin's flight as a Triumph not just of Communism but of all humankind his American counterpart jonth Kennedy responded by sending a telegram to kov congratulating him on gagarin's flight and telling kof it was his sincere desire that in the continuing Quest for knowledge of outer space our Nations can work together to obtain the greatest benefit to mankind these discussions from leaders were not just platitudes either they led to substantive talks negotiations were launched between Hugh Dryden representing NASA and Anatoli bov who spoke for the Soviet Academy of Sciences looking to share data and information between their respective space programs these talks which began in 1962 continued even during the 10 days of of the Cuban Missile Crisis Dryden and blackon ROV were among those who saw science as being outside of politics and they ultimately concluded an agreement for the US and USSR to share information in medical science and satellite meteorological data in practice this allowed for results of studies on human and other living things in space to be openly published in scientific journals and discussed at scientific conferences the same held true for meteorological data which allowed for development of the first weather satellites to continue unimpeded and for their forecasts to be shared internationally now all of this may sound fairly benign but considering the depths of both Soviet and American Cold War paranoia and the potentially highly destructive military applications for space the fact that even at this early stage both governments were willing to explore avenues for cooperation is massively significant back to President Kennedy we already mentioned his famous 1962 Rice University address the one where he challenged America to go to the moon but in 1963 Kennedy addressing the UN General Assembly suggested that a lunar Expedition might be a joint us Soviet operation sadly Kennedy's death in 1963 ended that Avenue of exploration but the Johnson and then the Nixon administrations continued to explore highle cooperation with the Soviets the reasons for this are Myriad and often incredibly complex but but simply both sides recognized the enormous propaganda value of space but also the potential for competition to spiral into an uncontrolled arms race there was already one of those on the ground so another arms race which neither side can win or afford and if War ever broke out would likely destroy all life on Earth seemed like a step too far so negotiations continued dren and blon ROV kept meeting and established a memorandum of understanding in 1964 the UN banned weapons of M mass destruction from space in 1963 in 1967 both the US and USSR became sponsors to the outer space treaty which among its key Provisions are one the exploration and use of outer space shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries and shall be the province of all mankind two states shall not Place nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit or on celestial bodies or station them in outer space in any other Manner and three the moon and other celestial bodies shall be used exclusively for peaceful purposes prohibits their use for testing weapons of any kind conducting military Maneuvers or establishing military bases installations and fortifications in effect the outer space treaty establishes space as neutral territory which can be explored and possibly developed but should remain demilitarized this agreement was followed a year later by the rescue agreement which made it obligatory for any Nation to report a spacecraft in distress and render assistance if they were able this mirrored long established agreements and conventions that anyone who sees someone in distress at Sea is required to do all they are able to render Aid okay so even as the moon landing approached the US and the Soviet Union were discussing cooperation in space and sharing scientific information most of this was public but didn't detract from the idea of a space race of vital competition in indeed both the US and USSR were open about their competition with each other but both had an interest in ensuring that it remained peaceful and abided by International rules and conventions this is not to say that both sides were not willing to use space for unarmed military purposes both the US and the Soviets began to develop spy satellites as early as 1955 and continued to develop them even as the outer space treaty came into Force the utility of spy satellites is one reason why the outer space treaty does not explicitly forbid all military activity in space and to be fair the us as early as Eisenhower argued that the ability of Nations to maintain Mutual observation would lower the risk of conflict thus the US and the Soviets kept launching satellites even while neither side would acknowledge their existence as a side note Conventional Weapons were not banned from space either in part because Soviet cosmonauts carried shotguns in their survival kits the weapons were present in in order to allow cosmonauts to survive in the Siberian Wilderness until they could be rescued this was the result of the 1965 VOD 2 mission veering off course and landing in Siberia and Mission Commander Alexi leonov being very concerned the pistols the cosmonauts carried would be insufficient to deal with Siberian wolves tigers and bears the shotgun may also have helped if a random xenomorph was encountered but probably not after the Apollo Landings the US and USSR Contin Contin to pursue space cooperation for NASA this was welcome as the nixed Administration was looking to cut costs and thus reduce NASA's budget being an Avenue for international and superpower cooperation helped to keep the agency relevant astronauts and cosmonauts launched Mutual Goodwill tours and Soviet and American scientists visited each other's facilities in October 1970 Robert gilruth director of the man space flight center entered into an agreement with his Soviet counterpart parts to develop a universal docking adapter this is the same unit that is now standard on all man spacecraft a year later the US USSR working group on Space biology and Medicine met for the first time followed up with another meeting the next year these discussions ultimately resulted in the 1972 bilateral treaty between the US and Soviets on agreement concerning cooperation in the exploration and use of outer space for peaceful purposes both sides agreed as early as 1971 to undertake a joint mission where an Apollo spacecraft would dock to a soyu spacecraft and the astronaut and Cosa would shake hands in a symbolic gesture as these talks were underway both space programs were examining more sustainable missions the US was exploring Skylab and the Soviets were beginning to develop their own space station with salute both were developed using the universal docking system even though neither ever hosted visiting astronauts or cosmonauts these design principles Illustrated that both sides had a mentality of planning for long-term cooperation the Apollo so Mission known officially as Apollo soyu test project came to fruition in July of 1975 American astronauts Thomas Stafford Vance brand and Dee Slayton and Soviet cosmonauts Alexi leonov and valer kubasov docked their spacecrafts in Orbit on July 17 Stafford and Leon of shook hands on live television the Soviets read statements from Soviet Premier Lon bnv and received a phone call from US President Gerald Ford the spacecraft remained docked for 44 hours during which time the astronauts and cosmonauts undertook joint scientific experiments exchange gifts and listen to each other's music including tenderness by Maya kristalinskaya and why Can't We Be Friends by War due to American Commander Stafford's thick Oklahoma accent leonov later said jokingly that there were three languages spoken on the mission Russian English and Oklahom Sky another notable aspect of the mission was that leonov and Slayton had entered their respective astronaut cores at the same time with Slayton being one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts but due to medical reasons this was slayton's only space flight and the last flight of an Apollo spacecraft the two vehicles undocked successfully and remained in orbit for several more days carrying out their respective experiments the joint venture was criticized at the time especially in the US as being too differential to the Soviets and contributing to a growing American malaise largely driven by a failure in Vietnam as well as Watergate which would see significant push back against US policy of cooperation the Apollo so Mission not only gave birth to a terrible brand of cigarettes but also marked what is considered by many as the high Watermark of dayon however despite the politics US and Soviet space cooperation would ultimately remain largely intact American space shuttles would visit the Mir space station and despite some experimentation neither side would break the outer space treaty or other agreements despite the struggles and competition the space rise was in fact one Avenue throughout the Cold War where the two primary competitors found more room for Mutual cooperation the attitude of the superpowers was perhaps best captured by American physicist Carl Sean who upon viewing an image of Earth known as the pale blue dot photo captured by the Voyager One spacecraft at a distance of 29,400 KM would say from this distant vantage point the Earth might not seem of any particular interest but for us it's different consider again that dot that's here that's home that's us on it everyone you love everyone you know everyone you ever heard of of every human being who ever was lived out their lives the aggregate of our joy and suffering thousands of confident religions ideologies and economic doctrines every Hunter and forager every hero and coward every Creator and destroyer of civilization every King and peasant every young couple in love every mother and father hopeful child inventor and Explorer every teacher of morals every corrupt politician every superstar every supreme leader every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there Automotive dust suspended in a Sunbeam space exploration served as a romantic and heroic source of propaganda but also contributed major engineering and logistical challenges neither the United States or USSR saw space as a place to dominate but rather recognized that their respective positions would be best served by contributing to a shared understanding for all humankind we hope even enjoyed today's episode and to make sure you don't miss our future work please make sure to press the Subscribe button and the bell button which will result in it being launched into space on top of a 363 ft rocket weighing almost 3 million kilos fly Bell button fly please consider supporting us on patreon patreon.com thee coldw war or through YouTube membership we can be reached VI email at the coldwar channel@ gmail.com this is the Cold War Channel and as we think about the Cold War please remember that history is Shades of Gray and rarely black and white

Channel: The Cold War

Views: 33,379

Keywords: was, ussr, an, empire, damansky, china, how, almost, war, tito, market, socialism, yugoslavia, system, mkultra, rise, strategic, nuclear, communism, union, communist, Ukraine, Khrushchev, housed, republic, russian, laws, people, world, american, Stalin, Cold War, soviet union, stalin documentary, kings and generals, operation unthinkable, the cold war, USSR, US, capitalism, marshal plan, stalin, nato, united states, khrushchev, eisenhower, cambridge five, korean war, america, zhanbao, incident, island, space, race, who, won

Id: CQYg--OghHA

Length: 47min 3sec (2823 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 04 2024