July 22, 1969 / The Eagle and The Bear

is now dangerously low on power. The partially deployed panel also obscured some critical navigation equipment, meaning Camrav is finding it nearly impossible to steer. To make matters worse, his communications equipment is not functioning properly. His spacecraft is, as one Russian official will later call it, a piece of shit. The thirty seven year old Colonel Camrav had been chosen as the cosmonaut to ride aboard so Use, one the Soviet's newest and most advanced spacecraft designed as part of

their effort to beat the Americans to the Moon. Urigageron, the first man in space, and Camarad's best friend, was chosen as his backup. As the launch day approached, it was clear to Camrav and Gagaron that the spacecraft was not yet ready. The untested space vehicle was shodily constructed, and the engineering team identified more than two hundred serious structural problems, including the parachutes, which repeatedly failed to deploy correctly.

The three previous unmanned soy U's test flights had all failed. Camarav and Gagaron drafted a letter outlining their concerns and asking that the mission be postponed until the issues could be properly addressed, but it was quickly buried. The powers that be wanted a bold triumph to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Communist Revolution, the mission would go forward. Before he departed, Comrade told a colleague that he was

not going to make it back from this flight. When asked why he did not simply refuse the mission, Comrof said that if he did, Gagaron would go and die in his place, and he could not do that to his best friend. The previous morning, as Camrav waited inside his Soyuz capsule conducting his pre flight checks, several witnesses claimed that Gagaron arrived at the launchpad demanding to take his friend's place, but Gagarin was a national hero, and there was no way that was ever going to happen.

After more than a day in orbit, wrestling with malfunction after malfunction, Soviet ground control orders Camrav to cut his mission short and return to Earth. After eighteen agonizing orbits, Camarad fires his retrorockets and heads for home. After making it safely through the Earth's supper atmosphere and with the Russian countryside opening up beneath him, Camarav deploys his pear shutes to slow his descent, but nothing happens. The shoot deploys,

but it doesn't inflate. Kamrav has a manually activated reserve shoot for just this sort of emergency. He yanks at loose, but it instantly becomes tangled with the trailing primary shooting, Traveling at nearly ninety miles per hour, so use one smashes into the Russian steps like a three ton meteorite. Rescue helicopter finds the wreckage by following a massive tower of black smoke. The capsule is burning so hot that

the metal has gone molted. What's left of Camrath looks like a massive marshmallow burned to a misshapen cinder over a campfire. Before his departure, he stipulated that if anything should happen to him, his funeral would be open casket, so that the Soviet leadership would be unable to hide what they had done. Vladimir Conrad is the first person to die in the Race for space. This is Apollo control of one, seven hours, thirty nine minutes. Flight surgeon

reports that all three crewmen now are awake. Good morning eleven, and about twenty four seconds from now, the spacecraft will pass the imaginary line into the Earth's sphere of influence. Mark you're leaving the learned there of influence over. This is the point that the Earth's gravity becomes stronger than that of the Moon and begins tugging our astronauts homeward. At the time the spacecraft across to the Earth's sphere of influence Pollow eleven was about one seventy four thousand

nautical miles from Earth. At the present time, the spacecraft is traveling at a speed of three thousand, nine hundred ninety four per second with respect to the Earth. If you're not busy now, I can read you up the morning news. A follow eleven and still dominates the news around the world. Only four and a commun China and North Korea, North Vietnam in Albania have not yet informed their citizens of your flight and landing on the Moon.

Can you imagine not knowing that such an astonishing feet took place, one of the greatest accomplishments in human history, and hundreds of millions of people where didn't I had the opportunity to celebrate the accomplishment with the rest of the planet. Tonight, President Nix and the scheduled to watch the All Star Baseball game in Kington. After the game, he will depart for the Pacific Recovery Area and flying

to the Hornet in time to witness your flashdown. The USS Hornet is the aircraft carrier in charge of recovering Apollo eleven when it splashes down in two and a half more days. McCandless has one last bit of news. Lunar fifteen is believed to have cracked into the state of crisis yesterday, after all being the Moon fifty two times.

When Apollo eleven reached the Moon three days ago, the Russians were already there, or at least one of their spacecraft was Luna fifteen was launched just days before Apollo eleven launch, so you had essentially in July nine two missions to the Moon. That's awesome, Siddiki. I'm a professor of history at Fordam University in New York. I reade quite a bit about the history of space exploration, including

the Russians side of things. The Americans sent Neil Buzz and Michael Apollo eleven, and the Russians, in a last ditch effort to win the space race, launched Lunar fifteen,

which was essentially designed to go to the Moon. Going to its orbit, the lander was supposed to come down, scoop up some soil, and lift off and fly directly back to the Earth, so they would bring back lunar soil before Apollo leven, showing the world that you know, you guys wasted all this money to lend guys on the Moon, but we got it back, you know, cheaper

and safer. That's not what happened. Bernard Level at General Blank Observatory said that Lunar fifteen hit the surface of the Moon at a speed of about three as it was descending to the Moon. It essentially crashed into a mountain. It's July nineteen sixty nine, day seven of the Apollo eleven mission. It's time to talk about the space race. That's a term we're all familiar with, but for most Americans, the only part of the space race they really know

is who crossed the finish line first. But that means that everything that led up to that moment is overlooked. After all, a race presupposes more than one competitor. Today, we are going to take a look at what launched the space race and some of the major milestones that built up to the moon landing. And we'll be paying special attention to the Russian side, because the USSR beat America to just about every significant first in space milestone

there is. But to really understand where all this starts, we have to go back to the end of World War Two. Even though the Soviets have been our allies during World War Two, it becomes quickly apparently the Soviets keeps saying, you know, they're going to crush the West and communism will rule in the future, and the U s s, oh, you want that's NASA historian Bill Berry.

The Cold War happens after the end of World War Two, largely because nuclear weapons appearing, and people realize that World War two is bad enough to start with, but then it ends with with these city killer weapons, and people are scared it. It's like, we can't afford to have another war like this again. It's just too destructive. So lines get drawn, armies are built on both sides with you know, nuclear weapons pointed at each other, but nobody

wants to actually engage in a fight. The Communist Party of the United States is far better organized and where the next is in occupied countries prior to their capitulation, their goal is the overthrow of our government. But we're getting a bit ahead of ourselves. Germany had developed a terrifying new weapon in the final days of World War Two, the V two, or Vengeance Weapons. The V two was

the world's first long range, supersonic guided ballistic missile. At the end of World War Two, the Allies decided, we need to go find out what the heck they were doing and make sure this technology gets gets collected for us, because it's clear at the end of the war with nuclear weapons that if you get surprised in warfare after World War Two, it's likely to be over. You know, if somebody launches bunch of nuclear weapons and you get

caught by surprise. That's it. One of the men responsible for the creation of the V two was Werner von Braun. He came from an aristocratic German family. He was what we would today called maybe a space enthusiast. From a young age, he was willianto cosmic things. Um he gets involved in an amateur rocketry group. He realizes that the only way he's going to get money to build rockets is to work with the German military. About the time

he does that, the Nazi Party takes over. They see that this is a very bright young guy, and he good moves upward through their rocket program until he's heading the V two design projects. He wants to go to space, but he's now building rockets for this regime. Hitler directed thousands of V two attacks against targets in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. London was among the city's most heavily bombed, killing more than twenty people and

injuring three times that amount. In all, it is estimated that nine thousand civilians and military personnel were killed in V two attacks too. Another holy indiscriminate weapon. It's a truly typical effort of the immortally injured Nazi beast to attempt to tear down everything as he goes under. And actually actually more people died building V two rockets than

died in the attacks with the V two rockets. Some twelve thousand concentration camp prisoners and forced laborers perished building the V two and von Braun clearly knew about this stuff. He knew what he wanted to do, which was to get to space, and I think he made compromises along

the way to achieve that goal. I think, ultimately I would say he's an opportunist in the sense that he was willing to compromise in order to achieve his dream of space, and I think to the end of his days he probably believed that his compromises were worth it. The military had a list of German scientists and engineers that they wanted to interrogate, and Verne von Braun was

at the top of that list. When it was clear that Germany was about to fall, von Braun, in more than one hundred of his V two colleagues sought out American forces and surrendered. They wanted to avoid falling into the hands of the Soviet Army, which was less than one hundred miles away. They provided the Americans with rocket blueprints and many of the missiles themselves generalize and hower and farms. May that the forces of German they have surrendered.

The flags of freedom fly all over Europe. The Nazis surrendered late in April of nineteen forty, the same month that Franklin Delano Roosevelt died and Harry Truman took over in the Oval Office. The War Department secretly smuggled von Braun and more than three hundred rail cars of his hardware out of Germany. They didn't even tell the new

president what they were doing. Somebody in the US government decides that they're The connections of these people to the Nazi Party in Germany is not something we really want to talk about anymore, because they're kind of useful to us, and we want to have them stay here and help with our missile programs, and so they go to work for the U. S. Army. This was Operation paper Clip, a covert American program to use the Nazis knowledge and know how to design weapons for the United States. The OSS,

which is the predecessor to the CIA. They basically whitewashed a lot of the personal records as a lot of these engineers, and some of whom were rather dubious. The Germans ended up at Fort Bliss in Texas. For the first several years, they were not allowed to leave the base without a military escort. They referred to themselves as p o p s Prisoners of peace. Used to being coddled, von Braun now had to answer to far younger, far

less experienced Army officers. But what truly rankled him was the fact that the Army was only interested in his missile technology and continually dismissed every proposal he put forward for rockets designed for space. Launching human beings into the cosmos was still his overwriting ambition. When the Korean War broke out in nineteen fifty, von Braun and his team were transferred to Huntsville, Alabama. He was put in charge of the Army's rocket development team, designing a Erica's first

large ballistic missile, the red Stone. Finally, he saw a way to begin setting the stage for lift vehicles capable of handling massive payloads. The stuff of popular science fiction suddenly felt within Arm's reach. This is a follow Control at one eight hours, fifty eight minutes. At the present time of follow eleven has one seventy two thousand, six hundred fifty four nautical miles from the Earth, traveling at

a speed of four thousand seventeen ft per second. Given that there is little to do in the spacecraft, mission Control decides it's the perfect time to pick Neil and Buzz's brains about some nagging Moon questions. Under sixty four thousand dollars, we're still trying to work out the location of your landing site. We think it is located on l am To chart at Juliett Desmal five and seven point eight. For the twenty one hours that the Eagle was on the Moon, no one knew where they were.

Remember that they overshot their landing site by four miles and had to set down at the first available opening given their fuel state. While he was in orbit, Michael had been tasked to look for his colleagues with each pass he made over the Sea of Tranquility, but he was never able to find them. Bruce McCandless and the rest of Mission Control is still trying to figure out where humanity's first lunar footprints are the position which I

just gave you is plightly. What of West Crater? I think that it's flagly that that might have been West Crater that we went across the landing. The flight plan has relatively few activities scheduled for now through the beginning of the cruise sleep period. Tonight boredom. That's not something these guys, be they in Apollo eleven or Mission Control, are used to feeling. But I'm sure it's a welcome

change from the past week. So let's oh, we were think you up there there getting writer and writer, and we're not done talking about Verner von Braun, But right now it's time to take a peek behind the Iron curtain and check in on the Soviets. As it turned out, the Soviets had their own version of Operations paper Clip, dubbed Operation Asiovikim. On a single night in nineteen forty six, the Soviets recruited more than twenty two hundred German V

two rocket scientists. And when I say recruited, I mean kidnapped several hundred Germans and put them on trains and took them back to the Soviet Union, and they put them in teams through reverse engineering this rocket. The man in charge of operation Asiovikim was Sergey Pavlovitch Korlev Serga Karlov in many ways of counterpart to von Braun, very charismatic person like von Braun, a very good organizer. He was able to inspire people even when he was really young.

He walked in the room, people knew that this guy was something special. Kra Lev was born in nineteen o seven. He fell in love with flying as a child and began taking flying lessons at sixteen. He later studied under the pioneering Soviet aviation designer Andre Tupolev, who would go on to design many of Russia's most iconic aircraft. His interest in space began while working as the lead engineer

on one of Tupolev's bombers. What if he wondered, liquid fueled rocket engines could be used to allow the bomber to fly higher, further faster forms. This amateur group in just a bunch of young guys in their twenties getting together building rockets on their own, you know, melting silverware at home to build rocket carts and things. And then they get snatched up by the Stalinist government who recognizes that these guys are smart, and they get repurposed into

an actual design institute to build rockets. There's no space at this moment. It's about rockets for war. Cora Leev was not interested in making weapons, but his group saw the research as a means to an end, and then his life took a darker turn. The shadow of the Great Purge those upon the nation. There's a nationwide great purge going on in nineteen thirty eight. Hundreds of thousands of people are arrested on false charges. It's kind of the apex of Stalinist paranoia, but a lot of people

lose their lives. Karlav was one of those sort of caught up stadions. Enemies real and imaginary are executed hundreds of thousands tall in the Blood Path. Korlv was falsely accused and the newly married father of an infant daughter was sentenced to be shot, but on the day of the execution, his actual sentence was commuted and he was

a sentenced to ten years in a gulaub camp. So he got sent off to Siberia, a brutal, brutal camp where he works as a gold digger, and he loses a lot of his teeth has scurvy, he has injuries on his head and neck, and all sorts of horrible things happened to him. Emaciated and near death, Korlav was saved when he was transferred to a special gulag for learned intellectuals who might be of use to the state. I don't think he ever got over that. He was

a very hard hitted, you know, rude person. He didn't have time for people who were just screwing around wasting time. In ninety four, shortly before the end of World War Two, kor Lev was freed and ordered to begin designing ballistic missiles. One of his first duties was traveling to Germany to help the Soviets collect as much information, manufacturing, and engineering

on the V two program as possible. The Russians started by reverse engineering the V two, creating ever larger, more powerful vehicles, and he rose through the ranks until he was a really important guy by the mid fifties. Tis passed in the prison was eventually sort of blotted out.

While the Soviet government was keen on intercontinental ballistic missiles, kor Lev, like von Braun, recognized that the same technology could with only a few modifications launch probes or even people into space, but the Kremlin had no interest in his outlandish ideas. That was until the US declared its intent to launch the first ever artificial satellite into outer space.

It was mostly hot air. The Americans technology did not yet match their robust rhetoric, but coral V was confident that with what he and his team had already designed, Russia could embarrass the Americans and get to space first. Today, a new moon is in the sky, a twenty three inch metal sphere placed in orbit by a Russian rocket. You are hearing the actual signals transmitted by the Earth circling satellite, one of the great scientific feats of the age.

On October fifth, ninety seven, the Soviet Union stunned the world by launching Sputnik, the first human made object to ever orbit the Earth. As it did so, Sputnik sent out a distinctive beeping sound that could be heard by anyone with a simple Ham radio. For Washington, the sound was terrifying. When the news gets to the s all held bricks loose and people are kind of freaking out because if they can put a satellite into space, they could put a bomb into space and they could land

on you know, Oklahoma, ar Kansas. America wouldn't get its first satellite, Explore one, into space until four months later, aboard a Jupiter sea rocket designed by who else, Erni von Braun. Do you have ange an American? I've been so await, pray for work for as the Army successful launching a Victor one, but by that time Russia had already one up to them. Sputting one is launched on October four, and once the Soviets realized that it was a very powerful pr tool, they wanted to do it again.

And Nikita Krushchov, who was the chairman of the Communist Party at the time, he calls in carla Evin says can you do this again? And Carlos says yes, and I can do you one better. I could put a little animal into this satellite. And so Sputting two was designed, built and launched, and US than a month nine fifty seven year of space and Sputnik dogs, like a first space traveler, was ready for the takeoff. Nestled the board

was like a stray dog plucked off the streets of Moscow. Unfortunately, the Soviets had not yet developed the technology to get like a back home again. And she died in orbit. And some people say, wow, okay, I think that goes deep in the night is one thing. But a live dog go on into space. What does that tell us about how advanced their program is and what their objectives are in space? And suddenly the Sputnik situation goes from being sort of a curiosity a concern to being a

major crisis. Sputnik one and two were like giant wrecking balls to America's pride. Suddenly a new front was opened in the Cold War. The space race. In the rocket's finery wake was America's sober realization that the battle had just been joined and that the work of self preservation was at hand. It's based historian Amy share a title.

So it became this push to figure out, well, you know, we have to show our dominance in space, because dominance in space is dominance in technology, dominance in rockets which are missiles, dominance and our ability to solve problems and show that we're the strongest, best nation. And so the United States and the Soviet Union, their competition on which system or government is going to win out gets tied

to space. And of course The Soviets love this idea at the beginning, because they're ahead, von Braun and corals wacky ideas about humans in space didn't sound so wacky to their respective governments anymore. One of the things that happens as a response to spot Nick is the creation of NASA immediately within less than a year in October. But now we have come to a new day, and I say it is to become part of a new agency,

the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Right out of the gate, NASA launched the Mercury program, developing one man space capsules designed to prove that humans can live and work in space. Von Braun and his team were moved under NASA's umbrella. He became the director of the new Martial Space Flight Center, developing ever larger rockets, and though no one was asking for it yet, he began drafting plans for his magnum Opus,

the Saturn operations paper clips. Former Nazis were no longer advising Americans, they were leading them back in Russia. Korlav was also promoted. He essentially leads the Soviet space program for the next ten years or so, not that anyone in the West knew who he was. His name was never mentioned in Russian newspapers anywhere. He was just called

the chief designer. Official reason given why they didn't disclose his name was that, you know, they were afraid that the CIA would come and kidnap him or something terrible would happen. In fact, even many of the Russian engineers who worked beside Karlav didn't know who he was. This only added to his mystique. And the Soviets they didn't have anywhere near the side program at the United States had.

They were brilliant, and they were very nimble, and they're watching very carefully what the United States just doing to say, what can we do to outdo the United States? Up until nineteen so we didn't really have a human spacefight program. They had a what can we do to embarrassing the United States program. Nineteen fifty nine was a very good year for coral Lev and the Russians. The Luna program

was their robotics program to explore the Moon. The first goal they wanted to do us to just impact the surface of the Moon, which was a very difficult navigational problem because the Moon is moving around the Earth. And they did that with Luna to the Luna three was a really ingenious spaceship essensed to spun around the back of the Moon, photographed it, and transmitted the picture back to the Earth. This was the first time anyone had

seen the Moon up close. In addition to the Luna probes, Coral lev also began working on the N one, a profoundly powerful rocket capable of escaping Earth's gravity. Well, the end one was the response to the Saturn five. It's a giant rocket capable of ultimately launching about metric ton since Earth or bid. Truly a great leader, a great name. Yah MC president to John F. Canada as a new decade dawn. John F. Kennedy ran for President of the United States on a platform pledging to close the space

race gap and move America into first place. The Americans ushered in nineteen sixty one, not with a dog in space, but with a chimp named ham M has done it. He has moved man closer than ever before to his age old dream of traveling the heavens Now it was time to send a human being. That human was Alan Shepherd, one of the original Mercury seven astronauts. When Shepherd informed his wife that she was hugging the very first man to go into space. She replied, who let a Russian

in here? More prophetic words could not have been spoken. First success in space when the Russians pushed a man across the po he was Yuri Gagara. In April twelfth, nineteen sixty one, twenty seven year old Yuri Gagarin became the first human who travel to space and orbit the planet in Vostok One. He remains to this day, I think one of the most recognized names in all of Russian history. Most Russians, if you asked who won the space race, they would say, well, we want it. We

got the first guy in space. As with Sputnik just two and a half years earlier, America had its collective breath knock out of it. When Alan Shepherd heard the news, he slammed his fist on the table so hard that others in the room were certain he'd broken it. The mood of the White House was no less volatile. Kennedy ordered Vice President Lyndon Johnson to figure out something dramatic that the United States could do to best the Soviets.

Johnson met with a number of NASA officials for ideas but it was Verde von Braun who most impressed him. Von Braun pitched something outlandish, a moon landing. The ex Nazi was confident that he could get Americans to the moon. By nineteen sixty eight, Johnson passed von Braun's recommendations to the President, who signed off on it. The United States was going to the Moon. Three weeks after Euryga Geron's history making flight, Alan Shepard became the first American in

space aboard Freedom seven. His flight lasted only fifteen minutes. He was launched into space on a Redstone rocket, the direct descendant of von Bronze V two. Now it was time to sell America on von Bron's big idea. On nine sixty one, just twenty days after Shepherd's fifteen minute flight, President Kennedy stood before Congress and said, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal before this decade is out of landing a man on the

Moon and returning him safely to the Europe. We think of Kennedy as the space races loudest and most ardent cheerleader, and he was at least in public. But on a day in nineteen sixty two, Shortly after John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth, Kennedy sat down with NASA Administrator James Webb, arguing that all of NASA's scientific and technological efforts should be subservient to Apollo. Let's listen in on a recording only made public in two

thousand and one. I think it is the top priority that we had that very clear. This is uh important for in an act of political reasons and whether we like it or not, in intensive race. So I think we have to take the US the top priority. NASA Administrator Webb and Jerome Wisner, the President's scientific advisor. We're arguing that before the United States could land on the Moon, NASA would first need to come to grips with a

lot of unknowns about outer space. But Kennedy didn't want to hear any of it that we do or to really be hie and getting onto the mole ahead of the writing why can't space we join a lot? Because by guys? Would women tell? Everybody reamed the space boys. Nobody believe that the policy ought to be a position of the top priority program of the agency and one of the two to the fan the top priority United States government sending it's kind of funny because I'm not

that interested in space. Let me repeat Kennedy's words, I'm not that interested in space. The view that I grew up with in the nineteen sixties was that Kennedy was this guy who was really interested in space and was a leader in the space program, and and saw human destiny in space and all these things that people imagined um and that that sort of myth grew for a

long time. Now, when those tapes came out, it became really crystal clear Kennedy's goal wasn't to send people to the Moon, or to explore space or any of the other stuff. What he really had was a political problem with the Soviets beating us up over space spectaculars on a regular basis, and he just wanted it to stop. Despite his stirring rhetoric. That's all the space race was to Kennedy, and he had good reason to think the Soviets were win that race. In the summer of nineteen

sixty three, they launched Vostok three and four. The two craft met in space with just four miles separating them, and engaged in the first ship to ship communications. One of the two cosmonauts would later marry a woman named Valentina Tereshkova. Tereshkova became the first woman to fly in

space aboard Vostok six in November of that year. The twenty six year old textile worker was the first woman in space, A feat of dubious scientific value perhaps, but what is its rather in propaganda another first for the Soviet 'gen She made nearly fifty orbits over three days and is still the only woman to ever undertake a solo mission. America wouldn't put its first woman into space, Sally Ride, until nineteen eighty three, a full twenty years later.

Kennedy soon began to regret endorsing von Braun's crazy moonshot idea. He and others were beginning to realize just how unrealistic the plan was. Kennedy has a realization that Apollo is super expensive, might even bankrupt the budget, and he floats this idea of a giant project with the Soviets. While speaking before the United Nations, Kennedy said, finally, in a theod why the United States and the Soviet Union of a special capacity in the field of space, there is

room for new co operations. I include among these possibilities, a joint expedition to the Moon. Premier Nikita Krushcheff ignored him if America was going to save face, he was going to have to make good on Kennedy's promise. On November six, seven months after the launch of Gemini one, Kennedy visited Cape Canaveral and toured the facility with von Braun, inspecting the extraordinary hardware already in use and the Saturn

one rocket, the predecessor to the Saturn five. The President came away from his visit with the renewed enthusiasm for the Apollo program, designed to follow after Gemini. He was back on board. Five days later. President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed. Back aboard Apollo eleven, the crew sets up for another television transmission. Charlie Duke is now in the capcom set all you're packing our part names.

That's the focus A little bit out the way through the Earth in the center of the brain lemming it came from it is huh, Well, I'm really looking at a bad brain here, then, might want The image is blurry enough that Duke has confused the Moon for the Earth. Bad enough not fun in the right landing. But when I got to that the right planet, Buzz decides to poke Duke a bit and remind him that he doesn't even know where in the moon he and Neil were.

I'll have a little that one down. We're making it get tomorrow and tomorrow and itbody here that it really is the one we're leaving. Oh not the guy. Neil starts the broadcast, showing off boxes of moon rocks and soil samples that they're bringing back to Earth for Judy. We know a lot of scientists standard by to be the later example, and incidic we get onto the ship. I'm sure these boxes will need with the transferred and

deliberate started to the later receiving laboratory. Now it's Buzzes turn, but he's not thinking about moon relics. He's thinking with his stomach. And I'd like to take through a little bit for you. Development taken place and a department. He unwraps a food cube. Designs, uh, we're designed to remove the problem of ad income. Many problems voting around in the cabin, so I designed a particular side that would be able to go into the mouth all at once.

Michael decides to take a quick detour and become a science teacher. Is in effect, is a little down a rating for the kids at home, all kids everywhere for that matter. I was gonna tell you how you drank water out of a book, but I'm afraid I built a bone to foe and uh, if I'm not careful, I'm gonna go right over the dot. Can you can you do the water lapping around at the top of the kid. That's the permanend of eleven. I'll tell you what I just I just turned that point over and

I get out of the water over again. Okay, okay. Michael flips the spoon over and the water resting in it now hovers in the air as tiny spherical globules and say, up there, and we don't know where over at the one up it is good in another And that really is what Michael swallows several of the tiny water spheres in midair. A couple of decades into the twenty one century, we're used to images like this from the astronauts aboard the International Space Station, But in nineteen

sixty nine, images like this we're downright magical. Thank you for malla kids in the world who gave l from all right, get damn, I want to I'll get you that very quint then I never think youre No, that's perimend I repeated to bite on that point. No, you tell uh uh by getting larger. There the play for a coming out there no matter where, rabb all it all it bight to good home Lincoln, cer liv being happy to have you back. Can you tell the guys in the ship are really starting to loosen up after

years of intense training. They are finally heading home as conquering heroes from Dallas, Texas and the Flash. Apparently official President Kennedy died at one Central Standard time some thirty eight minutes ago. When we left off, John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. Two hours and eight minutes later, Lyndon Johnson was sworn into office. One of his very first acts was renaming Cape Canaveral. It would now be called Cape Kennedy. He also doubled Apollo's budget. Johnson comes in

and he says, Okay, the moon landing program. This is our tribute to our Slane President, and we are going to the moon. And no, and the Kremlin has any doubt in your mind that Lyndon Johnson is out that kicked their butts. The Servis realize, Holy Mackarel, Americans are really serious about going to the moon. Von Braun Saturn prototype, the Saturn one, successfully blasted off into space with a

dummy Apollo spacecraft to top it. Though the Saturn one was only half the size of the future Saturn five, it was a validation of everything von Braun had been pushing for five four three two one ignition. It was now definitely only a matter of time until man with first set foot on the Moon. And yet, despite all of America's successes, Sergey Kurliev and the Russians were still

embarrassing the United States at every turn. In nineteen sixty five, Alexei Leonov became the first person to conduct a spacewalk. Leonof brought a suicide pill with him just in case something went wrong, and he very nearly had to use it. But when he tried to get back in, he couldn't get back in the air log because his space suit had ballooned. Leonov's space suit became bloated in the vacuum of space. He was literally floating inside of it. His hands slipped out of his gloves and his feet came

out of his boots. The only way he was able to get back inside his spacecraft was by releasing his precious oxygen until the suit became compact enough for him to squeeze through the hatch. The first artificial Earth satellite, the first Moon probes, the first animals in space, the first man in space, the first woman in space, the first crew in space, the first spacewalk. So far, the space race belonged to the Russians between seven and about

nineteen sixty six. There's very few firsts that actually belonged to the US. If you were watching this happened, you would have very little confidence that America would get to the Moon first. But America was about to close the gap. On March nineteen sixty, Gus Grissom and John Young flew on the first two man mission J and I. Three. Later that summer, ed White conducted a twenty minute spacewalk while aboard Gemini four. Finally the United States had caught up.

Over the rest of nineteen sixty five, Gemini would continue to break records, including the first orbital rendezvous and the longest time spent in space up to that point fourteen days on Gemini seven, and then tragedy struck the Soviet space program. Chief designer Sergey cora Lev went into the hospital for a routine surgical procedure. He never came out. He goes in for surgery to remove like what's what

was thought at the time, benign growth. But during the surgery, the doctor finds that there's a quite large tumor and its cancerous. In removing that, they had to anesthetize him obviously, but he had a very weak heart because of his time in the Gulag. Cora Lev was just fifty nine. Coral Lev died, and then the whole Soviet program was kind of thrown into upheaval. They've lost their their key engineering leader, and they replaced them, but nobody was really

a replacement for surgery Corralov. The tide had finally turned. Astronauts Pete Conrad and Dick Gordon performed the first ever direct descent rendezvous with an uncreweded Gina target vehicle. This wasn't just for fun, This was a test run for what would later be Apollo's command and lunar modules and the Russians. They landed Lunar nine on the Moon, the first soft landing of a spacecraft. It was their twelfth attempt. Rocket science is hard. The Russians also put the first

satellite around the moon, Luna ten. These are hardly minor accomplishments, but probes are not people of the moon. It wasn't that they didn't spend enough money. Wasn't that they weren't trying. They spent a boatload of money, and they had huge programs, but they were disorganized and they started late. Their system was really chaotic. It works for short term bursts of things, but it wasn't suited for long term, sustained periods of innovation.

The other reason is that there were a lot of competing factions within the communist system who had these huge engineering empires, and they didn't get along. They were constantly fighting for the same resources. While he was alive, korl Lev was only occasionally successful at unifying the various factions. Once he died, none of his predecessors seemed capable of navigating those fraud political waters. Nineteen sixty seven nearly derailed both countries space programs. This was the year of the

Apollo one fire. It was also the year in which Sawyer was one crashed that's the story that opened this podcast. The Americans took a long, hard look at their program and eventually rallied von Bron's magnificent Saturn program boasted success after success. In fact, the Saturn five would be launched a total of ten times and never once suffer a significant failure. The former ss man was now an American hero.

The United States finally had the Moon in their sights, and while the Russian people were convinced that their country would still be the first to the Moon, the engineers and cosmonauts were not fooled. They could see the writing

on the wall. After the death of Camrad, Morale plummeted, and although the propaganda machine was still going at full power, fooling their American counterparts into believing that their communist nemesis was still neck and neck with them, they recognized there was no way they were going to beat the United States to the Moon. The only thing left to do was beat them in a circumnavigation of the Moon. But fearing just that possibility, NASA pushed the launch of Apollo

eight up several months and four days before Christmas. Jim Levell, Frank Borman, and Bill Anders orbited the Moon method who we would like then you God created Earth. Apollo seventeen astronaut Harrison Schmidt. Yeah, I think beginning of Apollo eight, Americans really started to gain some confidence that the Cold War was not going to go on forever. The Russians last victory in space came just a few months ahead of Apollo eleven, in which soy Use four and soy

Use five both crude met in space and docked. They opened hatches to allow the cosmonauts access to both craft, but that was the end of it. In February of nineteen sixty nine, five months before Apollo eleven, Russia tested coral Lev's powerful AND one rocket for the first time. Before he died. Coralav realized that if Russia was going to best the Americans into space, they'd have to take

some shortcuts. Rather than a cluster of large, expensive engines as on the Saturn, cora Lev opted to fit the N one with thirty small engines, and instead of testing each stage of the N one separately as the Americans did, Corala Have proposed they build the entire end one and test it fully assembled. They bring it to the padded nineteen sixty nine, they tried to launch it four times, and all four times it explodes. The rocket, known as

kor Lev's last dream, was dead. His vision of men visiting the Moon would come to pass, but the flag planted there would be the stars and stripes, not the hammer and sickle. Von Bronze moon vision was fully realized in July of nineteen sixty nine. With Apollo eleven. The space race was over. Moon landings wouldn't have happened without this intense political issue between the United States and the Soviet Union. I mean, the space races is, let's not

kid ourselves a product of the Cold War. I mean, this had nothing to do with science, or exploration or any like goodness of mankind. This was entirely about showing the Soviets that were better back on Apollo eleven. The guys are still bored. Michael calls Charlie Duke and Mission control just to idly chatty on the night. Were really booming along here with all activity. Can barely believe it are you doing? Then you're made up on the kind

build drinking. A later, mission Control begins hearing some creepy sounds emanating from Apollo eleven. Once again, the guys are trying to get a rise out of everyone in Houston.

The song is music out of the Moon by Less Baxter, and Neil loves it all right in a mind about an album pointy hair, hand out the man, but it's been a little frank or you're bank with a little blow that it sounds odd because the primary instrument is a theorem, in which, fittingly enough for today's conversation, is a Russian musical instrument that to this day is forever and inseparably associated with space. Neil may like his therem and music, but mission control and not so much thank you.

As the guys prepare for sleep, Duke relays one last piece of news to the crew. President Nixon is the preparative cloud. Greek Europe returned convicted that within thirty one years the man will have vincit at least one of the planets bearing some form of line. In the year two thousands, we on this Earth will have been the viewer where there will be a form of line. As of two thousand and nineteen, when I am recording this podcast,

that prediction has yet to come true. We will be taking a look at the current state of the U. S. Crude space program. In our final episode, Day seven is over. On day eight July are penultimate episode, We're going to look at what happened after the astronauts got home. They left as reality stars and returned as the biggest celebrities on the planet. But behind the ticker tape parades, the world tours, and the White House Dinners lay a dark reality,

a future riddled with depression, alcoholism, and fractured families. This podcast is a production of I Heart Radio and trade Craft Studios. Executive producers Ashe Seroia and Scott Bernstein, in association with High Five Content and executive producer Andrew Jacobs. Amazing research and production assistants by associate producers Brian Showsau and Natalie Robomed. Licensing rights and clearances by Deborah Correa. Our incredible editor is Bill Lance. Original music by Henry

ben Wah. The experts who contributed to this episode were NASA Chief Historian Bill Berry, Professor Asaf Sadigi, Space historian Amy Sherry Title, and Apollo seventeen astronaut Harrison Schmidt. Special thanks to everyone at NASA who made this podcast possible, especially the incredible technological wizardry of consulting producer Ben Feist, who's responsible for organizing and cleaning the eleven thousand hours of mission audio you're hearing selections from in this podcast special.

Thanks also to consultant Gina Delvack Kennedy Election Archive audio compliments of the South Carolina Political Collections, University of South Carolina Libraries. Licensing rights and clearances by Deborah Correa. This is a brand new podcast and we're so excited to be sharing it with you. Help us spread it far and wide, tell your friends, leave ratings and reviews, and chat about it on social media. Our hashtag is nine D I J. We would love to hear what you think.

New episodes come out each week, so be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Brandon Phipps. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll see you next episode.