{"id":3534,"date":"2025-05-08T00:37:25","date_gmt":"2025-05-08T00:37:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=3534"},"modified":"2025-05-08T00:40:15","modified_gmt":"2025-05-08T00:40:15","slug":"ftv-the-space-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=3534","title":{"rendered":"FTV: The Space Race"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Back in 2021, I shared the story of the Chief Designer of the Soviet Union\u2019s Manned Rocket program, Sergei Korolev, also known as \u2018The King\u2019. (FTV:\u00a0 The King, Part 1 (7-14-21) & Part 2 (7-21-21)).\u00a0 Korolev\u2019s name was so top secret that there were very few people even in Russia who even knew about his contributions to putting the first man in space.\u00a0 He was particularly fond of the cosmonauts he prepared and often referred to them as his \u2018little eagles\u2019.\u00a0 Though he professed to not have a favorite cosmonaut to put forward as the first man in space, it became obvious that it was a two horse race right up to the final days.\u00a0 Gherman Titov would later say that Yuri Gagaran was the right choice at the time.\u00a0 It took some time and Gagarin\u2019s death to help Titov shake off the bitterness he felt when he was pegged for the second manned flight.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0While the United States ran their Manned Space Program under the glare of the media spotlight, information about the Russian program was highly classified.\u00a0 The KGB controlled all of the reports that were released and much of what we know about their early program only came to light 35 years after the fact.\u00a0 In their excellent book, <\/span>Starman – The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin <\/span><\/i>(1998, updated in 2011 – Walker Publishing), authors Jamie Doran and Piers Bizony were able to dig deeper into the secretive world of the Soviet Union than previous researchers had been able to do.\u00a0 Some of the \u2018old ways\u2019 that Russia dealt with their internal politics took some time to melt away, but when the USSR began to dissolve in the era of Regan and Gorbachev, people became more willing to talk about the old days.\u00a0 Doran and Bizony stated they were lucky their work could be conducted in the shadow of that time as the rise of Vladamir Putin has revived much of the Russian narrative from the old days;\u00a0 rule by fear and control.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Much of <\/span>Starman<\/span><\/i> is devoted to Yuri Gagarin\u2019s path to become \u2018the first one\u2019 and the impact becoming a Russian hero had on his life.\u00a0 The part of the story we will concentrate on here is what became known as \u2018the Space Race\u2019.\u00a0 The Russians were not actually racing to do anything and the fact that Gagarin made it to space before Alan Shepard was more of a collision of circumstances than anything else.\u00a0 Once Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev saw the effect Gagarin\u2019s flight had on Russia, the United States, and the world, he pushed for more of the same.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t take much for the Russians to stay a step ahead of the U.S. – all they had to do was watch the evening news or read the American papers to know exactly what was going to happen in NASA\u2019s near future.\u00a0 They took whatever shortcuts they needed to take to stay one step ahead.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The first indication that there was a burgeoning \u2018Space Race\u2019 came about because Gagarin\u2019s flight had a big impact on the American psyche.\u00a0 There had been a bit of alarm from the American public when the Russians launched the first orbiting satellite, Sputnik, but it had died down (some).\u00a0 According to Dr. John Logsdon, the head of the Space Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. and an advisor to many presidents, Gagarin\u2019s flight was different:\u00a0 \u201cIt was a sudden rebalancing of our power relationship with the Soviet Union, because of the clear demonstration that – if they wanted to – they could send a nuclear warhead across intercontinental distances, right into the heart of \u2018Fortress America\u2019.\u00a0 There was an uproar:\u00a0 how did we get beaten by this supposedly backward country?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0President Kennedy was one of the most concerned Americans.\u00a0 He paced his office and demanded to know how the United States could answer this challenge.\u00a0 JFK rebuffed Jerome Wiesner\u2019s suggestion they make a three month study of the problem.\u00a0 Kennedy told\u00a0 his science advisor, \u201cIf somebody can just tell me now to catch up.\u00a0 Let\u2019s find somebody – anybody.\u00a0 I don\u2019t care if it is the janitor over there, if he knows how.\u201d\u00a0 If the president was feeling panicky about Gagarin, the failure of the CIA trained force of Cuban refugees to overthrow Fidel Castro at the Bay of Pigs three days later certainly didn\u2019t calm his fears about countering the Communist threat.\u00a0 With his administration faltering in its first 100 days, he sent Vice President Lyndon Johnson a pivotal memo on April 20 asking him to do a thorough assessment of the United States rocket program.\u00a0 The five points outlined by the President may have been a brilliant political move or a desperate attempt to right the ship by a panicked captain.\u00a0 Either way, Doran and Bizony state, \u201cWithout a doubt, it laid the foundations for the largest technological endeavor since the \u2018Manhattan\u2019 (Project) development of the atomic bomb:\u00a0 [The memo ignited] the Apollo lunar landing program.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Twenty three days after Gagarin\u2019s single orbit flight, Alan Shepard\u2019s suborbital hop of 15 minutes duration was just the start for the American program.\u00a0 NASA\u2019s Redstone Rocket only generated one third of the Russian\u2019s R-7 booster, but it was enough to get the United States off square one.\u00a0 NASA administrator James Webb told Kennedy and Johnson that the Soviets were certainly capable of beating the US in the short term, but he encouraged them to pursue longer range goals.\u00a0 He convinced them that the amount of resources and technological development this country could put into a Moon landing program would far eclipse the Russian\u2019s ability to match America\u2019s program.\u00a0 Right after Shepard\u2019s hop, Webb\u2019s advisors wanted him to keep the cost estimates of a Moon program as low as possible so Congress wouldn\u2019t be scared off when asked to fund the program.\u00a0 Webb, in a stroke of genius, doubled the estimate they had come up with and presented it to Kennedy:\u00a0 $20 billion spread over eight years!<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The figure stunned Kennedy, but he laid it out for Congress and the American people in his famous speech of April 25, 1961:\u00a0 \u201cI believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.\u00a0 No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important to the long-term exploration of space, and none will be more difficult or expensive to accomplish.\u201d\u00a0 The race was now officially on and Congress was all in.\u00a0 Over the next four years, NASA\u2019s budget would make up 5 percent of the entire federal budget and the space agency would employ 250,000 people to make Kennedy\u2019s promise come true.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Logsdon raised an interesting question:\u00a0 The last chimp-onaut flight before Shepard flew had a glitch (that sent Ham higher, faster, and farther downrange than they intended).\u00a0 This problem alarmed the rocket designers enough that it slipped Shepard\u2019s flight far enough back to allow for one more chimp flight.\u00a0 It was this delay that allowed the Russians to get Gagarin into space first.\u00a0 Logsdon wonders, \u201cIf Shepard had been able to fly when he was originally scheduled (and beat Gagarin into space), would history have been different?\u00a0 Would there have been a reason to even start the so-called \u2018Space Race\u2019?\u201d\u00a0 The point is obviously moot – Gagarin was the first and his flight did indeed fire the starting gun for the \u2018Space Race\u2019..\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The other part of Kennedy\u2019s \u2018Moon Speech\u2019 was a challenge to the American people.\u00a0 He said, \u201cWe choose to do these things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.\u201d\u00a0 JFK told the story of two boys running across the Irish farm lands and when they came to a wall that seemed too high, one would throw the other\u2019s cap over the top so they would have no choice but to follow it:\u00a0 \u201cWe have thrown our cap over the wall of space,\u201d is how Kennedy put it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0To show how desperate the Soviets were to keep one upping the Americans, they took risks the Mercury – Gemini – Apollo program didn\u2019t.\u00a0 To get a multi-man crew in space before Apollo flew, Korolev modified their next generation capsule to accommodate three cosmonauts.\u00a0 The space in the capsule was so tight they had to not only do away with the ejection seats, but also with their space suits.\u00a0 NASA rules said astronauts must wear their pressurized suits upon re-entry in case the capsule lost pressure.\u00a0 The Russians took a chance they wouldn\u2019t have any problems.\u00a0 NASA lost some of three astronauts when they lost their focus on quality while developing the Apollo spacecraft.\u00a0 The pause in their program would have given Russia ample time to also improve their new craft, but they pushed to stay ahead of NASA to their own detriment.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When Gagarin, and later Titov, encountered problems with their one-man Vostok capsule, one would have to wonder why they didn\u2019t address these issues.\u00a0 On Gagarin\u2019s return, the electrical umbilical connecting his cabin and the service module to the rear failed to disconnect, giving him a bumpy ride home.\u00a0 The two spheres kept banging into each other which finally stopped when the cables burned through.\u00a0 Even though they knew this was a problem before Titov\u2019s flight, no steps were taken to ensure a smooth separation so they could get him in orbit as soon as possible.\u00a0 The second flight experienced the same trouble.\u00a0 Adding his nausea and almost freezing due to a broken cabin heater to Titov\u2019s list of problems made for an uncomfortable flight.\u00a0 Titov was lucky to miss a train by some fifty meters as he parachuted from his returning capsule.\u00a0 Unfortunately, his troubles didn\u2019t end when he hit the ground.\u00a0 After rolling over three times, the wind caught his chute and dragged him across the fields with his open faceplate scooping up soil.\u00a0 \u201cYou know, the farmers in Saratov had done their ploughing quite well that season, otherwise my landing would have been even harder,\u201d\u00a0 he commented later.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A week after Titov landed, construction of the Berlin Wall began.\u00a0 Before this escalation of East – West tensions came to a head, there were internal talks about the two countries cooperating on a joint space exploration initiative.\u00a0 Bobby Kennedy was sent to make back door overtures to the Russians about such a program but neither the President or the First Premier would be around to see it through.\u00a0 Kennedy, of course, was struck down in Dallas and Khruschev was pushed from power.\u00a0 It would be decades before any semblance of international space cooperation would gain any traction.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Further tensions involving the Space Race occurred in the middle of the Cuban Missile crisis. \u00a0 Kennedy and Khrushchev played a dangerous game of chicken over the Russian rocket installations spotted in Cuba by high flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft.\u00a0 In the middle of all the kerfuffle, Korolev had a Mars probe set up and ready to be launched for another \u2018space first\u2019.\u00a0 Fearing a showdown, the Russian military ordered the on-site rocket engineers to replace the probe with a nuclear warhead.\u00a0 The head engineer flew to Moscow to alert Korolev (who was battling a cold) and he in turn talked to Khrushchev to belay the switch.\u00a0 Ironically, the Mars probe booster exploded during the launch attempt, causing an ultra-alert in the American Ballistic Early Warning System.\u00a0 The BEWS tracking computers shut down any counterstrike when no inbound missiles were detected.\u00a0 Kennedy got the Russians to blink over the Cuban missiles ending the standoff.\u00a0 Could there have been a worse time for a space launch rocket failure?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As both sides jockeyed for space supremacy, Yuri Gagarin was tiring of his role as a hero.\u00a0 He made some poor personal decisions but few noticed.\u00a0 No one wanted to be accused of tarnishing his image even though he seemed to be doing a pretty good job on his own.\u00a0 He kept getting promoted and with each step up the ladder, he was pushed further away from the one thing he desired the most:\u00a0 to fly in space again.\u00a0 He particularly wanted to be the first man to walk on the Moon.\u00a0 As the director of cosmonaut training at Baikonur, Gagarin was not even allowed to pilot a jet aircraft solo.\u00a0 The new cosmonaut recruits had been training in new state of the art jet aircraft.\u00a0 What little time Yuri got in the air, it was in an antiquated two seat MiG -15UTI.\u00a0 To increase his chances of getting another space flight, he had returned to school to catch up to the new hotshot pilots.\u00a0 A thesis concerning reusable winged spacecraft showed he was thinking about the future of space travel even as the Soviets were now running as fast as they could but still losing ground to NASA.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Proof of the widening gap between the two countries came when the Russian program suffered the loss of their first cosmonaut during a mission.\u00a0 Vladimir Komarov was scheduled to fly the first manned test flight of the new Soyuz craft with Gagarin slated to be his backup.\u00a0 His launch would be followed the next day by a three man crew.\u00a0 The plan called for them to rendezvous in orbit and transfer two of them to Komarov\u2019s ship.\u00a0 They were supposedly rehearsing for a future moon mission but more likely it was designed to be another Russian \u2018first\u2019.\u00a0 There was a list of 203 hardware problems with the ship but politics prevented a letter concerning these defects (drafted by the cosmonauts) from being seen in the chain of command.\u00a0 It seems those pulling the strings felt it was more important to get the ship aloft in time to celebrate the fiftieth Anniversary of the 1917 revolution.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Komarov told his comrades that he would not survive this flight.\u00a0 As soon as he reached orbit, problems began to pop up:\u00a0 One of the two solar-power panels failed to deploy causing his guidance computer to run short of power.\u00a0 The second craft was not launched as the ground control team tried to iron out Komarov\u2019s problems in orbit.\u00a0 When this second mission was scrubbed, Komarov\u2019s flight was terminated and he was instructed to return to Earth.\u00a0 He had great difficulty getting his capsule lined up for re-entry and he radioed, \u201cThis devil ship!\u00a0 Nothing I lay my hands on works properly.\u201d\u00a0 The ship would not remain stable so the cosmonaut resorted to firing his thrusters to regain control.\u00a0 The thrusters were mounted too close to the navigation sensors and the lenses on those units could not tell the difference between guide starts and random reflections.\u00a0 Komarov\u2019s only choice was to use the Moon as a reference point while trying to keep the ship in the proper attitude.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Two hours before the re-entry drama began, everyone, including the cosmonaut, knew he was in serious trouble.\u00a0 Premier Kosygin talked to him and promised him a hero\u2019s burial.\u00a0 Komarov\u00a0 talked to his wife and told her how to settle his affairs.\u00a0 Just when it appeared he might survive reentry, his drogue parachute failed to pull the larger canopy from its storage bay.\u00a0 The back up parachute was released but it became entangled with the first drogue and when the capsule slammed into the steppe near Orenburg, the retro-rockets at the base exploded and burned what was left of the smashed spaceship.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When the Apollo 1 astronauts died in a flash fire during a ground test of their own flawed space capsule, the Russian government sent condolences to NASA and their families.\u00a0 As Doran and Bizony put it, \u201cThis time it was NASA\u2019s turn to send letters of condolence.\u00a0 Both sides in the superpower divide had learned that the space environment showed no concern for nationalities or flags, but treated all trespassers – Russian and American alike – to the same set of risks.\u201d\u00a0 The space race would continue, but the Russian\u2019s were no longer seen as America\u2019s technological equal.\u00a0 Even their Space Shuttle clone, Buran, only flew once without a crew and its shell ended up as a diner in a Moscow park.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As far as Yuri Gagarin, he continued his request to return to space after Komarov\u2019s death.\u00a0 On March 12, 1968, he and co-pilot Vladimir Serugin were completing one of Gagarin\u2019s recertification flights in a two-seater MiG-15UTI jet.\u00a0 Radio traffic released later indicated they had to fly lower than they normally would have to find clear air to run their test patterns.\u00a0 The cause of their crash was never revealed but recent research indicates they may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.\u00a0 It is probable that wake turbulence from a more advanced fighter caught them unaware and they were flying too low to recover.\u00a0 Both Gagarin and Serguin were cremated and laid to rest in the wall of the Kremlin.\u00a0 Information about their fate would remain unreported so even in death, Gagarin could continue to be a symbol of Russia\u2019s leading the early Space Race.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Top Piece Video:\u00a0 \u00a0Rocketman\u00a0<\/em>Live from Madison Square Garden in 2000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Back in 2021, I shared the story of the Chief Designer of the Soviet Union\u2019s Manned Rocket program, Sergei Korolev, also known as \u2018The King\u2019. (FTV:\u00a0 The King, Part 1 (7-14-21) & Part 2 (7-21-21)).\u00a0 Korolev\u2019s name was so top secret that there were very few people even in Russia who even knew about his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3534"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3537,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3534\/revisions\/3537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}