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History of Technology 2: Humans in Space 22 Views


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Description:

What's the biggest takeaway from our race to get into space? Easy: the U.S.A. > Russia. 'Merica! 'Merica!

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:00

getting humans into space wasn't rocket science.

00:05

okay it wasn't just rocket science. a bunch of other factors came [equations on a white board]

00:09

into play to make human space travel happen. the whole idea of space travel

00:13

became tangled up with the Cold War which was a global conflict between the

00:18

United States and the Soviet Union. for lots of complicated reasons the old USSR

00:23

and the US were political and ideological enemies from the 1950s through the 1990s.

00:29

all that yeah. well the two countries made a habit of bickering and one-upping

00:34

each other for several decades. it was communism this and capitalism that 24 by

00:40

7 .what's important here is that the Cold War was one of the reasons space travel [president on the phone]

00:44

became a thing in the first place. in 1957 both the US and the USSR announced

00:49

that they were going to launch satellites that would orbit the Earth

00:51

and collect scientific data. basically spying on each other. suddenly getting to

00:57

the moon wasn't just a fun maybe one day sort of thing. it was a race. and the

01:02

Soviet Union was totally handing it to the US right out of the gate. by October [men in lab coats]

01:07

1957 the USSR had launched Sputnik 1 the first man-made object to orbit the earth.

01:13

a month later they launched the first live creature into space on the Sputnik

01:18

2 like a stray dog from the streets of Moscow and now her treatment wasn't fun

01:24

and nor was her eventual end. Sputnik 2 was not designed to be retrievable. no

01:31

we're not gonna focus on that poor dog. well all this Sputnik action had

01:35

Americans freaking out. the good ol US of A couldn't seriously lose to the

01:39

Russkies right ?right? well by 1961 their Soviets were still winning/ they put the [map of U.S. and USSR shown]

01:45

first man in orbit a fella named Yuri Gagarin/ well then they put the first

01:50

woman in space valentina Tereshkova. what a way to shatter the glass ceiling there

01:55

guys. no doubt the u.s. definitely needed to step up its game .so President John F

02:00

Kennedy announced to the world this nation should commit itself to achieving

02:05

the goal before this decade is out of landing a man on the moon and returning

02:10

him safely to the earth. well that was a nutty thing to say because the US had [crew helping with trip to the moon waves hands]

02:15

put an object in space for a grand total of 60 minutes at that point.

02:20

oh sure John we'll just pop on over to the moon there hit control off the

02:24

leader. but Americans loved it so the political pressure to figure out space

02:28

travel went off the charts. it turns out that Russian technological research and

02:32

pressuring scientists it's a really really bad idea. in the insane rush to

02:37

get to the moon both America and the Soviet Union ended up with accidental

02:41

deaths all over the place. in the u.s. three astronauts died in a fire while [headlines shown]

02:45

testing out the Apollo one. in the Soviet Union another astronauts parachute

02:50

failed while he was aborting a failed test. both countries took it down a notch

02:54

but well not too many notches. there were tons of problems to be solved in both

02:58

countries were determined to solve them. here's a short list of the issues with

03:02

space travel. number 1 navigation. sounds like it wouldn't be hard to find the

03:07

moon and it's a pretty big thing out there and it tends to glow. but it turns

03:11

out there's an incredibly narrow route we have to take if we want to hit the [smiling men in lab coats]

03:16

moon at the right spot at the right time and at the right speed. and in the 1960s

03:21

there was no surie calmly guiding us to our destination. NASA had to build one of

03:26

the world's first computer guidance systems using pretty primitive computer

03:30

hardware. our microwave probably has more advanced technology than that they did.

03:35

well another issue was food and water. spoiler alert humans have to eat and

03:40

drink. engineers didn't want too much ship space taken up with food and water

03:45

so they designed a water recycling machine to reuse most of the water on

03:50

board and yes ew. and they figured out how to freeze dry food to make it [astronauts in a spaceship]

03:54

smaller and significantly less appetizing. then there was the issue of

03:59

actually surviving out in space itself. somehow people were gonna have to exit

04:03

their shuttle and you know walk around on the moon. but space is kind of cold. we

04:09

stinks. and there's no air which stinks more. so engineers and scientists

04:13

designed the first spacesuits. well scientists and engineers also needed to

04:18

figure out how to connect to spaceships. because of the way a moon landing has to

04:23

work there's a big ship that makes the full distance and then there's a smaller

04:27

shuttle that pops down to the surface of the Moon. [taxi cab drives over moon's surface]

04:30

that means NASA I had to figure out how to let two ships connect and lock

04:34

together in space. starts to sound kind of impossible right ? well apparently it

04:39

wasn't because on July 20th 1969 American astronauts Neil Armstrong and

04:44

Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon in the Apollo 11. well Neil Armstrong got to be

04:49

the first human to set foot on the moon famously saying that's one small step

04:54

for a man one giant leap for mankind. we wonder if they played rock paper [Armstrong and Buzz Lightyear on the moon]

05:00

scissors to see who got to say that cool line.

05:05

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