Now Playing
Von Braun, Korolev & the Cost of Speed: Rivals Who Dragged Humanity to the Moon
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Two men with shattered pasts — one celebrated, one invisible — built the rival empires that made the space race possible. From Sputnik's shock to Apollo 1's tragedy, this is the human cost behind the countdown.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Most people who followed the space race knew one name on the Soviet side. They didn't.
In October nineteen fifty-seven, the R-7 lifted a small metal sphere into low Earth orbit. It weighed about eighty-three kilograms.
Before Apollo, there was a programme most people have largely forgotten. Gemini ran from nineteen sixty-one to nineteen sixty-six and flew ten crewed missions.
By nineteen sixty-seven, both programmes were under pressure. The political clock Kennedy had set in nineteen sixty-one was still running.
Getting to the Moon required solving problems that had never been solved before. Some of them were visible, like propulsion and navigation.
Before Apollo 11, there was Apollo 8. December nineteen sixty-eight.
There's a final thread worth holding onto. Korolev died in January nineteen sixty-six, during routine surgery.
Chapter summary auto-generated from the verified script. Listen to the full episode for the complete content.