Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works not love all things tech, and recently
Speaker 1: I got an email from tech Stuff listener Lim asking
Speaker 1: me to do an episode about the Space Shuttle program.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna do that, but it really sent me
Speaker 1: down a very long rabbit hole, and I thought it
Speaker 1: might be fun to look at some of the early
Speaker 1: manned spacecraft and a couple of the unmanned ones to
Speaker 1: that preceded the Space Shuttle programs. So we're actually gonna
Speaker 1: do a block of space related episodes. This is the
Speaker 1: first one. We're gonna have several more, including ones about
Speaker 1: different eras of space exploration, the different rockets that have
Speaker 1: been used in space exploration, and the Space Shuttle program.
Speaker 1: So we're blasting off into out space for a few episodes.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy the ride. Now, before I get started,
Speaker 1: I want to give you guys some trigger warnings early
Speaker 1: on in this episode. So I'll be talking a bit
Speaker 1: about some early space missions that involve animals, and not
Speaker 1: all of those are happy stories. So if you are
Speaker 1: distressed by sad stories about animals, and there is one
Speaker 1: coming up later in this episode, I'll point it out
Speaker 1: when I get to that section, just be aware that
Speaker 1: that's going to happen. And second trigger warning, I'm one
Speaker 1: of those people who gets distressed about sad stories about animals.
Speaker 1: So if you get distressed by bald tech podcasters who
Speaker 1: are barely able to keep it together on microphone because
Speaker 1: they're talking about a sweet doggie, then this is your
Speaker 1: trigger warning for that as well. Before there were spacecraft
Speaker 1: with actual human beings in them, there were many earlier
Speaker 1: experiments and projects and thought experiments that provided valuable information
Speaker 1: about what it would take to get people into space.
Speaker 1: The scientists and engineers responsible for those experiments came from
Speaker 1: all over, and much of their work was advanced not
Speaker 1: through a pursuit of knowledge but through conflict. And I've
Speaker 1: mentioned this in other episodes, but the space race was
Speaker 1: largely fueled by pretty ugly political rivalries and a need
Speaker 1: to demonstrate a position of technological dominance and capability. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't say that to diminish the incredible contributions of
Speaker 1: countless individuals who have dedicated their lives to exploring the unknown,
Speaker 1: whether it is piloting a spacecraft or working on Earth
Speaker 1: so that others can do that. I I say it
Speaker 1: to illustrate that much of the work they did was
Speaker 1: made possible because the people in charge of the purse strings,
Speaker 1: the ones who were actually paying the checks, were really
Speaker 1: interested in their country being seen as the most powerful
Speaker 1: and more importantly unassailable entity on Earth. So double edged sword.
Speaker 1: Before I talk about any specific spacecraft, I want to
Speaker 1: give an overview about some of the early scientists and
Speaker 1: engineers who helped pave the way. Now, I could go
Speaker 1: all the way back to the Renaissance, when folks like
Speaker 1: Galileo made astronomical observations that challenged the prevailing geocentric view
Speaker 1: of the universe, but that would make this show way
Speaker 1: too long, and I've already got five episodes planned in
Speaker 1: this block. I don't need to add more to them,
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna skip ahead of bit. One person I
Speaker 1: do feel I must mention published a work at the
Speaker 1: end of the nineteenth century that was incredibly important. His
Speaker 1: name was Konstantine Siolkovsky, a Russian scientist. In eighteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: he began writing a work the English title of this
Speaker 1: work is Exploration of Cosmic Space by means of Reaction Devices,
Speaker 1: and essentially Siolkovsky was working out the logistics of escaping
Speaker 1: Earth's gravity, going to space and using rockets to do it.
Speaker 1: He did this at a time when Russia was still
Speaker 1: under the control of the Czar. In fact, it really
Speaker 1: wasn't an after the Russian Revolution of nineteen seventeen in
Speaker 1: the formation of the Soviet Union in nineteen twenty two
Speaker 1: that Siolkovsky really received any support for his work. The
Speaker 1: Soviet government was very interested in rockets that could go really,
Speaker 1: really far. Siolkovsky wasn't just a theorist either. He would
Speaker 1: also test his ideas. He introduced the concept of using
Speaker 1: wind tunnels to judge rocket aerodynamic design, for example, so
Speaker 1: he was practical as well well as a theoretical physicist.
Speaker 1: Over in the United States, meanwhile, a physicist named Robert
Speaker 1: Goddard was also working out the requirements to send a
Speaker 1: rocket to space. He he came out along a little
Speaker 1: bit after Sulkovsky. He also invented liquid fueled rockets. He
Speaker 1: received patents for his designs in nineteen fourteen, and he
Speaker 1: build the first working liquid fueled rocket In the mid
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties. He pioneered work in elements like gyroscopic control
Speaker 1: to help with flight stability, and also power driven fuel
Speaker 1: pumps for fuel managed it and a couple of years
Speaker 1: later scientists in Europe would create similar designs, largely independently,
Speaker 1: which would be put to use in Germany's V two
Speaker 1: rockets during World War Two. The V two is short
Speaker 1: for fair Gel tongs FAFA s VY or retribution weapon
Speaker 1: to which, yeah, that kind of tells you the purpose
Speaker 1: of that particular piece of technology. It was not meant
Speaker 1: to explore space, however. On June twenty, nineteen forty four,
Speaker 1: engineers conducted a test of a V two rocket that
Speaker 1: saw it reach an altitude of one D seventy six kilometers.
Speaker 1: That made the V two the first rocket to cross
Speaker 1: the Carmen line, which you could call the edge of space.
Speaker 1: The Carmen line is at a hundred kilometers above mean
Speaker 1: sea level, and it's named after Theodore Fawn Karmen, who
Speaker 1: was an Hungarian American engineer. He proposed that that altitude
Speaker 1: would mark the point where it would be impossible to
Speaker 1: maintain your your flight through UH lift alone at least
Speaker 1: through conventional means, because the atmosphere would be too thin
Speaker 1: to support an aircraft via lift unless the aircraft were
Speaker 1: actually traveling faster than orbital velocity. Now, interestingly, in the
Speaker 1: United States, it doesn't take as far to get up
Speaker 1: to space. You don't have to go up to a
Speaker 1: hundred kilometers to be in space. Now, I don't mean
Speaker 1: that space is magically closer to the United States soil
Speaker 1: or anything. Rather, I mean the United States Air Force
Speaker 1: calls anyone who has traveled at an altitude higher than
Speaker 1: eighty kilometers over sea level an astronaut. So if you
Speaker 1: go higher than eighty kilometers and you're in the U. S.
Speaker 1: Air Force, you're an astronaut. If you are anywhere else
Speaker 1: in the world, they would say, you haven't actually been
Speaker 1: to space yet. You need to go another twenty kilometers.
Speaker 1: But I just thought that was an interesting little side point.
Speaker 1: At the end of World War Two, there was a
Speaker 1: scramble among allied powers to grab up some of the
Speaker 1: more important assets that were formally held by the excess powers.
Speaker 1: Two of the assets that the United States really wanted
Speaker 1: were the V two rockets Germany had been using to
Speaker 1: bombard various countries and the scientists who had helped design
Speaker 1: those rockets, and the US did not want to put
Speaker 1: the scientists on trial for developing weapons of mass destruction,
Speaker 1: even though they had killed countless civilians. Instead, they wanted
Speaker 1: those scientists to build rockets for the good old U.
Speaker 1: S of A. This was called Operation paper Clip. In
Speaker 1: ninety six, the United States launched some V two rockets
Speaker 1: to the edge of space, but that would be the U. S.
Speaker 1: Air Force definition of the edge of space, meaning it
Speaker 1: was around eighty kilometers altitude, not a hundred and work
Speaker 1: on the V two lead to the development of two
Speaker 1: stage rockets, which, as their name suggests, means the rockets
Speaker 1: have two segments designed to provide the energy needed to
Speaker 1: boost the rocket out into space. I'll cover more details
Speaker 1: about rockets and stage rockets and what that all means
Speaker 1: in an upcoming episode of tech Stuff. Now here's the
Speaker 1: part of the episode where I get really sad, the
Speaker 1: bit that I warned you about earlier, because I'm a
Speaker 1: softie and I love dogs, so this could be a
Speaker 1: little hard for me to get through. It was hard
Speaker 1: for me to research, and right I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's gonna be hard for me to talk about. But
Speaker 1: we'll find out together. So just take my hand. We'll
Speaker 1: make it through this. Beginning in the early nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: the Soy Union began to experiment with simple spacecraft capsules,
Speaker 1: and they put dogs in these capsules to test and
Speaker 1: see if it might be viable to send a human
Speaker 1: into space. No one was really sure yet. The first
Speaker 1: two dogs to do this were named Desik and Saigon.
Speaker 1: These were both put in very tiny capsules. They were
Speaker 1: actually trained by being put into increasingly smaller crates over
Speaker 1: prolonged periods of time, because they would have to sit
Speaker 1: in these very tiny capsules for quite some time. They
Speaker 1: were carried by our one rockets to an altitude of
Speaker 1: one kilometers, which meant that they were actually crossing the
Speaker 1: carm online. They were not going into orbit though, they
Speaker 1: were just going very very high up into the atmosphere
Speaker 1: and then coming back down. They were in special pressure
Speaker 1: suits and they were inside a little pressurized cabin, so
Speaker 1: the case they were in was a pressurized case. Both
Speaker 1: of them returned from that first test flight alive and well.
Speaker 1: On July twenty, nineteen fifty one. Desert would be put
Speaker 1: on another test flight on July one with another dog
Speaker 1: named Lisa. But at that occasion we weren't so lucky.
Speaker 1: The two dogs died when the parachute for their capsule
Speaker 1: failed to deploy. Saigon, however, would be adopted by a
Speaker 1: Soviet scientist and would not go on any more flights
Speaker 1: and lived out her life fine. The Soviets did several
Speaker 1: more tests. They gradually would increase the altitudes until they
Speaker 1: reached about four fifty kilometers and by then they were
Speaker 1: using our five A rockets in the late nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: and then there was like okay. So on October four,
Speaker 1: ninety seven, the Oviots launched sput Nick one that was
Speaker 1: the first man made satellite to reach Earth orbit, to
Speaker 1: actually orbit the Earth in full. It was a silver
Speaker 1: sphere that went beep. That's essentially all it did. It
Speaker 1: sent out a radio signal and it orbited the Earth.
Speaker 1: It was also a huge wake up call to people
Speaker 1: in the United States. Scientists and government officials had known
Speaker 1: about Russian work in the space program and also about
Speaker 1: their advances in rocketry for a while. But sput Nick,
Speaker 1: which could be detected by amateur radio operators and it
Speaker 1: was ham operators were detecting this satellite in real time
Speaker 1: as it crossed overhead. It was proof the Soviets could
Speaker 1: put something up into space that could travel to the
Speaker 1: other side of the world. And if they could do
Speaker 1: it with a sphere what went beep, they might be
Speaker 1: able to do it with a bomb. And this was
Speaker 1: when the USSR and the USA were engaged in a
Speaker 1: Cold war, so this was a big deal. It really
Speaker 1: lit fires in the United States, not just in the
Speaker 1: space program, but for a host of other technological research projects,
Speaker 1: some of which would even evolve into stuff like the Internet.
Speaker 1: So that's spot Nick one, and I did a full
Speaker 1: episode on it in the past, so I'm not going
Speaker 1: to go into further detail right here. When we come
Speaker 1: back after I've stealed myself, will tell the sad story
Speaker 1: of sput Nick two and like a But first let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break and thank our sponsor. So Sputnik
Speaker 1: one was an unmanned satellite. Sputnik two would be the
Speaker 1: first spacecraft to carry a living creature inside of it
Speaker 1: and go into Earth orbit, and that living creature was
Speaker 1: like a spot Nick two launched on November third, nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty seven, just a month after Sputnik one launched, and
Speaker 1: inside the capsule was like a a dog that would
Speaker 1: become the first animal to into Earth orbit, and unlike
Speaker 1: the earlier tests with dogs, this was a one way
Speaker 1: ticket from the beginning. The other experiments were designed in
Speaker 1: an effort to ensure the dog's survival. The scientists wanted
Speaker 1: the dogs to come back down and and safely land,
Speaker 1: but they had no such plans for spot Nick two.
Speaker 1: Like it was going to go up into orbit, and
Speaker 1: the Soviets didn't have any way to bring her back
Speaker 1: down safely. They knew the satellite would encounter drag, it
Speaker 1: would lose speed, it would eventually have its orbit decay,
Speaker 1: and the spacecraft would re enter their atmosphere. They had
Speaker 1: no way of controlling its descent or mitigating the problems
Speaker 1: of heat build up. Like, uh, no matter what, was
Speaker 1: not going to survive that trip. She didn't live very long.
Speaker 1: When she died is actually a matter of some mystery.
Speaker 1: The Soviet Union originally reported that she actually survived a
Speaker 1: full week in orbit, which is kind of horrifying to me.
Speaker 1: But equally horrifying are the points of evidence that point
Speaker 1: other wise. Later documents said she died only a few
Speaker 1: hours after launch. Because the temperature inside the capsule reached
Speaker 1: more than a hundred degrees, the forces she endured were
Speaker 1: pretty rough. Uh. Data from Spotnik two indicates the capsule's
Speaker 1: temperature increased after it orbited the Earth three times, and
Speaker 1: that was the beginning of the end for her. And
Speaker 1: the story really rips me up every time I think
Speaker 1: about it, because, on the one hand, I certainly understand
Speaker 1: the need to test whether or not it might be
Speaker 1: possible to send a person to space and into orbits safely.
Speaker 1: That is a huge, huge risk, and it was full
Speaker 1: of unknowns. We had never done it before, so you
Speaker 1: have to be sure that's going to be safe before
Speaker 1: you put a human life at risk. And it's not
Speaker 1: like we had the technological capabilities at that time to
Speaker 1: do this without an actual organism on board to see
Speaker 1: what happens to that organism. But it's still a really
Speaker 1: hard story for me to get through. Ole Gazinco, who
Speaker 1: was one of the scientists who worked on spot Nick two,
Speaker 1: would later say that the mission wasn't designed to gather
Speaker 1: sufficient information that would justify the death of Lyca. He
Speaker 1: expressed regret in his involvement and the decision to sacrifice,
Speaker 1: or essentially said we didn't get enough information from this
Speaker 1: experiment to justify killing an animal in this way. By
Speaker 1: the way, Laca's legacy lives on in multiple forms of media.
Speaker 1: There's nick about Ziz novel Likeca, it's a fictional account
Speaker 1: of her story. The animation studio Lika is named after her.
Speaker 1: That's the studio that did films like Coraline and Cubo
Speaker 1: and The Two Strings. There are poems about her. There
Speaker 1: are songs, and my favorite in case you want to listen,
Speaker 1: but I warn you it is emotional as a sad
Speaker 1: song by Jonathan Colton. It's called Space Doggedy. It's actually
Speaker 1: an homage to David Bowie's Space Oddity song. He was
Speaker 1: given a challenge to transform a song and the specific
Speaker 1: song was Space Audity Audity by David Bowie. So he
Speaker 1: took that and he said, I'm known for doing all
Speaker 1: these songs about monkeys, so I wasn't going to do
Speaker 1: one about the first monkey in Space. I decided to
Speaker 1: do one about the first dog. And it's a really
Speaker 1: sweet song. If you're a dog lover, it's uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's very sad, but it's worth a Lessen. It's a
Speaker 1: very good song, all right. I gotta get it back
Speaker 1: together and talk more about spacecraft. So we're through with
Speaker 1: the animal cruelty stuff. I think while spot Nick two
Speaker 1: did not gather that much useful information, it did show
Speaker 1: that was possible to keep a living organism alive in
Speaker 1: orbit barring technological failures. And so now the race was
Speaker 1: on to see who could get a human being into
Speaker 1: orbit first. Over in the United States, efforts were rushing
Speaker 1: along with the Mercury program. Understandably, there were many launches
Speaker 1: with unmanned versions of the Mercury capsule. They wanted to
Speaker 1: test its space worthiness before ever putting an actual human
Speaker 1: being inside of it and sending that human off into space.
Speaker 1: And there was one test with a special pilot. It
Speaker 1: was for the Mercury Redstone to mission. Mercury missions were
Speaker 1: given different designations. The Mercury Redstone missions were suborbital, meaning
Speaker 1: these were tests where the Mercury capsule was sent up
Speaker 1: into space, but not into an orbit around the Earth.
Speaker 1: It would just go up and then come back down.
Speaker 1: This was late in the testing phase, after they had
Speaker 1: fired off multiple Mercury capsules that were unmanned. The special
Speaker 1: pilot was a chimpanzee later named Ham. Ham's name comes
Speaker 1: from the lab that trained him for the mission. It's
Speaker 1: the Holloman Aerospace Medical Center, so it was kind of
Speaker 1: an acronym. Ham was trained to activate switches when presented
Speaker 1: with the stimulus of a lit indicator, so a light
Speaker 1: lights up and the chimpanzee would reach out and hit
Speaker 1: a switch. It was trained this way. He was trained
Speaker 1: this way by he was given a banana pellets whenever
Speaker 1: he did it correctly, so he was rewarded. If he
Speaker 1: didn't do it, he would get a very mild electric
Speaker 1: shock on his feet, which sounds pretty awful, but it
Speaker 1: was mild. It was not something that was enough to
Speaker 1: harm him, but to you know, to sting a bit
Speaker 1: and and to essentially train him into this behavior. The
Speaker 1: whole point of it was the the the medical center
Speaker 1: wanted to train Ham to perform repetitive routine tasks and
Speaker 1: to be able to do it on command, because they
Speaker 1: weren't sure what would happen when someone was in orbit.
Speaker 1: Would they maintain that ability, would they be able to
Speaker 1: continue to do these routine tasks while they were in orbit,
Speaker 1: or would weightlessness affect you in such a way that
Speaker 1: you you were no longer able to do this. Because
Speaker 1: if you put a pilot up into orbit and it
Speaker 1: turns out after a short while that weightlessness or micro gravity,
Speaker 1: if you want to be more specific, has a negative effect,
Speaker 1: then you could condemn that person to die because are
Speaker 1: no longer able to do whatever they need to do
Speaker 1: in order to return to Earth safely. So this was
Speaker 1: a test to see would waitlessness or microgravity have that
Speaker 1: negative impact on cognitive abilities. So Ham got trained in
Speaker 1: this way, learned how to flip switches according to lights
Speaker 1: being lit up. Ham was not, by the way, piloting anything.
Speaker 1: Ham was again acting acting on these little these little
Speaker 1: lights that would blink on a console and would react
Speaker 1: to that. On January thirty one, nineteen sixty one, Ham
Speaker 1: who at that point did not actually have a name
Speaker 1: yet because NASA thought it might be a bad idea
Speaker 1: to name the chimpanzee just in case something did go wrong.
Speaker 1: If something went wrong and they had named the chimpanze,
Speaker 1: it would create kind of an emotional anchor point that
Speaker 1: might make it even more difficult to move forward with
Speaker 1: the space program. So he was just number sixty five
Speaker 1: until he came back anyway, he got into a mercury capsule,
Speaker 1: or was put into a mercury capsule. I should say,
Speaker 1: I'll talk more about what those capsules were like in
Speaker 1: just a little bit. And he would perform his duties
Speaker 1: of switching switches on command pretty much as he would
Speaker 1: on Earth. So he sent up into orbit, and he
Speaker 1: saw the little lights, and he flipped the little switches,
Speaker 1: and apparently it was pretty much the same as he
Speaker 1: would have done back at home. It was a little slower,
Speaker 1: but not by much. It was like a split second,
Speaker 1: So it wasn't it wasn't statistically important. It appeared that
Speaker 1: the rigors of space and effects of microgravity were not
Speaker 1: negatively impacting his ability to think and react in that way,
Speaker 1: which was a relief because there were also other issues
Speaker 1: that happened that fortunately did not affect Ham's health. For
Speaker 1: one thing, the spacecraft lost air pressure. There was a problem,
Speaker 1: a breach, but Ham Ham was inside a pressure aze
Speaker 1: capsule inside the spacecraft. The capsule part maintained its pressure,
Speaker 1: so while the spacecraft itself lost some air pressure, Ham
Speaker 1: was still safe inside. His flight was suborbital. It did
Speaker 1: not go all the way up into orbit. It lasted
Speaker 1: about sixteen and a half minutes long. He landed safely
Speaker 1: in the ocean, because that's how the mercury capsules were
Speaker 1: designed to make an ocean landing. There was a bit
Speaker 1: of a scare because the capsule had that small breach
Speaker 1: it actually started or not the capsule, but the spacecraft
Speaker 1: had that small breaches actually started filling up with water
Speaker 1: upon landing in the ocean. But the retrieval crew was
Speaker 1: able to get to Ham in plenty of time, and
Speaker 1: so Ham was extracted from the spacecraft. There was otherwise
Speaker 1: a danger that Ham, really very real danger that Ham
Speaker 1: could have drowned if they hadn't gotten to him in time. Uh.
Speaker 1: He then was transitioned to live out most of his
Speaker 1: life at the National Zoo in Washington, d C. Part
Speaker 1: of the Smithsonian, but in nineteen eighty was transferred to
Speaker 1: the North Carolina Zoo, and that's where he passed away
Speaker 1: on January nineteenth. And he was in his mid twenties,
Speaker 1: probably twenty five or twenty six. It's actually pretty young
Speaker 1: for a chimpanzee, which can live up to age fifty.
Speaker 1: Not entirely certain what caused his demise. I don't know
Speaker 1: if he just got a disease or what. I couldn't
Speaker 1: find a whole lot of information about what led to that,
Speaker 1: but uh, he did get that name upon landing, and
Speaker 1: he made history is the first non human hominid in space. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: over in the Soviet Union there was the Vostok program
Speaker 1: that was going strong, So Mercury was starting to work
Speaker 1: with these unmanned missions and the one with the chimpanzee.
Speaker 1: Over in the Soviet Union there was a push to
Speaker 1: go toward into space with a program called Vostok v
Speaker 1: O S t O K. The Vostok looked like kind
Speaker 1: of a giant circuitry component to me. There was a
Speaker 1: re entry capsule that's where the crew member would say.
Speaker 1: It was a one person spacecraft, and that was a
Speaker 1: sphere essentially, and then had sort of a conical base
Speaker 1: to it. That's where the retro rocket would be, and
Speaker 1: it was supposed to jettice and off the spherical part.
Speaker 1: And the sphere was two point three meters in diameter
Speaker 1: that's about seven and a half feet in diameter, So
Speaker 1: the cosmonaut didn't have a whole lot of room inside,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't the most cramped quarters of any spacecraft,
Speaker 1: it did have some odd designs to it. Apparently, the
Speaker 1: instrumentation was at a ninety degree angle from the the
Speaker 1: forward facing position of the cosmonaut, meaning that the cosmonaut
Speaker 1: was going to have to turn his or her head
Speaker 1: ninety degrees in order to see the instrumentation panel. That
Speaker 1: seems like a weird design to me, but that's, I guess,
Speaker 1: just the product of having to do this so quickly. Also,
Speaker 1: there was an important part of figuring out where to
Speaker 1: distribute the weight in this spacecraft see its spherical because
Speaker 1: there was no way to control the capsule's path and
Speaker 1: orientation once it re entered Earth's atmosphere and separated from
Speaker 1: its engine system that was in that that conical section.
Speaker 1: The sphere icle design meant it had to be shielded
Speaker 1: on all sides because there was no way to be
Speaker 1: absolutely certain how it might be oriented once it began
Speaker 1: to descend. The best the Soviets could do was designed
Speaker 1: the sphere in such a way that the equipment inside
Speaker 1: would offset the center, the natural center of gravity for
Speaker 1: the vehicle, and thus create a tendency for it to
Speaker 1: maneuver into a predictable orientation. Also, the cosmonaut was meant
Speaker 1: to actually eject from the capsule during descent, once reaching
Speaker 1: an altitude of seven kilometers. From there, the cosmonaut would
Speaker 1: float on down with a parachute and the capsule would
Speaker 1: land on its own. The Soviets didn't quite have time
Speaker 1: to develop a capsule that could descend gently enough to
Speaker 1: ensure the survival of the human inside of it, so
Speaker 1: this was a necessary step. It wasn't like an emergency
Speaker 1: UH procedure, although the Soviet Union did call it that
Speaker 1: for a while. This was actually normal practice was that
Speaker 1: the cosmonaut would eject from the spacecraft at seven kilometers
Speaker 1: and then parachute down by themselves. The Vostostom had a
Speaker 1: retro rocket designed to slow the spacecraft down enough in
Speaker 1: orbit to purposefully re enter the urt atmosphere, and if
Speaker 1: that failed, the spacecraft would likely remain in orbit for
Speaker 1: up to ten days, so cosmonauts were given enough food
Speaker 1: and oxygen to last that long just in case. In
Speaker 1: other words, there was no backup system. If the retro
Speaker 1: rocket failed, then the cosmonaut was going to be forced
Speaker 1: to sit there and wait until the orbital decay of
Speaker 1: the spacecraft was enough for it to force it to
Speaker 1: go and land or or re enter the r atmosphere,
Speaker 1: and there was no real predicting where that might happen
Speaker 1: at that point. Really, it's it would be based upon uh, well,
Speaker 1: whatever the actual speed of the spacecraft was and it's
Speaker 1: orbital altitude at that point. But yeah, it's kind of
Speaker 1: scary to think there was no backup system to re
Speaker 1: enter into the Earth's atmosphere in a controlled way, and
Speaker 1: that it might just require you to wait it out
Speaker 1: for ten days, also in a spacecraft that had notoriously
Speaker 1: bad waste removal systems. I'll leave it at that. On
Speaker 1: that happy note, let's take another quick break and thank
Speaker 1: our sponsors. Al right, backtracking a little bit, the first
Speaker 1: organisms to launch into orbit and return alive were an
Speaker 1: early prototype of this Vostok capsule. It was the Vostok
Speaker 1: one K model that carried them. It was the corrible
Speaker 1: spot Nick two, which in the West we call spot
Speaker 1: Nick five. That was the specific mission to carry animals
Speaker 1: into orbit and return safely, uh and did so successfully.
Speaker 1: It launched August nineteen, nineteen sixty and it carried Belka
Speaker 1: and Stroka, two dogs, plus it had a couple of
Speaker 1: rats in there. A whole bunch of mice and some plants.
Speaker 1: It completed three orbits of the Earth and then it
Speaker 1: returned safely, so everyone lived on that one. The first
Speaker 1: human flight into orbit was aboard a Vostok three K
Speaker 1: A spacecraft which had the official name Vostok one. And
Speaker 1: I know that's confusing, because the Vostok one K was
Speaker 1: a type of spacecraft. Wasn't the name that was a classification.
Speaker 1: The Vostok one was the name of a spacecraft, but
Speaker 1: it's classification was Vostok three K A YEA. The cosmonauta
Speaker 1: board that flight was Uri Gagarin, and he launched into
Speaker 1: the heavens on April twelve, nineteen sixty one. He was
Speaker 1: the first of six manned flights aboard the Vostok three
Speaker 1: K A spacecraft model. The sixth one of those flights
Speaker 1: actually saw Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space. She
Speaker 1: launched on June six, nineteen sixty three. The Vostok one
Speaker 1: spacecraft had manual pilot controls, but they were meant to
Speaker 1: be used only in the case of an emergency. The
Speaker 1: plan was that all the controls of the space craft
Speaker 1: would happen automatically or would be issued from ground control,
Speaker 1: and the fear was that no one was really sure
Speaker 1: what space flight was going to do to a person's
Speaker 1: ability to think and react. It's that same thing that
Speaker 1: the United States was trying to test with the chimpanzee.
Speaker 1: So it could be that weightlessness could cause some sort
Speaker 1: of space madness, or maybe the pilot just gets disoriented
Speaker 1: to the point where that control of the spacecraft would
Speaker 1: be in danger. So the manual controls were only supposed
Speaker 1: to be activated by initiating a code sequence aboard the spacecraft,
Speaker 1: and the pilot was not supposed to be told what
Speaker 1: the code was unless there was an emergency. So if
Speaker 1: it became necessary, ground control could send up a message
Speaker 1: to URI and say, hey, here's the code sequence you
Speaker 1: need in order to take manual control of your spacecraft. However,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, at least one person gave URI
Speaker 1: the code before you even got into the capsule, just
Speaker 1: in case. The Volstock one would launch at six o
Speaker 1: seven a m. Ten minutes after launch, Uri was in orbit.
Speaker 1: He made one orbit of the Earth, and at seven
Speaker 1: twenty five AM or thereabouts, his spacecraft's retro rocket fired
Speaker 1: to slow down the spacecraft enough for re entry, and
Speaker 1: things went a bit scary at first. The reentry model
Speaker 1: for the Vostok one is that sphere I mentioned earlier, right,
Speaker 1: It's a sphere that's kind of attached to a conical base. Well,
Speaker 1: the conical base is supposed to detach from the sphere
Speaker 1: upon reentry. It's supposed to uh to to separate from
Speaker 1: little explosive bolts, but that's not exactly what happened. Part
Speaker 1: of it ended up sticking to the sphere. It was
Speaker 1: strapped there. There was a bundle of wires that kept
Speaker 1: the two pieces tethered together, which complicated matters. The sphere
Speaker 1: was meant to fall in a very controlled way, but
Speaker 1: with this added weight that was tethered to it, it
Speaker 1: was causing lots of gyrations and rotations. I can't imagine
Speaker 1: what the forces felt like inside the spacecraft as it
Speaker 1: was plummeting down and turning unpredictably. URI ended up experiencing
Speaker 1: forces around eight G. That's eight times the force of
Speaker 1: gravity we feel here on Earth. But fortunately, through that process,
Speaker 1: the conical section eventually broke away and the sphere was
Speaker 1: able to reorient properly, and at seven fifty the reentry
Speaker 1: model reached the altitude of seven kilometers and your re ejected.
Speaker 1: His parachute deployed, and he would land in Russia at
Speaker 1: eight oh five, about two hours after he had launched.
Speaker 1: Now a little less than a month after his successful
Speaker 1: flight and orbit of the Earth aboard the Vostok one,
Speaker 1: America established a new first. Alan Shepherd became the first
Speaker 1: person to actually pilot a spacecraft while in space, as
Speaker 1: opposed to ride in a capsule as more or less
Speaker 1: a passenger. The mission included both automatic pilot and manual
Speaker 1: control segments. Shepherd tested the Mercury's flight controls he was
Speaker 1: aboard a Mercury capsule. He tested those flight controls to
Speaker 1: make sure that the spacecraft would react in a way
Speaker 1: similar to the way they had simulated it back on Earth,
Speaker 1: and he found that pretty much they reacted the same
Speaker 1: way the simulations did. Shepherd's historic flight took place on
Speaker 1: May five, nineteen sixty one, aboard the Mercury spacecraft that
Speaker 1: he named the Freedom seven. Each of the commanders of
Speaker 1: the Gemini spacecraft got to name their own spacecraft, and
Speaker 1: he called it the Freedom seven, not because it was
Speaker 1: the seventh Mercury capsule. It wasn't uh he named of
Speaker 1: the Freedom seven because seven was the number of astronauts
Speaker 1: who were originally selected to be part of the Mercury programs,
Speaker 1: so it was uh the seven referred to the number
Speaker 1: of astronauts, not to the capsule, and it became tradition
Speaker 1: all the other Mercury capsule pilots would name their spacecraft
Speaker 1: a name plus the number seven. Shepherd's flight was a
Speaker 1: suborbital one, so he did not go high enough or
Speaker 1: fast enough to go into Earth orbit. He flew up
Speaker 1: past the Karmen line and came back down again. His
Speaker 1: flight was was more of a test flight to make
Speaker 1: sure that a human pilot could withstand the rigors of
Speaker 1: space travel and still operate the spacecraft properly. His flight
Speaker 1: lasted a little more than fifteen minutes. He traveled about
Speaker 1: three hundred two miles or four eighty six kilometers away
Speaker 1: from the launch site in Cape Canaveral, Florida. He did
Speaker 1: go to space. His space spacecraft actually reached an altitude
Speaker 1: of a hundred eighty seven and a half kilometers. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about what that spacecraft was like, not the
Speaker 1: launch vehicle, the rocket. I'll talk about rockets in another episode,
Speaker 1: but the spacecraft itself. The Mercury project started in the
Speaker 1: late nineteen fifties and the goal was putting an American
Speaker 1: in orbit, preferably before the Soviets did. That obviously didn't
Speaker 1: work out, but the it did prove ultimately to be
Speaker 1: a success in more meaningful ways to test love of
Speaker 1: technologies that would be incorporated in later space projects. One
Speaker 1: of those ways was that the US wanted to create
Speaker 1: a spacecraft that would allow a human operator to control it,
Speaker 1: including making adjustments to the spaces orientation upon re entry.
Speaker 1: Rather than go with that spherical approach that the Vostok
Speaker 1: spacecraft had, the Mercury is more of a cone shape.
Speaker 1: It's something that would be repeated with the Gemini or
Speaker 1: if you prefer, Giminy and Apollo spacecraft capsules. This helped
Speaker 1: reduce the surface area that they had to coat with
Speaker 1: heat shielding. Instead of coding the whole thing with heavy
Speaker 1: heat shielding, they just put on the base of this
Speaker 1: cone that was the part of the craft that would
Speaker 1: face the Earth at an angle while going through the descent,
Speaker 1: so it was the base of it that had to
Speaker 1: be heavily shielded against heat. The Mercury capsule was three
Speaker 1: point three meters long or ten point eight feet. It
Speaker 1: was one point eight meters wide that's about six ft,
Speaker 1: and the bottom side, the wise part of the spacecraft,
Speaker 1: the part that's pointed towards the ground, had the heat
Speaker 1: shield on it, and unlike the Vostok, the astronaut inside
Speaker 1: the Mercury was meant to stay in during the entire descent.
Speaker 1: They were not meant to eject from the spacecraft. So
Speaker 1: the Mercury would deploy a pair of parachutes to control
Speaker 1: and slow that descent. The first, which was called a
Speaker 1: drogue parachute, would release at six thousand four meters or
Speaker 1: twenty one thousand feet, and it was meant to provide
Speaker 1: stability during the descent. It really only had a minor
Speaker 1: effect on slowing down the spacecraft. The second parachute would
Speaker 1: deploy it three thousand meters or ten thousand feet. That
Speaker 1: was the one that was meant to slow its descent.
Speaker 1: The Mercury was meant to land on water. Most of
Speaker 1: Earth's surfaces covered by that stuff, so it made sense
Speaker 1: just before impact the Mercury would deploy what was in
Speaker 1: effect a giant airbag to help absorb some of the force.
Speaker 1: Of impact, because while hitting the water sounds like that
Speaker 1: would be great compared to say, hitting a giant rock,
Speaker 1: hitting water at high speeds is rough stuff. So why
Speaker 1: is that? Why is it that when you hit water
Speaker 1: at a high speed it feels almost like you're hitting
Speaker 1: a solid surface. Well, first we need to talk about
Speaker 1: what makes us get hurt when we fall on solid ground.
Speaker 1: So it's physics time. When we fall and hit the ground,
Speaker 1: the ground is effectively hitting us back. That's the force
Speaker 1: we feel when we fall down and hit the ground.
Speaker 1: It's equal to the rate of change in momentum with
Speaker 1: respect to time. So momentum is equal to mass times velocity,
Speaker 1: So the mass the amount of stuff that's in motion,
Speaker 1: and the velocity, which is the speed and direction of travel,
Speaker 1: and the forces depending upon the rate of change in
Speaker 1: that value. So we can determine our momentum. We take
Speaker 1: our mass and we multiply at times the velocity we
Speaker 1: were traveling an instant before we make impact. The velocity
Speaker 1: in this case would be really closely tied to acceleration
Speaker 1: from gravity unless something pushed us to get us going.
Speaker 1: But essentially gravity is what we're using as our guide here. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the important thing here is that the rate of change
Speaker 1: of momentum is the key, not just momentum, not just
Speaker 1: how fast you're going, but how quickly you go from
Speaker 1: moving that fast to not moving at all. If you
Speaker 1: slow down gradually, then obviously you don't you don't feel
Speaker 1: a huge impact. But if you slow down instantly, you
Speaker 1: feel impact. So you're going a certain speed until you
Speaker 1: hit the ground and then you've essentially stopped. We're gonna
Speaker 1: ignore bouncing here, we're just saying splatting. The rate of
Speaker 1: change of momentum is incredible because you go from whatever
Speaker 1: the speed was to complete stop and pretty much an instant.
Speaker 1: Water is a little different from solid ground, obviously because
Speaker 1: as a bit of a gift to it, right, if
Speaker 1: you slide into the water, then there's not a big deal.
Speaker 1: It's the rate of change in momentum ends up being
Speaker 1: a little slower than if we hit solid ground. You
Speaker 1: don't stop instantaneously because we displace water. But displacing water
Speaker 1: actually takes time because for water to move out the way,
Speaker 1: it has to push against other molecules of water, and
Speaker 1: that water has to move and so on. There's a
Speaker 1: ripple effect and that requires force and time. The water
Speaker 1: is one of those pesky substances that really resists compression,
Speaker 1: so you can't just squish it down. It moves. The
Speaker 1: molecules have to move out the way. So the more
Speaker 1: water you attempt to displace in a very short amount
Speaker 1: of time, the less water you'll actually be able to displace.
Speaker 1: It's just not going to move all the way fast enough.
Speaker 1: So as you increase the velocity of a mass and
Speaker 1: you aim it at water, you see less of a
Speaker 1: cushioning effect from the water itself. There's still some Landing
Speaker 1: on water at a high velocity is not the same
Speaker 1: as hitting concrete at that same velocity, but the displacement
Speaker 1: of water will not be sufficient to make the landing
Speaker 1: a painless one. It's still gonna hit you like it's
Speaker 1: a solid surface. So the air bags helped take some
Speaker 1: of that force out, but not all of it, and
Speaker 1: it would transfer some of the force the air bag
Speaker 1: and make the landing inside the Mercury capsule survivable. It
Speaker 1: wouldn't be gentle, but it wouldn't be as jarring as say,
Speaker 1: the Vostok capsule would have been if they had used
Speaker 1: a parachute. So the Mercury spacecraft would then, upon landing
Speaker 1: in the water, raise an antenna from the top of
Speaker 1: the spacecraft and sent out radio signals that would alert
Speaker 1: nearby ships and helicopters where the capsule was so that
Speaker 1: they could come and retrieve the capsule and more importantly,
Speaker 1: the astronaut inside the capsule. Shepherd actually collaborated with the
Speaker 1: automatic pilot system and this test flight, this early flight
Speaker 1: wasn't a test flight, this early flight and the Mercury mission,
Speaker 1: it was an intended design of the Mercury spacecraft. So
Speaker 1: he used a controller that would send commands to the
Speaker 1: automatic system to fire rockets in order to get the
Speaker 1: spacecraft into the proper orientation for re entry. So essentially
Speaker 1: he would say, the spacecraft is in this particular orientation,
Speaker 1: I needed to move from this one to this new orientation,
Speaker 1: and then the automatic system would try to make those
Speaker 1: adjustments and turn the spacecraft the way uh Shepherd wanted
Speaker 1: it to. It didn't go off without a hitch. It
Speaker 1: was a little bit off, but it wasn't catastrophically off.
Speaker 1: The freedom sevens orientation was not quite where NASA wanted
Speaker 1: it to be, and some of the indicators also failed
Speaker 1: during the landing process. It gave the incorrect impression that
Speaker 1: important sequences like the retro rockets jettisoning off the heat
Speaker 1: shield had not happened, and if that were the case,
Speaker 1: it could have been a terrible, terrible tragedy. But in fact,
Speaker 1: the retrorockets had jettisoned off. It's just the indicator light
Speaker 1: was not showing that having happened. But NASA was able
Speaker 1: to verify that in fact, it did happen, and everything
Speaker 1: turned out to be okay. According to Shepherd, landing in
Speaker 1: the ocean wasn't that different from feeling like landing a
Speaker 1: jet on an aircraft carrier is about the same kind
Speaker 1: of bumpy ride. It wasn't the smoothest experience, but it
Speaker 1: was tolerable, so his mission was a success. It probably
Speaker 1: would have been met with an enormous amount of enthusiasm
Speaker 1: if it were not for the fact that the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union had just put a man into orbit just a
Speaker 1: few weeks earlier. But it did solidify the US approach
Speaker 1: to space travel, and it prepared the way for more
Speaker 1: Mercury missions as well as the Gemini and Apollo missions. Now,
Speaker 1: in our next episode, i'll talk more about the Doose missions,
Speaker 1: as well as a little bit more about Voss Stock
Speaker 1: and UH and mercury. Also, i'll talk about the spacecraft
Speaker 1: that the Soviets built after the Vostok capsules. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you guys have suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: maybe it's a technology or a company or personality and
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