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 Jothan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works in love all Things Tech. And in
Speaker 1: my last episode, I talked about the early efforts to
Speaker 1: put a human being into Earth orbit to the moon, actually, no,
Speaker 1: just to the orbit. We covered how the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: did it first with a cosmonaut named Yuri and inside
Speaker 1: a Vostok one spacecraft actually as a Vostok three K,
Speaker 1: a spacecraft that was named the Vostok one. And I
Speaker 1: also talked about how US astronaut Alan Shepherd flew a
Speaker 1: suborbital mission in the Freedom seven Mercury space capsule. But
Speaker 1: I had not quite reached the point where a U.
Speaker 1: S astronaut completed an orbit of the Earth or what
Speaker 1: came next. So in today's episode, we're gonna look more
Speaker 1: at those missions and the spacecraft that followed those early examples.
Speaker 1: So both the Vostok and the Mercury spacecraft went on
Speaker 1: six missions, not not the same spacecraft, but those models, uh,
Speaker 1: they both went on six different missions from nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: one to nineteen sixty three. So they were closely in
Speaker 1: competition with one another. The Soviet missions included Valentina Tereshkova.
Speaker 1: She was the first woman in space. The US missions
Speaker 1: had two suborbital missions, the first in the Freedom seven
Speaker 1: that I mentioned earlier with Alan Shepard. The second was
Speaker 1: in a spacecraft named the Liberty Bell seven. That one
Speaker 1: was piloted by Virgil Ivan Gus Grissom. Gus would also
Speaker 1: play a very important role in the development of the
Speaker 1: Gemini spacecraft, which I'll talk about later in this episode.
Speaker 1: And starting with the third Mercury mission, which was in
Speaker 1: the Friendship seven and was piloted by John Glenn, the
Speaker 1: US began to send astronauts into orbits, so John Glenn
Speaker 1: was the first US astronaut to go into orbit. I'll
Speaker 1: cover that one more in just a second, because that
Speaker 1: was a big deal for the US. The Mercury missions
Speaker 1: had two designations. These suborbital flights were classified under the
Speaker 1: name Mercury Redstone. The four orbital missions were called Mercury
Speaker 1: Atlas missions. So along with Shephard, Grissom, and Glenn, you
Speaker 1: had the astronauts Leroy Gordon, Gordy Cooper Jr. Walter Marty,
Speaker 1: Wally Skira Jr. Malcolm Scott Carpenter who didn't get a
Speaker 1: fun nickname, I guess, and Donald Kent Deek Slayton, the
Speaker 1: only one of the seven who did not pilot a
Speaker 1: Mercury mission. Because I remember there were six Mercury missions,
Speaker 1: they were one man capsules, seven astronauts. Someone gets left out.
Speaker 1: The one left out was Donald Kent Deek Slayton. He
Speaker 1: was grounded after medical exams found he had an irregularity
Speaker 1: with his heartbeat, and just to be on the safe side,
Speaker 1: they decided not to send him up into space, although
Speaker 1: everyone kept saying he'd probably be okay, but we don't
Speaker 1: want to take the chance. Slayton, however, would eventually regain
Speaker 1: his flight status in the nineteen seventies and would ultimately
Speaker 1: get to travel to space as part of an Apollo
Speaker 1: Soyu's mission, which I'll talk about in the next episode.
Speaker 1: That was a collaborative effort between the United States and
Speaker 1: the Soviet space programs. So he did finally get to
Speaker 1: go up into space, but it was a decade later
Speaker 1: than what he had planned. John Glenn's historic flight on
Speaker 1: February twenty, nineteen sixty two, some orbit the Earth three
Speaker 1: times the mission took nearly five hours from launch to touchdown,
Speaker 1: and Cooper's mission on May fifteenth, nineteen sixty three, on
Speaker 1: the Faith seven took nearly a day and a half.
Speaker 1: This was the final Mercury mission. So why did it
Speaker 1: take so long, Well, it's because Cooper orbited the Earth
Speaker 1: twenty two times. To prepare for these orbital missions, astronauts
Speaker 1: would train for two years and one month out from
Speaker 1: the mission launch date. Two astronauts would get the nod
Speaker 1: as being the picks for that mission. You would have
Speaker 1: an astronaut and you would have an alternate. That way,
Speaker 1: if the primary pick had an issue on launch day,
Speaker 1: like a medical condition that could threaten the safety of
Speaker 1: the astronaut or the mission, there was already an alternate.
Speaker 1: So let's say it's launched day. Everyone wakes up. Turns
Speaker 1: out your primary pick for your mission has come down
Speaker 1: with a terrible case of food poisoning. Well, you can't
Speaker 1: send that person up in a spacecraft. You have to
Speaker 1: go with your alternate. Three days before launch, the astronauts
Speaker 1: who had been picked for that mission would be switched
Speaker 1: to a special diet that would help reduce the possibility
Speaker 1: that said astronaut would need to go poop during the mission.
Speaker 1: I said that in a way to honor my former
Speaker 1: co host Chris Palette, who I think would have said
Speaker 1: it the same way. Chris, if you're listening, let me know.
Speaker 1: The astronauts would get suited up and put on a
Speaker 1: mask to breathe pure oxygen to prep for the conditions
Speaker 1: of being inside the capsule a few hours before they
Speaker 1: actually would get in. Two hours before launch they would
Speaker 1: go and get into them are cury capsule, so they
Speaker 1: still have two hours to go. And the last episode
Speaker 1: I mentioned the dimensions of this capsule. It was big
Speaker 1: enough for a single astronaut seated in kind of a
Speaker 1: reclined position, so they're essentially laying on their backs in
Speaker 1: a seated position, staring up at the sky. Outside the capsule,
Speaker 1: mechanics would bolt on the hatch to seal the astronaut inside.
Speaker 1: Ground control would go forward with the countdown, checking all
Speaker 1: the launch systems and the weather conditions to make sure
Speaker 1: everything was good to go. Delays would just mean that
Speaker 1: the astronaut would be laying down there for a really
Speaker 1: long time. There's a great story about Alan Shepherd and
Speaker 1: a delay and his roop need to make use of
Speaker 1: the facilities, and there are no facilities aboard the Mercury,
Speaker 1: at least not that first one. I'll leave it at that.
Speaker 1: You can read up on it if you really want
Speaker 1: to know more. Anyway, four seconds before liftoff, the rocket
Speaker 1: engines would come to life and they would ignite. Clamps
Speaker 1: would hold the launch vehicle down on the pad, essentially
Speaker 1: holding the rocket in place until enough thrust had been
Speaker 1: built up for liftoff. At that point, the clamps would
Speaker 1: release and the rocket would lift off the launch pad,
Speaker 1: and a couple of minutes after launch to booster, rocket
Speaker 1: engines would turn off and jettison off the vehicle. A
Speaker 1: central thruster would continue to fire and give enough thrust
Speaker 1: to do sort of the final push to get up
Speaker 1: into orbit. That would continue until they reached the proper
Speaker 1: orbital altitude, and then they would the capsule could re
Speaker 1: orient itself into a position that was horizontal with respect
Speaker 1: to the Earth, then the engine would shut off. At
Speaker 1: that point, the spacecraft would jettison the launch engines and
Speaker 1: continue its orbit until it was time to reorient again
Speaker 1: and fire the retro rockets, which would slow down the
Speaker 1: spacecraft enough for it to re enter the Earth's atmosphere.
Speaker 1: That repositioning for re entry was really the only maneuvering
Speaker 1: the capsule could do in space, and it took just
Speaker 1: a bit less than an hour and a half to
Speaker 1: make a full orbit of the Earth, around eighty eight
Speaker 1: minutes or so to do one full orbit. I talked
Speaker 1: about the reentry process in the last episode, so I'm
Speaker 1: not going to go over it again here, because it
Speaker 1: was the same for each of the Mercury missions. To
Speaker 1: slow down enough so that the parachutes would deploy once
Speaker 1: you hit certain altitudes, and then you would land in
Speaker 1: the water and wait to get picked up. Now, it's
Speaker 1: basically it. The first of the six man Mercury flights
Speaker 1: happened on May five, nineteen sixty one. The final one
Speaker 1: happened on May fifteenth, nineteen sixty three. During that time,
Speaker 1: what was happening over at the Soviet Union. Well, in
Speaker 1: the last episode, I talked about the Vostok one mission
Speaker 1: with Uri, which was again that first space mission to
Speaker 1: put a human into orbit, that happened in April nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty one, a month before the first manned Mercury mission.
Speaker 1: Then the Americans held their first suborbital manned flight, which
Speaker 1: was partially piloted by the astronaut inside the spacecraft. So
Speaker 1: that was a little bit of a one up on
Speaker 1: the Soviets in that respect, because Uri didn't control the
Speaker 1: space craft of the Vostok one that was completely under
Speaker 1: automatic control. On August six, nineteen sixty one, a few
Speaker 1: months later, the Vostok two launched into space with the
Speaker 1: then twenty five year old cosmonaut Garman Titov. He spent
Speaker 1: more than a day orbiting the Earth. He was out
Speaker 1: in space orbiting the Earth for more than twenty four hours.
Speaker 1: That was something that the Americans would not be able
Speaker 1: to match. For nearly two years, his spacecraft orbited the
Speaker 1: Earth seventeen times during the amount of time he was
Speaker 1: out in space. And like Uri, Titov was inside a
Speaker 1: Vostok three k A spacecraft. It was called the Vostok two,
Speaker 1: but its classification was Vostok three k A. The crew
Speaker 1: compartment was essentially a sphere. It is the same as
Speaker 1: as Uri Gagarin's. This connected to an equipment module that
Speaker 1: was more conical in shape. I mentioned that in the
Speaker 1: previous episode two that in turn connected to the rocket engines.
Speaker 1: The length of the mission was a matter of hot
Speaker 1: scientific debate before the launch of the law stuck to
Speaker 1: how long should this mission be. The Russians had experimented
Speaker 1: with dogs aboard a spacecraft that had made six orbits
Speaker 1: of the Earth, and during those experiments the dogs had
Speaker 1: experienced convulsions, so those Soviets weren't sure. Maybe if you
Speaker 1: stayed in space for more than just a few orbits
Speaker 1: you might start having severe health issues. So the dogs
Speaker 1: had returned to Earth alive, but it left the scientists
Speaker 1: worried that a human might encounter similar problems after extended
Speaker 1: periods of weightlessness. There was also a concern about where
Speaker 1: the spacecraft was going to land, because each time it
Speaker 1: orbited the Earth, it would actually shift the landing position
Speaker 1: for the the spacecraft. It would shift a little bit
Speaker 1: to the west. So if you orbited a few times,
Speaker 1: you would still be in Russia Russia is a really
Speaker 1: big country, but a few more than that and suddenly
Speaker 1: you're in Europe, and then you'd be out over the ocean, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And so you have to keep orbiting the Earth until
Speaker 1: you had done essentially a twenty four hour stint in
Speaker 1: space before you were over Russia again. So the choices
Speaker 1: seemed to be either go up for a very short
Speaker 1: amount of time, which was similar to what they had
Speaker 1: already done, or grow up for a longer time, not
Speaker 1: knowing what the effects were going to be, but you
Speaker 1: would be able to land the spacecraft back in Russia.
Speaker 1: So ultimately they decided to go with the longer mission.
Speaker 1: Titov was given manual control of his spacecraft during the mission,
Speaker 1: so while he was in orbit he was able to
Speaker 1: take control of this Vostok to spacecraft. Ground controls still
Speaker 1: maintained control of the spacecraft for most of its operation.
Speaker 1: The mission did have a couple of issues. One of
Speaker 1: the was the first known instance of space sickness. This
Speaker 1: is a kind of a disoriented nausea that can set
Speaker 1: upon an astronaut or a cosmonaut. Titov became nauseated shortly
Speaker 1: after the first few orbits had passed. He fell asleep
Speaker 1: after his spacecraft had made seven orbits. This was planned.
Speaker 1: He was actually going to bed, and he slept for
Speaker 1: more than eight hours, but when he woke up he
Speaker 1: reported that he still wasn't feeling great. It was only
Speaker 1: after twelve orbits that the nausea passed. Also, like the
Speaker 1: Vostok one, the Vostok to experienced problems upon re entry.
Speaker 1: If you listen to my last episode, you heard about that.
Speaker 1: In fact, it was exactly the same issue. The equipment module,
Speaker 1: that conical section that's connected to the sphere that's the
Speaker 1: re entry module, did not detach properly at the beginning
Speaker 1: of re entry. It's supposed to jettison off, but it
Speaker 1: failed to do that completely. It was still kind of
Speaker 1: tethered to the spherical re entry module. That threw off
Speaker 1: the Vostech two's orientation. You suddenly had this loose weight
Speaker 1: that was connected to your re entry module, and it
Speaker 1: made it spin and gyrate and shake like crazy. Eventually,
Speaker 1: the heat and the various gyrations of this spacecraft made
Speaker 1: that tether break, and then the re entry module was
Speaker 1: all by itself and it continued down as it had
Speaker 1: been intended, and it uh there were no other issues
Speaker 1: and uh and Titov was able to eject at the
Speaker 1: seven kilometer mark and float down safely on his parachute.
Speaker 1: Now I've got more to say about the Vostok commissions,
Speaker 1: but before I get into that, let's take a quick
Speaker 1: break to thank our sponsor. A year After the Vostok
Speaker 1: two mission, the Soviet Union held a pair of launches.
Speaker 1: On August eleven, n andre Nikkarayev launched into space on
Speaker 1: the Vostok three, and he would end up spending almost
Speaker 1: four full days in orbit, making sixty four orbits around
Speaker 1: the Earth. This was still a year before Gordie Cooper
Speaker 1: would break the amer I Can record by orbiting the
Speaker 1: Earth twenty two times in the Faith seven Mercury Capsule,
Speaker 1: So the Soviet Union was really setting records in endurance
Speaker 1: in orbit, and records that wouldn't be broke until NASA
Speaker 1: would have their Gemini project later on the day after
Speaker 1: the Vostok three launched, the Soviet Union launched the Vostok four.
Speaker 1: This one carried Pavel Popovich on board. That made the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union the first country in the world to have
Speaker 1: two manned spacecraft in orbit at the same time. The
Speaker 1: two ships were actually able to establish ship to ship
Speaker 1: radio communication when they got close enough to each other,
Speaker 1: and by close enough, I mean they were still kilometers apart,
Speaker 1: like six and a half kilometers apart when they established
Speaker 1: radio communications, so they weren't like they were right next
Speaker 1: to each other. The USSR would then repeat that feat
Speaker 1: with the Vostok five and six capsules. Remember, Vostok six
Speaker 1: was also the one that had Valentina Tereshkova, the first
Speaker 1: woman in space aboarded. Those spacecraft launched in June nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty three. The Vostok five made eighty two orbits. The
Speaker 1: Vostok six, with Valentina aboard, made forty eight orbits. Like
Speaker 1: the Vostok one and two spacecraft, the Vostok five experienced
Speaker 1: those same problems with that separation from the equipment module
Speaker 1: upon re entry. And at this point it's amazing to
Speaker 1: me that none of these Soviet missions resulted in a
Speaker 1: catastrophic failure upon re entry. Now, there are conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: that alleged the Soviet Union space program resulted in numerous
Speaker 1: unreported cosmonaut fatalities. I should add that most of those
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories don't rely on very convincing evidence. It's a
Speaker 1: lot of circumstantial stuff and a lot of just wild speculation.
Speaker 1: Now that does not mean that the theories are wrong necessarily,
Speaker 1: but I wouldn't put stock into them without more actual
Speaker 1: evidence in proof of the matter. Did it happen, maybe,
Speaker 1: but I haven't seen the evidence to convince me. Yet,
Speaker 1: both the Archy and Vostok programs had those six manned
Speaker 1: missions and both saw the final missions launch in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty three, and both the USA and the USSR would
Speaker 1: go on to different designs for their next spacecraft, although
Speaker 1: they were both very similar to the previous generation of spacecraft.
Speaker 1: So for the Soviets, that was the Voshkod project, And
Speaker 1: I have no idea if I'm saying that correctly. I
Speaker 1: could be completely butchering it, but I'm going with it.
Speaker 1: So the vosh Cood space vehicles started off essentially as
Speaker 1: Vostok spacecraft, but they had a couple of different designs
Speaker 1: to it. One, they had an additional solid fuel retro
Speaker 1: rocket mounted on the re entry module. Remember the first
Speaker 1: Vostok spacecraft had one retro rocket, and if it failed
Speaker 1: then the cosmonauta board would just have to wait for
Speaker 1: ten days for the orbit to decay enough for the
Speaker 1: spacecraft to re enter the Earth's atmosphere. However, the Vashkad
Speaker 1: could not take this luxury, if you can call it that,
Speaker 1: because it was going to be placed in a higher orbit,
Speaker 1: so it would take much longer for its orbit to
Speaker 1: decay and it would put the cosmonauts life in danger,
Speaker 1: so just in case one of the retro rockets were
Speaker 1: the main retro rocket, if it were to fail, there
Speaker 1: was a backup. The Vashkad also had a projection on
Speaker 1: it that was a place it was a ring where
Speaker 1: inside the ring there was an inflatable airlock system inside
Speaker 1: of it, which would be used on the second vash
Speaker 1: Cod mission. It wasn't used in the first one, but
Speaker 1: it would be used in the second one, and that
Speaker 1: gave the vosh God spacecraft a little bit of a
Speaker 1: knobby look to it compared to the Vostok one. But
Speaker 1: the Vashkad also lacked an important feature that the Vostok had,
Speaker 1: which was a launch escape system. The Vostok had a
Speaker 1: limited escape system if an emergency happened during launch, assuming
Speaker 1: it wasn't too early in the launch or too late
Speaker 1: in the launch, you could actually use the escape system
Speaker 1: to pull the cosmonaut away to safety. The vash Cod
Speaker 1: did not have this, so if there had been a
Speaker 1: failure during launch, there would be no escape for the cosmonauts,
Speaker 1: which is pretty terrifying. It was designed to land with
Speaker 1: the crew still inside the spacecraft, which again set it
Speaker 1: apart from the Vostok. With Vostok, once you hit seven
Speaker 1: kilometers upon descent, you would eject out of the spacecraft
Speaker 1: and you would parachute by yourself down to the ground.
Speaker 1: The vash God was meant to parachute with the cosmonauts
Speaker 1: still inside the capsule. And that that bit about the
Speaker 1: crew being inside the capsule and saying like everyone would
Speaker 1: still be inside, that's a clue to the other big advancement.
Speaker 1: The vash God could carry more than one cosmonaut. Now
Speaker 1: it was meant to carry two, but political pressure from
Speaker 1: the Soviet government that really was determined to show up
Speaker 1: the United States demanded that the first manned vosh Good
Speaker 1: mission would actually have three crew members, and that was
Speaker 1: more or less a political requirement, not a technologic goal
Speaker 1: requirement a scientific one. It was politically motivated, and the
Speaker 1: engineers had to figure out how to make this work
Speaker 1: in a spacecraft that was really meant to carry just
Speaker 1: two people in space suits. So that meant that the
Speaker 1: three people inside the Vashkod could not wear space suits.
Speaker 1: They had to wear normal jumpsuits but not space suits,
Speaker 1: which was again terrifying because if anything went wrong, there
Speaker 1: was no pressurized space suit that could save their lives.
Speaker 1: They would just die in that capsule. And America was
Speaker 1: already at work of the Gemini project. So this had
Speaker 1: created a real um motivation for Russia to move forward
Speaker 1: and get multiple cosmonauts aboard one space vehicle. It would
Speaker 1: set another world's first, to be the world's first spacecraft
Speaker 1: to carry more than one person. That three person crew
Speaker 1: came with some other hefty drawbacks. Uh, it wasn't just
Speaker 1: the space suits. I mean, there was hardly any room
Speaker 1: for anyone to move, and there was a real concern
Speaker 1: that the the close proximity and the limited maneuverability was
Speaker 1: going to require them to cut the mission short. The
Speaker 1: vash Cod one launched on October twelve, nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: and they completed sixteen orbits around the Earth and returned
Speaker 1: a little more than twenty four hours after launch. The
Speaker 1: Vashkod also had a breaking rocket, as in hit the
Speaker 1: brakes that would help slow down the spacecraft's descent and
Speaker 1: help reduce the impact of landing on solid ground. Because
Speaker 1: the vosh Cod, unlike the Mercury or the Gemini where
Speaker 1: the Apollo as it were, wasn't designed to land in
Speaker 1: the water. It was designed to land on firm ground
Speaker 1: for the cosmonauts aboard the vosh God. The world changed
Speaker 1: significantly during their mission because when they went up into space,
Speaker 1: the Soviet premiere was Nikita Khrushchev. When they landed a
Speaker 1: day later, Krishtchev had been removed from power and replaced
Speaker 1: by Alexey caused Gin and Leonid Brezhnev, which is a
Speaker 1: heck of a twenty four hours when the leadership of
Speaker 1: your country has changed in essentially a coup. Since you
Speaker 1: went up into space, it came back down. That's a
Speaker 1: big deal, especially when you consider it's the government that's
Speaker 1: funding everything. The vash good To mission would launch in
Speaker 1: March nineteen sixty five. Now, this was a two man
Speaker 1: mission with both cosmonauts wearing space suits. This was supposed
Speaker 1: to be more along the lines of what the engineers
Speaker 1: had intended from the beginning. This was also a necessity
Speaker 1: they had to wear space suits because this was the
Speaker 1: first space flight to have a space walk, meaning one
Speaker 1: of the two cosmonauts was going to have to leave
Speaker 1: the spacecraft and go out into outer space, so both
Speaker 1: of them had to have space suits. Alexei Leonov, the
Speaker 1: pilot of the craft conducted a twelve minute spacewalk during
Speaker 1: this mission, and the whole mission lasted a little more
Speaker 1: than twenty four hours and the craft made seventeen orbits
Speaker 1: of the Earth. The Vashkod deployed in inflatable exterior airlock
Speaker 1: in order to allow for this mission that that airlock,
Speaker 1: like I said, was on sort of a ring on
Speaker 1: the outer side of the spherical reentry module, and after use,
Speaker 1: after Leonov had come back into the capsule, they would
Speaker 1: jettison the airlock into space, so it was not a
Speaker 1: permanent part of the spacecraft itself. The airlock required seven
Speaker 1: minutes to inflate. It had forty channels into which air
Speaker 1: would flow, and those channels were all grouped into three
Speaker 1: big clusters and that would hold the shape of the airlock.
Speaker 1: The airlock kept the spacecraft pressurized while it was first deployed,
Speaker 1: so Leonov would inflate this airlock, open up the hatch,
Speaker 1: climb into the airlock, and his commander, Pavo Beliyev would
Speaker 1: seal the hatch behind Leonov, and then the airlock would
Speaker 1: be depressurized. That would allow Leonov to exit the spacecraft
Speaker 1: into space, and according to Leonov, he was given a
Speaker 1: special a special thing just in case there were any
Speaker 1: problems of him getting back into the spacecraft. Because there
Speaker 1: was no guarantee he was going to be able to
Speaker 1: get back in once he went out. They tried very
Speaker 1: hard to design a system so that Leonov would be
Speaker 1: able to return to the spacecraft, but no one was
Speaker 1: really sure how it was going to turn out. So
Speaker 1: just in case, he had a suicide capsule that he
Speaker 1: could bite into in case he would be unable to
Speaker 1: go back into the spacecraft, so that he could end
Speaker 1: his life on his own terms, which is pretty heavy
Speaker 1: stuff even in a waitless environment. Leonov actually did have
Speaker 1: some problems getting back into the spacecraft. It fortunately did
Speaker 1: not necessitate suicide, but he was having some issues. He
Speaker 1: was getting finding difficulty moving through the airlock. His space
Speaker 1: suited sort of inflated and it made squeezing through the
Speaker 1: airlock very difficult. So in order to move through the airlock,
Speaker 1: he was forced to release some air m his suit
Speaker 1: to release pressure from his suit out into space and
Speaker 1: give him enough flexibility to move through the airlock and
Speaker 1: get back inside the spacecraft. Once he was in, it
Speaker 1: took him and his crewmate more time to seal the spacecraft.
Speaker 1: They were having issues making sure that the seal was
Speaker 1: actually proper and then justicing the the airlock, and then
Speaker 1: they found it difficult to maneuver inside the spacecraft but
Speaker 1: inside their space suits, so they were you know, they
Speaker 1: had gotten up out of their seats in order to
Speaker 1: do this, and it was hard for them to get
Speaker 1: back into position for re entry. So all of this
Speaker 1: delayed the re entry process by a bit, and so
Speaker 1: things did not go exactly as planned. On top of
Speaker 1: all that, the vox Shod two had the same re
Speaker 1: entry problem that the Volstock one, two and five spacecrafts dead.
Speaker 1: In other words, the re entry module and the equipment
Speaker 1: module did not have a clean separation. Upon re entry,
Speaker 1: they were stuck together, which meant that again the red
Speaker 1: Tree module started to spin like crazy until finally the
Speaker 1: equipment module broke away. And so by the time everything
Speaker 1: was said and done, their spacecraft landed about four hundred
Speaker 1: kilometers away from where they had planned to land, so
Speaker 1: they were hundreds of miles away from where they were
Speaker 1: supposed to go. Their spacecraft touchdown in a heavily forested
Speaker 1: area that was populated by little critters, you know, like
Speaker 1: wolves and bears. Fortunately, the Soviet government had thought about this.
Speaker 1: They had supplied them with a pistol and some ammunition
Speaker 1: just in case of bear attack. You know. They ended
Speaker 1: up having to bunker down in a freezing cold spacecraft.
Speaker 1: The heater was no longer working, although the fans were
Speaker 1: still blowing air, and they it got super cold, like
Speaker 1: it dropped below freezing in that part of Russia, and
Speaker 1: uh they were able to survive the night. The next day,
Speaker 1: a rescue party on skis was able to reach their location,
Speaker 1: but it was too late for them to leave that
Speaker 1: location at that point, so instead the group constructed a
Speaker 1: log cabin, a simple log gavin and that's where they
Speaker 1: stayed overnight, and then the next day they were able
Speaker 1: to ski to a rescue location. Because the forest was
Speaker 1: so thick, there was just no place for helicopters to
Speaker 1: land to pick them up, so they had to ski
Speaker 1: down to a site where helicopters could pick them up
Speaker 1: from there. After this second Vashkad program, or mission, rather,
Speaker 1: the whole program concluded. There were a lot other missions
Speaker 1: that had been planned as part of this program, but
Speaker 1: by then the Soviet Union was changing its mind. The
Speaker 1: regime had changed in the USSR. The the scientists in
Speaker 1: charge of the space program, we're finally getting a little
Speaker 1: more leverage so that they could demand a more scientific
Speaker 1: approach and fewer missions that were just meant to show
Speaker 1: up the United States. Uh And while they were impressive,
Speaker 1: they weren't. They weren't advancing science and technology very much.
Speaker 1: So that was their objection to that. And plus over
Speaker 1: the United States, NASA was making up ground with the
Speaker 1: Gemini project. More about that in just a second, but
Speaker 1: first let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: So the Vashkad program was again putting the Soviets ahead
Speaker 1: of the Americans. But meanwhile work on the Gemini project
Speaker 1: was continuing with enthusiasm. The project actually began in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty one. That was while the Mercury flights were still
Speaker 1: going on. So the Mercury flights are going and already
Speaker 1: NASA is thinking about the next project. Actually, technically NASA
Speaker 1: was thinking two projects ahead, because between Mercury and Gemini,
Speaker 1: NASA had already determined that they were going to have
Speaker 1: the Apollo missions. So Gemini was launched as a project
Speaker 1: after Apollo. Although the flights would all happen before Apollo.
Speaker 1: The first Gemini mission wouldn't launch until March, which was
Speaker 1: the same month as Vakshad two. So the Gemini was
Speaker 1: a two person spacecraft, and the two crew members would
Speaker 1: sit side by side in very cramped quarters. You couldn't
Speaker 1: really get up and move around very much. You were
Speaker 1: pretty much stuck in that seated position unless you were
Speaker 1: popping outside to do a quick extra vehicular activity or spacewalk.
Speaker 1: So if you're sitting down, if you're in the left seat,
Speaker 1: that would mean that you are the command pilot for
Speaker 1: that mission, and in the right seat would be the
Speaker 1: pilot for the mission. The seats had an ejection system
Speaker 1: inside of them, because unlike the Mercury, which had a
Speaker 1: launch escape system incorporated directly into the design of the
Speaker 1: launch configuration for the spacecraft, the Gemini did not have that.
Speaker 1: The best they had was an ejection seat. Now I
Speaker 1: didn't really cover this when I talked about the Mercury,
Speaker 1: but if you were to look at a Mercury capsule
Speaker 1: on top of a rocket on a launchpad, you would
Speaker 1: notice there's this kind of tower that's on the very
Speaker 1: top of the Mercury capsule. That tower was the escape
Speaker 1: mechanism for UH in the case of a launch failure. Essentially,
Speaker 1: it was a booster rocket attached via that tower to
Speaker 1: the top of the Mercury capsule. So if there was
Speaker 1: a launch catastrophe, the rocket would ignite. That would separate
Speaker 1: the crew section of the Mercury spacecraft from the launch
Speaker 1: vehicle to create distance between the capsule and the rocket,
Speaker 1: and then the booster rocket would break away and the
Speaker 1: parachutes would come out and hopefully the crew would land safely.
Speaker 1: The Gemini did not have this, They just had the
Speaker 1: ejector seats. They would bring that launch escape mechanism back
Speaker 1: for the Apollo missions. So while Mercury was all about
Speaker 1: learning more about how space would affect humans, Gemini's purpose
Speaker 1: was largely to set the foundation for the succeeding Apollo mission,
Speaker 1: which would take people to the Moon. So, as I
Speaker 1: said before, the Apollo program started before the Gemini program.
Speaker 1: But the goal of the Apollo program was getting to
Speaker 1: the Moon and getting back to Earth safely. And NASA said, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, we probably need an intermediary step between Mercury,
Speaker 1: where people went into orbit, and Apollo, where people are
Speaker 1: going to go to the Moon. We're gonna need to
Speaker 1: test a whole lot of different technology. We're going to
Speaker 1: have to refine processes. We're gonna have to figure out
Speaker 1: how to do specific maneuvers like putting a spacecraft into
Speaker 1: a docking mode to uh interconnect with another spacecraft, and
Speaker 1: how to do orbital maneuvers. These are all things that
Speaker 1: the Mercury Capsule could not do. It was not equipped
Speaker 1: to do that. But they would need to perfect this
Speaker 1: before they committed in the Apollo program. So President Kennedy
Speaker 1: chartered the Apollo program in May nineteen sixty one. Gem
Speaker 1: and I would not get a formal announcement until January
Speaker 1: ninety two. The both of those programs were already in
Speaker 1: development before those specific dates. Now that meant that Gemini
Speaker 1: missions were going to focus on things like prolonged space flights,
Speaker 1: extra vehicular activity, or spacewalks, orbital maneuvers. These were all
Speaker 1: going to be critical components of Apollo missions because landing
Speaker 1: on the Moon would mean that part of your spacecraft
Speaker 1: would detach from the command module and then land on
Speaker 1: the Moon, and so you would have a crew of
Speaker 1: three with Apollo. Spoiler alert for next episode and two
Speaker 1: of the crew members would go down in the lander
Speaker 1: and land on the Moon. The third one would stay
Speaker 1: aboard on the command module, and then ultimately those two
Speaker 1: people would have to get back into the lander that
Speaker 1: would launch off the surface of the Moon, rendezvous with
Speaker 1: the command module and DOC. So there were a lot
Speaker 1: of things that had to be worked out in order
Speaker 1: to make that technology possible, and that's why Gemini existed.
Speaker 1: It was to be the working ground to create all
Speaker 1: that technology. The Gemini program was marked by both triumph
Speaker 1: and tragedy. It would put the US back in the
Speaker 1: lead for the space race ultimately, but it also involved
Speaker 1: the deaths of three of the astronauts involved. In nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four, Theodore Freeman died in a crash while bringing
Speaker 1: his T thirty eight training jet in for a landing.
Speaker 1: The cause of the crash was actually a goose flew
Speaker 1: and collided with the cockpit as the jet was landing,
Speaker 1: and it collided with such force that it broke part
Speaker 1: of the cockpit and plexiglass flew out the cockpit into
Speaker 1: the engine intake and caused the jet to crash. And
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty six, Elliott C. And Charles Bassett, who
Speaker 1: had been chosen to be the crew members for Gemini nine.
Speaker 1: They died in an accident on a training jet. H
Speaker 1: Elliot Sea was piloting the plane. The weather was really bad.
Speaker 1: There was rain, there was fog, there was snow. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: an investigation concluded that pilot was at fault for the crash,
Speaker 1: and so the backup crew for Gemini nine would end
Speaker 1: up taking their place. In many ways, the Gemini spacecraft
Speaker 1: was sort of an ambig end version of the Mercury capsule.
Speaker 1: NASA had learned a lot from the Mercury project, however,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't identical. There were some major differences. One
Speaker 1: of those was that NASA created a modular system for
Speaker 1: spacecraft components, which allowed different teams to work on the
Speaker 1: various systems in their individual modules, and so when they
Speaker 1: tested these before ever launching anything, making sure everything works
Speaker 1: with everything else. If a system failed or proved incompatible
Speaker 1: with the capsule design, the team could take that module
Speaker 1: back out and they could make adjustments to it, fixing it,
Speaker 1: changing it, and all the other modules that had been
Speaker 1: working just fine could remain in place. They didn't have
Speaker 1: to be messed with. So since it wasn't all incorporated
Speaker 1: directly together in one big mess. Then you could make
Speaker 1: more granular changes and you could have a lot of
Speaker 1: pair allel development going on simultaneously, which of course saved
Speaker 1: a huge amount of time and effort, and ultimately that
Speaker 1: also meant saved money. Gemini also relied heavily on solid
Speaker 1: state electronics, taking advantage of advances and electronics that had
Speaker 1: developed while the Mercury project was already going, so they
Speaker 1: were more sophisticated spacecraft, and like the Mercury, the Gemini
Speaker 1: was meant to land in the water. Originally, NASA had
Speaker 1: wanted to incorporate gear that would allow a touchdown on land,
Speaker 1: but time constraints meant there just wasn't enough time to
Speaker 1: do that, so they decided to go with the true
Speaker 1: splash down approach. They had tried it, they knew it worked,
Speaker 1: They're gonna stick with it. The Gemini capsule also had
Speaker 1: a detachable module called the Adapter module at the base
Speaker 1: of it. Inside that compartment were some various systems like propulsion, electrical, water,
Speaker 1: and oxygen, as well as the retro rockets, so it
Speaker 1: was separate from the cabin that the crew never sat in. Technically,
Speaker 1: the Gemini had five sections had the equipment section, a
Speaker 1: retrograde section, and both of those were inside the adapter module.
Speaker 1: It had the cabin section that's where the crew sat.
Speaker 1: It had a re entry control system, and a rendezvous
Speaker 1: and recovery section, so that's kind of working from the
Speaker 1: base up. The equipment section was the part that would
Speaker 1: also interface with the launch vehicle. That's space talk saying,
Speaker 1: that's the part that would attach to the rocket. So
Speaker 1: the rocket for the original Gemini mission was a Titan two.
Speaker 1: They would use other rockets later on in the Gemini program.
Speaker 1: Fun fact that Titan two's original purpose was to be
Speaker 1: an intercontinental ballistic missile or ICBM, and I'll talk more
Speaker 1: about that in an upcoming episode of tech Stuff. So
Speaker 1: let's say you're looking at this Gemini spacecraft. Are looking
Speaker 1: at it from top to bottom. The the conical section,
Speaker 1: not the rocket, but just the spacecraft part for the Gemini,
Speaker 1: the tippy tippy top, the pointy bit was the rendezvous
Speaker 1: and recovery section that had rendezvous ray it are inside
Speaker 1: of it, and also the two parachutes that would be
Speaker 1: used to help stabilize and slow down the spacecraft in
Speaker 1: its descent. The next segment down was the re entry
Speaker 1: control system, which held fuel and oxidizer tanks and attitude
Speaker 1: control thrusters. I always like talking about attitude control with
Speaker 1: spacecraft because it sounds like a spacecraft was kind of
Speaker 1: getting out of line and then you just you turn
Speaker 1: on attitude control. It's like giving it a time out,
Speaker 1: except we're really talking about orientation, not like personality attitude.
Speaker 1: Next down the line was the cabin section, the place
Speaker 1: where the crew sat the two crew members of each
Speaker 1: Gemini mission. Then was the retrograde and equipment sections. Retrograde
Speaker 1: on top of equipment, but this is the base of
Speaker 1: that conical section. Both in the adapter module. The retrograde
Speaker 1: had de orbit motors and thrusters, and the equipment section
Speaker 1: had more control thrusters and um the systems I had
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, and these were all meant to allow the
Speaker 1: Gemini to maneuver in space. And one of the really
Speaker 1: really big changes between Mercury and gem and I was
Speaker 1: that gem and I could actually move into a different orbit,
Speaker 1: So Mercury could reorient itself for re entry. It could
Speaker 1: change its orientation with respect to the Earth, but it
Speaker 1: couldn't change its orbit. Jim and I could it had
Speaker 1: the thrusters and the fuel aboard to allow for that,
Speaker 1: so you could actually move the Gemini from one orbit
Speaker 1: into another Earth orbit. There were ten manned Gemini missions.
Speaker 1: Dieck Slayton, who was one of the original Mercury astronauts
Speaker 1: but was never allowed to fly a Mercury mission he
Speaker 1: was grounded due to irregularities detected in his heartbeat, would
Speaker 1: become the director of flight crew Operations, so was his
Speaker 1: job to pick which astronauts would serve as crew aboard
Speaker 1: the various missions. Those missions included a couple of really
Speaker 1: notable ones. They were all notable, but there are a
Speaker 1: couple of standouts. Jim and I eight in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: six saw Neil Armstrong UH and UH David Randall Scott
Speaker 1: deal with a real emergency. The mission saw the Jeini
Speaker 1: spacecraft dock with an unmanned target vehicle out in space.
Speaker 1: This was the first time any manned vehicle had docked
Speaker 1: with another vehicle out in space, so a first in
Speaker 1: the world. One of the ways that the United States
Speaker 1: was able to start getting a lead on the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1: But while it was docked, one of the Gemini's thrusters
Speaker 1: malfunctioned and it sent the craft into an unplanned spin,
Speaker 1: so Armstrong and Scott had to work to undock the
Speaker 1: Gemini and Armstrong had to try and regain control of
Speaker 1: the spacecraft. They were forced to conduct an emergency landing.
Speaker 1: It was the first time any US manned space mission
Speaker 1: required an emergency landing, but they were able to do it,
Speaker 1: and obviously they both survived, and they would also both
Speaker 1: go on to participate in Apollo missions. In fact, both
Speaker 1: of them would be UH two of the astronauts to
Speaker 1: walk on the Moon, which is kind of cool. The
Speaker 1: longest of all the Gemini missions would happen right in
Speaker 1: the middle of the program. It was the Gemini seven,
Speaker 1: which was just a few hours shy of lasting two
Speaker 1: full weeks in low Earth orbit. It made two hundred
Speaker 1: six orbits of the Earth. And again this was one
Speaker 1: of those necessities to show how long term exposure to
Speaker 1: the rigors of space travel would affect people. If you're
Speaker 1: gonna go all the way to the Moon and back,
Speaker 1: that's a journey that takes a couple of days, So
Speaker 1: you want to make sure absolutely certain that human beings
Speaker 1: can withstand those those uh stresses that are put upon them. Now,
Speaker 1: in our next episode, I'll look more closely at the
Speaker 1: Apollo and soy U's capsules and and what made those
Speaker 1: spacecraft special. Talk more about the design of the Apollo
Speaker 1: spacecraft and how it was able to make such an
Speaker 1: amazing accomplishment like landing a segment on the Moon, and
Speaker 1: only that, but taking off from the Moon and reconnecting
Speaker 1: with the command module. That's the part that really blows
Speaker 1: my mind, not just that we were able to get
Speaker 1: people to the Moon, but that we were able to
Speaker 1: get them back again. That's phenomenal. That will be our
Speaker 1: next episode. After that, we're gonna take a closer look
Speaker 1: at rockets, and after that we're gonna look at the
Speaker 1: Space Shuttle. So we've got a lot more space to come.
Speaker 1: If you guys have any suggestions for future episodes of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff, possibly not involving space at all, send me
Speaker 1: a message. The email address is tech Stuff at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. You can drop me a line
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