The Space Race
I've devised a schema by which we will be chronicalling the Soviet side of the Space Race. It will follow two major tracks, with a few exceptions. First, though, the Americans.
In the summer of 2019, as the fiftieth anniversary of Apollo 11 & the first Moon landing approached, I decided to dedicate a trio of episodes of "The Explorers' Club" to the conquest of the Moon: one each for the launch, the "one small step," & the triumphant return to Earth, plus a bonus fourth episode about the worldwide publicity tour/victory lap. As the fiftieth anniversary of Apollo 12 approached in the fall of 2019, I decided to treat all the Moon landings equally, giving the lesser known Apollo 12 as much coverage as the most famous Apollo 11. Having decided this, I was then convicted by the realization that I'd neglected utterly to mark the fiftieth anniversaries of the first four Apollo missions, the flights that made Apollo 11 possible. Starting last Christmas with the fifty-first anniversary of Apollo 8, I've been playing catching up, chronicling the fifty-first anniversaries of Apollo 9 & Apollo 10, & I look forward to next month chronicling the fifty-second anniversary of Apollo 7. There was a lull in the Apollo program in 1970 after the near loss of Apollo 13, a lull that has afforded us a little more room to catch up, but I look forward in 2021 & 2022 to chronicling the last four Apollo missions from 1971 & 1972. After that, we'll chronicle the fiftieth anniversaries of Skylab (1973-1974) & the Apollo-
Soyuz Test Program (1975).
In the winter of 2020, I was alerted to & surprised by the fifty-eight anniversary of John Glenn's 1962 flight aboard the
Friendship 7. I made the snap decision to dedicate an "Explorers' Club" episode to Glenn's triumph, without working out what to do about the rest of Mercury. In short order, though, I decided what to do about the Mercury & Gemini programs that made Apollo possible. My harebrained scheme: 2020-2021 marks the fifty-fifth anniversaries of the ten Gemini flights, & I decided it was better to mark the fifty-fifth anniversaries rather than wait for the sixtieth anniversaries in 2025-2026. After all, who can say if I'll still be alive in 2025-2026. Mercury was a thornier problem, since I'd already jumped Glenn over his Mercury colleagues Alan Sheppard & Gus Grissom, whose suborbital flights preceded Glenn's orbital flight. I've decided to commemorate the remaining five Mercury flights in order: Sheppard, Grissom, & Glenn: check; Scott Carpenter, Wally Schirra, & Gordon Cooper: waiting in the wings.
Second, the Soviets. The Soviet Union set the early pace in the Space Race, launching the first manmade satellite in 1957 & the first man in space in 1961. As an American, valuing America's achievements in both manned & robotic spaceflight, I have absolutely no scruples about putting the American space program ahead of the Soviet space program. But the Soviets' achievements were real, though due to the inherent evil & corruption of Commmunism, many of those achievements are not as laudable as they first appeared. A very real difficulty we will face is the secrecy with which the Soviets conducted their space program; whereas N.A.S.A., as a civilian agency, experienced both its failures & its triumphs in the bright—sometimes blinding—glare of publicity, the Soviets rarely announced their intentions ahead of time & went so far as to make their crews communicate with ground controlers in code. Accurate information will be harder to come by, as will photographs & other imagery. The two tracks we're going to follow: fiftieth anniversaries & sixtieth anniversaries. Starting with yesterday's belated half-centenary of
Soyuz 9, we'll chronicle the fiftieth anniversaries of Soviet spaceflight in the 1970s, keeping pace with America's Apollo, Skylab, & Apollo-
Soyuz missions. Starting in the spring of 2021, we'll circle back to the sixtieth anniversaries of Soviet spacelight in the 1960s, starting with Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space.
Exceptions to this two-track schema include the two
Voskhod flights from 1964 & 1965 & the two failures of the N1 rocket from 1969. We covered the fifty-fifth anniversary of the
Voskhod 2 this year because it flew just days before the fifty-fifth anniversary of Gemini 3 & we'll cover the fifty-sixth anniversary of
Voskhod 1 later this year, just to put a bow on the two-flight
Voskhod program. I missed the fiftieth anniversary of the failure of the second N1 launch just days before the triumphant launch of Apollo 11 in 1969, but we chronicled the fifty-first anniversary this past summer. We'll cover the fifty-second anniversary of the first N1 launch failure next winter & then catch the fiftieth anniversaries of the third & fourth failures as they come up on the 1970s track. We'll also make exceptions to cover any spaceflight fatalities, to add them to our annual roll of honor, the yearly commemorations of the Apollo 1,
Challenger, &
Columbia disasters.
So, that's the road ahead, as I currently see it. Thank you for reading, for accompanying me on this ongoing adventure.
