Encore: The Space Race | Photo Finish | 4

American History Tellers

Wondery

Society & Culture, Kids & Family, History, Education For Kids

4.7 • 18.3K Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 2020

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

JFK said that nothing in the 1960s was "...more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space..." than getting a man to the moon and back safely. As the Apollo 11 flight neared, the entire nation waited, enraptured. But back in the USSR, the Soviets were also making strides. Though the contest with the Soviets for technological superiority had always been a race, it was now a literal one - a U.S. manned spacecraft was about to chase down a Soviet robotic vessel.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, prime members, you can listen to American History Tellers add free on Amazon Music,
0:05.6	download the app today.
0:07.0	The Imagine Us January 1969.
0:14.9	You used to be a Navy man, but your time on the high seas is long gone.
0:19.0	These days, you're a photo interpreter, or as they call it in the intelligence community,
0:23.7	a PI.
0:25.0	You work for the National Photographic Interpretation Center in Washington, D.C.
0:29.7	As you sit at your small table in the pitch dark inside a massive windowless building,
0:34.7	you feel a bit like you're in prison.
0:36.5	There's not a shred of light anywhere, but darkness is sort of the point.
0:40.6	Your job is to look at satellite photos and monitor a secret Soviet launch site behind
0:45.8	the Iron Curtain.
0:47.2	The photos are piling up, and you have your work cut out for you.
0:50.8	Just as you're about to get down to business, hey, working hard or hardly working.
0:55.7	Your coworker looms over your desk.
0:57.9	You tell me.
0:58.9	I'll go with hardly working.
1:01.2	You ignore him and focus on the task at hand.
1:04.1	You remove a spool of film from his camp, spread it out across the table, and attach it
1:08.8	to the reel.
1:09.8	You flip on the table light, peer through your microscope, and adjust the lenses.
1:14.1	He doesn't take the hand.
	...

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