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This Day in Esoteric Political History

No Nukes In Space (1967)

This Day in Esoteric Political History

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6982 Ratings

🗓️ 28 January 2024

⏱️ 19 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It’s January 28th. This day in 1967, the U.S., U.K., and Russia sign a treaty that, among other things, says that outer space should be off-limits for the testing and deployment of weapons of mass destruction.

Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss why there was a need for the Outer Space Treaty, and how — despite its important language about nuclear weapons — it left a lot of grey area and confusion about how different countries would take on space exploration.

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Our team: Jacob Feldman, Researcher/Producer; Brittani Brown, Producer; Khawla Nakua, Transcripts; music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions; Audrey Mardavich is our Executive Producer at Radiotopia

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

0:07.0

My name is Jody Avergan.

0:09.0

This day January 28th, 1967, the U.S. UK and the Soviet Union signed an agreement that would lead

0:18.8

to the first set of space laws.

0:21.6

So here we are at the height of the Cold War, the height of the

0:23.6

space race, and three of the major political powers are getting together to

0:27.0

basically say, you know what, we should cool it a little bit up there, and most

0:30.5

notably the law would outlaw the deployment of nuclear weapons in space so I am no space expert but it seems like a good idea to say no nukes in space and it also established I would say we'll get into, but like a bit of a spirit in which countries would travel to outer space, less about conquering territory and claiming ownership and more about exploration and scientific advancement.

0:51.2

But, like all good treaties, it did leave out a lot.

0:54.8

There was a lot of gray area and especially now as space travel has become more and more privatized.

1:00.3

It feels like the legacy of this treaty is very complicated and worth digging into.

1:04.5

So let's do that now. Here as always, Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of

1:09.6

Wesley. Hello there. Hello Jody. Hey there. So we can go all three on the record saying we are anti

1:16.5

exploding nuclear weapons in space correct? I'm open to it. I mean I feel like this is like what it would do.

1:25.0

Like a plot of minions or something like who's gonna nuke the moon?

1:28.5

What are you trying to nuke? What are you doing? Like why?

1:31.5

It was nukeing time in 1967 people were nuking

1:35.7

everything I mean that was part of it would there be a mushroom cloud what would

1:39.6

it look you know in a zero gravity environment yeah I mean but we were like testing nukes

1:46.9

underground and underwater so it's actually pretty imaginable that they would have

1:52.0

been like hmm what about space what if we duke the

1:55.2

moon? So how is it that these three powers who you know don't have a lot of common

...

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