This is John Batchel. Ice Station Zebra, 1968, Rock Hudson, Patrick McGuin, Ernest Borgnine, Jim Brown.

The plot recover of Soviet-dropped photography that is critical to understand the Cold War.

The mission for Rock Hudson and his submarine

to beat the Russians to the Arctic

to find the canister of film.

Anatoly Zach here explains

that is exactly how spy satellites worked

for the Russians and the Americans

until digital of the late 20th, early 21st century.

Photographic film dropped back down to Earth.

The thriller movie does not describe the details,

and Anatoly gives us an understanding of how it worked and what relationship it had to

the manned space program that the Roscosmos mounted with Yuri Gagarin and followers.

I station zebra, spy satellites, Cold War, Gagarin, popcorn.

Here's Anatoly.

Much more of this later tonight on Hotel Mars.

Absolutely.

So the plot of the movie is absolutely plausible and totally workable.

Because there are two reasons for this.

First of all, all the spy satellites, most of the spy satellites,

let's put it this way, at that point, were returning film back to Earth. So they would essentially

expose the film through the photo equipment, through the photographic equipment. Then they would reel

...