The Dangerous Early Days Of The Space Race

Fresh Air

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🗓️ 30 September 2022

⏱️ 45 minutes

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Summary

Historian Jeff Shesol recalls the early days of the U.S. space program, when rockets often blew up in test launchings, and no one was sure John Glenn would make it through America's first orbital flight alive. In his book Mercury Rising, he describes how Soviet success in space forced a reluctant President Kennedy to embrace the program.

And film critic Justin Chang reviews Bros, the new gay rom-com starring Billy Eichner.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies in For Terry Gross. If you'd happen to be in New York's
0:05.6	Grand Central Station on the morning of February 20, 1962, you'd have seen 10,000 people standing
0:12.6	on the concourse, staring up at a large television screen. They were awaiting the launch of the
0:18.1	United States' first mission to put an astronaut in orbit around the Earth. Our guest, historian Jeff
0:24.5	Shessel says the crowd was huge and the tension palpable because there was a real fear that
0:29.8	Colonel John Glenn wouldn't survive the day. Americans had become used to seeing their rockets
0:35.5	blow up on the launch pad. In a new book, Shessel recalls the early days of the space program
0:41.5	when the Soviet Union was ahead in the race to explore the heavens and their dominance of the
0:46.3	field seemed to take on a grim inevitability. The book describes the sometimes shaky improvised
0:52.7	technology the program employed and the experience of the seven men chosen to be the first astronauts.
0:58.9	They were military pilots who were embraced as the nation's champions in the Cold War.
1:04.2	But as Shessel describes, they were decidedly human, engaging in personal conduct that could
1:09.6	sell the program's image, publicized, and locked in intense rivalries with each other to man
1:15.8	key missions into space. Jeff Shessel is a historian and former speech writer for President Bill Clinton.
1:22.6	He's written two previous books selected as New York Times notable books of the year. His
1:27.6	latest is now out in paperback. It's titled Mercury Rising, John Glenn, John Kennedy, and the
1:34.1	new battleground of the Cold War. I spoke with them last year. Well, Jeff Shessel, welcome back to
1:39.9	Fresh Air. Thanks, Dave. Thanks for having me. You know, there aren't many subjects quite as heavily
1:45.7	chronicle as the US space program, especially since we, you know, had the 50th anniversary of the
1:51.4	moon landing recently. What convinced you that there was an original story to tell here?
1:56.2	Well, I read a lot of those space books and I've enjoyed many of them, but I always felt that
2:00.8	something was missing. It's widely understood that this was, as you said, a Cold War contest.
	...

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