The launch of the Hubble Space Telescope

The History Hour

BBC

History, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 21 March 2020

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1990, NASA launched the historic mission which put into orbit the Hubble Space Telescope. The orbiting observatory has revolutionized astronomy and allowed us to peer deeper than ever before into the Universe. We hear from astronaut, Kathryn Sullivan. Plus, China's cure for malaria, the "Red Scare" in Hollywood in the 1940s and 50s, and a pioneering sexual harassment case at the US Supreme Court.

PHOTO: The Hubble Space Telescope (NASA)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the History Hour podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson, history as told by the people who were there.
0:13.0	This week, how Maoist China found a cure for malaria.
0:17.0	Chairman Mao said,
0:20.0	the population of China has survived for thousands of years
0:24.4	always relying on Chinese medicine therefore there must be a
0:28.6	traditional cure for malaria.
0:30.8	Also the first sexual harassment case to go before the US Supreme Court.
0:35.8	Every company had to consider that it could be sued if something like what happened to Michelle Vincent happened there and they didn't fix it.
0:46.0	Plus the I Love You computer virus and a former Hollywood star on the anti-communist witch hunts of the 1940s.
0:53.2	I went to Washington to defend those who had been blacklisted.
0:59.3	There we all were headed by the Bogarts, so we were a pretty spiffy team.
1:05.0	That's all coming up later in the podcast but before all that we're going to turn our
1:09.9	eyes to the heavens and consider arguably one of humankind's most remarkable achievements.
1:16.0	For this we're going back 30 years to the launch of a space shuttle mission that put into
1:20.4	orbit the Hubble telescope.
1:22.4	It's the story of one of the most complex
1:24.1	scientific instruments ever built, but it's also a story of how a small error almost
1:29.2	scuppered the whole project. This report is from Alejandro Martins.
1:33.0	T-mines 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and
1:40.0	lift off of the Space Shuttle Discovery with the Hubble Space Telescope, our window on the universe.
1:46.0	Space Shuttle launches were an amazing experience.
1:49.2	You had five engines running at the same time as you lift it off the pad.
	...

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