[electronic beeping]
[static fizzling]
[female narrator] It's August of 1991,
and cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev is stranded aboard the space station, Mir...
[speaking Russian]
...because 250 miles below him, the Soviet Union is collapsing.
[crowd shouting in Russian]
He has nowhere to land,
so he stays in orbit, unsure how, if ever, he will get home.
Just one of many victims in this story of humanity's journey to space.
Since the dawn of space flight,
more than 550 humans have made it off planet.
Most of them men.
Those astronauts came from 40 different nations.
Thirty lives have been lost in space flight or space training.
Today, there are 15 international space agencies
with independent launch capability.
And the cost is astronomical.
Every year, the global price tag
is a whopping $62 billion.
So, if space is dangerous and expensive, why bother sending people there at all?
The race to space is born out of fear
in the face of a new catastrophic threat.
An atomic one.
[man] This is the gallant crew that rode the big Superfort,
which carried the first atomic bomb to Japan.
[narrator] Out of the nuclear ashes of World War II,
rise two opposing superpowers with two opposing systems:
capitalist America and communist Soviet Union.
Each is sure that the other is out to conquer the world,
and rising tensions soon draw the two nations into a cold war.
Paranoia mounts as Russia shuts its doors on its former allies.
From Stettin in the Baltic...
to Trieste in the Adriatic,
an iron curtain has descended across the continent.
[narrator] On both sides of that iron curtain,
the rivals start testing and stockpiling nuclear weapons,
flexing their atomic muscles for the world to see.
But to be an effective threat,
the superpowers need a way to deliver their nukes quickly and without warning.
It's a long-distance rivalry.
Moscow and Washington are thousands of miles apart.
And as of the late '40s,
rockets can only reach targets up to a few hundred miles away.
The best way to cover the shortfall is by launching rockets through space.
[alarm blaring]
The Americans and the Soviets both start developing ballistic missiles
that can carry their weapons above the atmosphere
and then down onto their enemy,
which leads to a new idea:
What if rockets could spy on the enemy?
[man] At White Sands Proving Grounds, New Mexico,
a captured German V-2 rocket was recently fitted up as a camera carrier
for a scientific experiment.
The idea was to see if rockets could be used for photographic reconnaissance...
[narrator] Soon, the ballistic missile race
turns into a race to get the first satellite into orbit.
On October 4th, 1957,
America wakes up to terrifying news: the Soviets have beaten them to it.
Sputnik 1 is basically the size of a beach ball
with four antennae sticking out.
It takes just one watt to run its radio transmitter.
Your cell phone takes six watts to power up.
Sputnik ends up orbiting the Earth two months,
traveling further than the distance between the Earth and Mars
before falling out of the sky.
Its ominous beeps send shock waves around the world.
[beeping]
[man] The reaction was one of astonishment and concern,
for it was now known that a potential enemy was at least temporarily ahead
in developing means for space travel.
[narrator] Americans are terrified.
For the first time ever, an enemy object is flying over their homeland.
What if Soviet nukes start raining down on their heads?
[man] We all know the atomic bomb is very dangerous.
We must get ready for it,
just as we are ready for many other dangers that are around us all the time.
[narrator] The race for space is on,
and it's USSR one, USA zero.
America needs to up its game to reassure its citizens.
[man] President Eisenhower responded by establishing a new agency,
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
With the establishment of NASA, America stood on the threshold of space.
[narrator] And immediately, NASA raises the stakes,
announcing they're planning to hurl a human into space before the Soviets.
It seems an impossible task.
Can the human body even survive the rigors of space travel?
No one knows.
The g-forces required to accelerate an object through the atmosphere
are far beyond what humans normally can take.
[alarm blaring]
Space is also about as cold as it gets.
But your blood will boil, or at least start to vaporize,
because there's no pressure keeping it a liquid.
Re-entry is another headache.
Temperatures generated by friction can reach 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
That's half as hot as the sun.
Before catapulting humans into the unknown,
the rival superpowers launch a medley of bewildered animals into space.
And though they don't all survive the round-trip ticket,
they do make it through the atmosphere unharmed.
And what animals can do, hopefully, humans can do too.
So, who to send?
In 1959, NASA finds seven military pilots with the right stuff.
They're called the Mercury 7.
Smart, brave, and wholesome, they're all-American heroes.
[surf rock music playing]
[man] We had some pretty good tests,
and it's rather difficult to pick one because,
if you figure how many openings there are on the human body
and how far you can go in any one of them...
[all laughing]
[stammers] Now, you answer which one would be the toughest for you, and...
[laughing continues]
[narrator] America instantly falls in love with them.
The Soviets have picked their own all-star squad,
led by 26-year-old fighter pilot Yuri Gagarin.
With his boyish good looks, modest farming roots,
and winning smile, Gagarin is the perfect poster boy for communism.
The competitors are on their marks,
but how will they even get passed the starting line?
In test after test, both space programs suffer serious setbacks.
Until...
[man shouts in Russian]
[man] "The Earth looked a delicate blue, floating in a black sky."
So said the first man in space after his fabulous journey of 108 minutes,
Major Yuri Gagarin.
[narrator] The world is astonished by Gagarin's flight to,
and safe return from, Earth's orbit,
and the Soviet triumph deals yet another blow to America's psyche.
For those keeping track, it's USSR two, USA zero.
Trajectory looks good. Roger.
[narrator] Not to be outdone, three weeks later,
NASA launches their own man into space.
Alan Shepard.
His is a far shorter flight than Gagarin's
and only just pierces the atmosphere.
Still, America gets a much-needed morale boost,
and space fever grips the nation.
[man] Commander Shepard and his wife
meet the president of the United States and his wife, Jackie.
Thank you very much, Mr. President.
I thought that last Friday was a thrilling day.
As a matter of fact...
I got far less sleep last night than I did the night before the flight.
[crowd laughs, applauds]
[narrator] Meanwhile, away from the glamour of space,
tensions keep rising between Soviet Russia and America.
The USSR builds a wall between Eastern Europe and the capitalist West.
[man] Here in Berlin, the West stands on guard, facing the next move by the East
in the continuing Cold War.
[narrator] With a stalemate on the ground,
the US makes a bold announcement that shakes up the space race.
Now it is time for this nation to take a clearly leading role
in space achievement,
which, in many ways, may hold the key to our future on Earth.
I believe that this nation should commit itself
to achieving the goal, before this decade is out,
of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.
[narrator] It will become the largest commitment of resources
ever made by any nation in peacetime.
Project Apollo.
Its goal? To put a man on the moon.
NASA's budgets are now doubling every year.
And President Kennedy is behind them every step of the way.
[man] On a whirlwind tour of Florida, President Kennedy visits Cape Canaveral.
The president's visit is regarded as an effort to focus attention
on the nation's space program and speed appropriation bills in Congress.
[narrator] Just six days later, President Kennedy is assassinated.
NASA loses its strongest ally.
The public starts to lose interest in this new moon race,
questioning the rising costs.
[man] Do you resent paying taxes in order to put a man on the moon?
Yes, I do.
[man] What would you rather have the money spent on?
Well, schools and, um, hospitals and things like that.
'Cause money should be used for,
uh, jobs and so on that need to be taken care of here on Earth.
[narrator] America also has other problems.
The US dispatches 184,000 troops to Vietnam...
in the name of halting the spread of communism.
To make matters worse, the Soviets are racking up a string of space firsts.
From the first object to hit the moon...
to the first woman in space...
to the first space walk.
It's USSR five, USA zero.
America's moon mission is now their only hope
for a big win in the space race.
But as they gear up for their first test launch in January 1967,
a routine rocket test proves catastrophic.
[man] Apollo astronauts Roger Chaffee, Edward White, and Gus Grissom
lose their lives in a tragic flash fire aboard their grounded space capsule.
In a few seconds, all three were victims of the swift inferno,
which left the capsule a blackened shell.
[narrator] The country is in shock.
Is space really worth dying for?
But America has invested far too much to quit now.
With 400,000 people on the payroll,
NASA is more determined than ever to leave their footprints on the moon.
And to get there, they turn to a former Nazi.
Hitler's favorite rocket engineer, Wernher von Braun,
invented the world's first ballistic missile, the V-2.
It devastated London during World War II.
Now, von Braun has come up with a much bigger rocket.
[man] Five, four, three, two, one, zero.
Liftoff. We have liftoff.
[narrator] Saturn V will be the muscle behind NASA's moon shot.
It towers over 350 feet and weighs 6.2 million pounds.
That's 1,240 pickup trucks.
It generates 34 million newtons of thrust, the equivalent of 43 jumbo jets...
enough power to carry over 95,000 pounds...
[horn honks]
...or four school buses to the moon.
But rumors that the Soviets have their own colossal moon rocket
on the launch pad send NASA into a panic.
And von Braun is concerned the race is too close to call.
I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they also landed in '69,
and who will there be first is anybody's guess, really.
[narrator] Meanwhile, 1968 is a turbulent year for both superpowers.
Assassinations and riots threaten to tear America apart.
Thousands of American soldiers are returning from Vietnam in body bags.
In the Soviet Union, space hero Yuri Gagarin is killed in a plane crash.
Czechoslovakia's revolt against Soviet control is brutally suppressed.
Both sides need a victory in space to boost morale at home
and distract from more earthly problems.
In August of 1968,
NASA announced they will take their first shot at the moon
by the end of the year.
Apollo 8's mission isn't to land.
It's to see if they can orbit the moon and get home safely.
It's a gamble. If they fail, it's unlikely Congress
and the American people will give NASA another chance.
On December 21st, 1968,
astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders
strap themselves in atop the immense Saturn V rocket.
[man 1] We have cleared the tower.
[man 2] Apollo 8, this is Houston, roger.
[narrator] After three days in space, the men enter lunar orbit.
[Borman] The moon is a different thing to each one of us.
I know my own impression is that it's a...
a vast, lonely, forbidding type...
existence.
Or expanse of nothing.
[Lovell] It makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth.
The Earth from here is a grand oasis in the big vastness of space.
[narrator] Apollo 8 is an unprecedented success.
Finally, America has a major victory in space:
the first humans to orbit the moon
and the first photo of Earth from the moon.
[Anders] Oh, God, look at that picture over there.
There's the Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty.
You got a color film, Jim?
[narrator] The photo will become known as Earthrise.
[Borman] The whole focus on the mission turned to the Earth
after we saw the Earth coming up over the lunar surface.
And the Earth was the only thing in the universe that had any color.
It was very lonely, and the universe is pitch black.
I think it gave us a sense of, uh,
"We better do our best to take care of this little blue marble that we have."
[narrator] For a brief moment, a fractured world
is brought together in awe.
["The Blue Danube" playing]
And just seven months later,
Neil Armstrong takes that unforgettable giant leap for mankind.
[man 1] They've got the flag up now,
and you can see the stars and stripes on the lunar surface.
[man 2] ...and you can see the stars and stripes on the lunar surface.
[man 3] Beautiful, just beautiful.
[narrator] In the race for the moon, America has finally come in first.
[Nixon] Hello, Neil and Buzz.
I just can't tell you how proud we all are of what you've done.
For every American, this has to be the proudest day of our lives.
Because of what you have done, the heavens
have become a part of man's world.
[narrator] The spectacular feat is watched by more than 500 million people,
one-fifth of the global population.
And it inspires generations of astronauts and engineers.
It's only the first stage of NASA's moon domination.
In the three years that follow, ten more Americans land on the moon.
As for the Soviets, they abandon any ambitions of getting there,
instead focusing on a different space dream,
launching an orbital space station called Mir, or "Peace."
[man] It's the Soviets' intention to have a permanently manned complex
of research laboratories and space factories,
making drugs and electronic components.
And they're well ahead of the Americans.
[narrator] Fast forward to 1991 and our unlucky cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev
floating inside Mir as the Soviet Union collapses beneath him.
He ends up staying in space nearly a year
before getting permission to return to the now Kazakhstani spaceport.
The last participant in a space race that has run its course and left him behind.
With the Soviet Union's fall, the Cold War is over,
and competition in space gives way to a new era of cooperation
between the US and a new, friendlier Russia.
In 1998, a new chapter in space exploration begins
as construction starts on the first International Space Station.
It's the largest man-made object in space, bigger than an NFL football field.
It uses 90 kilowatts of power, the equivalent of 90,000 Sputniks.
And eight miles of wire connect the circuitry on board.
It's the third-biggest object seen in space
and can be viewed from Earth with the naked eye.
It is also the most expensive object ever built.
Five different space agencies collaborated on its assembly...
and astronauts from 18 different nations have worked on board together.
When its first crew settles in in 2000,
on board is our old friend Sergei Krikalev.
[Krikalev] We are a small part of the large international team,
which has in the year past established this new outpost of the planet.
[Shepherd] The exploration of space is a powerful symbol
of the promise of a new year and of the possibilities of a new millennium.
Let the real Space Odyssey 2001 proceed.
[narrator] The ISS becomes a feel-good symbol
of international collaboration.
Fifty years after the moon landing,
NASA announces plans to return as part of their most ambitious mission yet.
[man] The investments announced today
will empower the people of NASA
to improving our quality of life today
and preparing to send American astronauts to Mars in the 2030s.
[narrator] But Mars is 160 times further away than the moon.
It will take eight months to get there.
Why go to the expense and risk of going all that way?
Well, the race to space began through fear,
as a reaction to the threat of an enemy.
But while reaching for the moon,
we gained a new perspective on our home planet.
Today, new threats are re-focusing our gaze back on our little blue marble.
In order to preserve it,
the nations of the world will need to work together.
The next space race may not be nation against nation,
but humanity against the clock.
[electronic music playing]