Throughout history, to explore space was an impossible fantasy.
Then, two rival scientists became locked in a race
to achieve that dream.
Their struggle would make history
Sergei Korolev.
We can launch a man-made moon,
a satellite into orbit around the Earth.
Released from the gulag
to take the Soviet Union into space.
His rival, Wernher von Braun,
space pioneer, visionary,
haunted by his Nazi past.
We could have made space history today, for America.
We could have launched the world's first satellite.
This is the future.
I am quite sure of it.
It requires an open mind Valentin,
perhaps you've not got one
It's just been announced over the radio
that the Russians have put a satellite into space.
The launch of the Sputnik has revealed
that the Soviets may already be five years ahead of us.
I guess the American people
are alarmed that a foreign enemy country
can do this.
Von Braun tried to catch up.
Do we have a satellite or don't we?
Gentlemen, we made it to space.
Yeah! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!
Today we have answered the Soviet challenge,
and in doing so, we opened the gates to the heavens.
It would appear that we are in a race to space.
A race that we intend to win.
Now Korolev plans his next spectacular move.
The first man into space.
The year is now 1959.
The candidate should be around thirty.
Height, below one seventy centimeters.
Weight less than seventy kilos.
And most importantly of all, he must be a man with a broad smile.
The hunt for a spaceman is on.
Across the Soviet Union,
military experts search for cosmonauts to match Korolev's specification.
The mission is so secret...
...that even those chosen
have no idea what it's for, or who's behind it.
Selected candidates are put under extreme conditions
to test their physical strength.
subjected to high temperatures and pressures,
some are taken almost to the point of death.
Gherman Stepanovich Titov
Valentine Stepanovich von...
A final six are chosen.
each hopes to be the first man
into space.
Angrian Grigorovich Nikolai
Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin.
Comrades. We have our cosmonauts.
Korolev is well ahead of the Americans.
His R7 rocket,
armed with a nuclear warhead,
powerful enough to cross continents and wipe out entire American cities.
And it could just an easily launch his cosmonauts into space.
The space race is fast becoming a new battleground of the Cold War,
an open contest between capitalism and communism.
The New York Times calls it a Race for Survival.
Ladies and Gentlemen...
To confront the Soviet threat,
the newly created National Aeronautical Space Administration, NASA,
has hastily put together a project to get an American into space.
...today we are introducing to you, and to the world,
seven men who have been selected
to begin training for space flight.
All family men,
they are here after a long and...
Seven test pilots are thrown to the world's media.
Please welcome our nation's Project Mercury astronauts.
Perhaps we could start proceedings with a few questions.
Yes sir?
Can I ask the astronauts, do their wives and kids
have anything to say about this?
Commander Shepard?
Uh, I don't have any problems at home.
My family is in complete agreement.
From a nation of a hundred and seventy-five million,
they stepped forward last week.
Seven men, cut of the same stone
as Columbus and Magellan.
But there was a difference.
Rarely were history's explorers and discoverers
so clearly marked in advance as men of destiny.
Uh, the Russians are trying to get there,
but I think we're gonna get there first.
One will be chosen to test for the first time
whether a human can be shot a hundred and twenty-five miles into space.
And one final question. Uh, yes sir?
Could I ask for a show of hands,
how many of you are confident that you'll come back alive from outer space?
The Mercury Seven
are to see the launch of the rocket
NASA's hopes
will take them into space.
the Atlas, is still undergoing tests
to become America's first
Intercontinental Ballistic Missile.
Well, glad they got that one out of the way.
With the failure of the Atlas,
NASA turned to
their only option left,
an old U.S. Army missile,
called Redstone.
Mach point seven five rising.
In a high-speed wind tunnel,
America's leading rocket engineer,
Wernher von Braun is testing his Redstone,
to find out what modifications it needs to carry an astronaut.
With American hopes relying on his rocket,
a journalist has come to see if he has the solution.
This rocket is more or less a V-2, am I right?
The same as you built for the Germans.
Based on the design.
That was some time ago.
Mach eighty-seven.
Capsule vibration, ninety decibels, increasing.
It's starting.
As a rocket speeds towards the sound barrier,
shockwaves build up...
Mach point nine three.
Capsule vibration one hundred fifty decibels, rising.
...causing it to vibrate violently.
Kill it.
Well, that concludes the entertainment.
Is this kind of problem serious?
It will be fixed.
It's one of the many modifications to be made to make the rocket safe for manned flight.
Please.
The vibration's so severe,
it would have killed an astronaut.
And von Braun has other problems.
The Red Stone will require more than eight hundred modifications
to make it safe.
Even then, it has only a tenth
of the power of Korolev's rocket.
Barely enough to put a man into space.
But before von Braun improves anything,
his rival delivers another crushing blow.
Both sides have been trying to send unmanned probes to the moon.
Korolev succeeds
when Luna Two impacts on its surface,
a milestone in space exploration.
And deliberately timed to coincide with Khrushchev's tour of the U.S.
The Soviet leader boasts, we have beaten you to the moon,
but you have beaten us in sausage making.
just three weeks later,
Korolev's next probe photographs the far side of the moon,
never before seen by man.
Despite all these triumphs,
von Braun has no idea who the Soviet's chief designer is.
Korolev's identity is a closely guarded state secret.
Even after five months' training,
Korolev's cosmonauts have yet to meet the man himself.
I consider this day to be a remarkable one.
Let's get acquainted.
This is my deputy Vasily Mishin.
Your name?
Air Force Pilot Gherman Titov.
And where are you from?
Outer region, Comrade Korolev.
And you?
Yuri Alexeevich Gagarin.
Smolensk region. Gzhatsk
School.
Vocational school. smelter's profession.
We have a lot in common, Yuri Alexeevich.
I too graduated from a vocational school.
Subject builder.
Specializing in roof tiles.
Korolev takes the cosmonauts to see the Vostok,
the capsule that will take them into space.
So, where are the controls?
How do I fly this?
The Vostok is completely automatic.
And controlled from the ground.
Without wings.
How does it land?
When you re-enter the Earth's atmosphere,
friction will slow you down.
As it does so, the front of the capsule
will reach a temperature six to ten thousand degrees.
Nearly as hot as the surface of the sun.
What brings the Vostok down from orbit?
Good question. Alexi! Alexi!
This is one for you.
Come and do your demonstration.
Comrades, this is Alexi Mikhailovich Isayev.
He designs the retro rockets, which bring you back.
This is the Earth, this, the capsule.
First, we must slow the speed of the capsule,
which will be traveling at around twenty-seven thousand kilometers per hour,
with small, breaking rockets.
The rockets must fire with great accuracy.
Too long, and the capsule will fall down too rapidly towards the Earth
and burn up.
Too short, and it will hit the outer atmosphere and bounce off
into, into a higher orbit.
- How would you return? - You would not.
You would fly around the Earth forever.
But that is not going to happen. You will succeed.
Thank you.
Intelligence reports soon filter back to America
that the Soviets are close to sending a man into space.
The pressure increases on NASA engineers
to complete their Mercury space capsule,
already a whole year behind schedule.
NASA's Mercury Man Space Program seems to be plummeting the United States
towards a new and humiliating disaster in the East West space race.
In charge of the Mountain Crisis
is NASA director Bob Gilruth,
called in to see yet another problem on a prototype.
So, what did you have to show me?
We're having to take a half-inch off the capsule.
Half inch off the capsule? Why?
Because it doesn't fit the rocket.
Oh my God. My God, Wernher is gonna go mad.
This would not have happened
if the capsule had come here first.
I must insist that future ones come to Huntsville for integration
tests with the Redstone before they travel down to the Cape.
Wernher, that's never gonna happen, you know that.
I insist.
We still have to fit dampeners to eliminate vibration.
Wernher, please.
Now who, who is going to take responsibility when the two don't work together?
- Wernher, listen. - I'm listening.
The FBI say that the Soviets
may be ready to go as soon as November.
We can't waste time
trucking this capsule from state to state
while the Reds are orbiting the Earth!
And you'd prefer we kill an astronaut?
Well, as with everything else at NASA,
I can see a committee has decided.
But how you think that a capsule made at McDonnell
with a rocket built by Boeing designed by us here in Huntsville,
overseen by Burokraten in Washington
is going to fit together like this.
Ah, we shall see.
While Von Braun only has to deal with NASA.
Korolev has to compete with
rival rocket groups for his funding.
designer Valentin Glushko, has a new rocket engine
that could be exactly what Marshall Nedelin, the chief of strategic missiles, is looking for.
It poses a serious threat to Korolev.
If the military decide to switch to Glushko's design
He could lose vital funds.
Uh, Comrade Marshal, comrades, the test is about to begin.
So please make your way to the control room.
The two men already have a troubled relationship.
Glushko denounced Korolev to the Secret Police,
He spent six years in the gulag.
The military advantage of a rocket with Glushko's engine is that it can be fired quickly.
But it uses a new, volatile fuel.
The fumes alone will dissolve a man's lungs.
You're not convinced, Sergei Pavlovich?
Of this fuel? No.
It is the devil's venom, far too toxic and corrosive.
For a spaceman maybe.
But not a nuclear warhead.
You know, Sergei Pavlovich,
imagine if our bullets worked like your rockets, huh?
Well, we need a rocket that fires when we pull the trigger.
Uh, comrades, please stand by.
Turbo pumps on.
Valves open.
Ignition.
The test is a success.
If Glushko succeeds,
Korolev's R7
will become obscure needed for the military.
Korolev could lose his chance of launching a man into space.
In order to impress the Politburo,
He plans a historic mission,
the first to bring living creatures back from space.
Lisichka and Chaika will test the same
Vostok capsule that will be used for a cosmonaut.
achieving a return trip
is a vital step towards a manned flight
Oxygen pressurization complete?
Almost.
Well, either it is or it isn't? Which is it?
Complete, chief.
Why can't I see the TV pictures, yet?
They're coming Sergei Pavlovich
Let's hope they return, Sergei.
I can't stand any more complaints from these English animal lovers.
All right, let's go.
The progress reports are given in numbers.
Below five and the rocket is in trouble.
Twenty-eight seconds into flight,
the booster rocket explodes.
Lisichka and Chaika are incinerated.
After this, it will be a terrible sin to risk the life of a young pilot.
Perhaps, one of us, a scientist or a designer should go first.
Utter nonsense.
Sentimental rubbish.
We go ahead.
I want another dog launch within a month.
A month?
And then we launch a cosmonaut.
Less then A month later, and the R7 flies again,
with another pair of dogs.
This time the rocket performs well.
And Belka and Strelka are soon in orbit.
They are just passing the American Explorer Satellite.
Good Soviet dogs.
Maybe they could piss on it.
The Soviet Union is quick to announce
the success of Belka and Strelka.
Korolev delivers his propaganda victory.
And more than that, he has demonstrated to the world,
his spacecraft is capable of bringing a cosmonaut back to Earth alive.
In a goodwill gesture,
Premier Khrushchev has sent one of dog astronaut Strelka's puppies as a gift to the White House.
An appreciative message was sent back to the Soviet Premier.
Accepting defeat, John F. Kennedy
admitted the first canine passengers in space were named Strelka and Belka,
not Rover or Fido.
They've got us now.
what the soviets plan to do next is anyone's guess
We'll see.
The Americans have yet to prove
they can even get an astronaut off the launch pad.
The first of von Braun's modified Redstones
in an unmanned Mercury Capsule
stands ready to see if it's up to the task, watched by the world's media.
Von Braun can only hope he has eliminated all the Redstone's problems.
Deputy and head of launch operations at the Cape, Kurt Debus,
had wished for more tests.
But defense status indicators have been offline.
Are they working now?
They are functioning at present, but...
- Von Braun, do you read? - Roger, copy.
How you all doing? Do I have a scheduled flight?
Yep. Countdown running A-okay.
Okay, copy that. Stay on the loop.
at the new multi-million dollar Mission Control,
Chris Kraft, flight director,
oversees the countdown.
Gentleman, the clock reads T minus ten minutes.
I'd like to see you all at your consoles please.
If today's test is a success,
a date can be set for a manned flight.
T minus twenty seconds.
- Capsule. - Go flight.
- Communications. - Go flight.
- Range officer. - Go flight.
- Launcher. - Go flight.
Okay. I have an all go. All go.
T minus ten, and counting.
Nine, eight, seven...
Six, five, four...
Three, two, one.
Sequence at zero.
Engines go.
We have a lift-off.
And the clock is started.
Just look at the acceleration on that son of a bitch.
We have abort.
- We have engine shutdown. - What's happening?
Rocket is still there.
- Abort. - What?
Engine shutdown.
We have engine shutdown.
Will someone tell me what's going on?
Nobody can see it here.
Will someone talk to me for Christ's sakes?
What happened?
Talk to me, damn it!
Damn Germans still haven't learned who they work for.
Later, film reveals
that only the escape tower was launched.
In a humiliating public spectacle,
the rocket itself had only lifted four inches off the pad.
The United States' hopes of rocketing a man into space
was dealt a crushing blow today by yet another failure.
One official said that this might have cost the nation
its last chance to beat the Soviet Union in the race to send the first man aloft.
With every Soviet launch kept top secret,
how much progress they are making
is always a guessing game for the Americans.
But why the delay?
Can no one tell me?
Glushko's new engine
is ready to be tested in a missile.
But there is a major fuel leak.
Marshall Nedelin has kept the launch team working for seventy-two hours without rest,
handling the highly dangerous fuel.
Under pressure from Glushko to launch on time,
he supervised a plot to repair from the pad.
Comrade Nedelin won't even let the firing circuitry be disconnected.
An electrical fault sends signals
which triggers the rocket's second stage.
In temperatures of three thousand degrees,
the surrounding tarmac melted,
trapping people in a sticky floor of fire.
The most horrific fate befell those suspended from harnesses in the gantry,
who burst into flames like candles.
The inferno kills Nedelin ninety-one
senior Soviet Union engineers and military officers.
The loss of the engineers deals a devastating blow to the Soviet Space Program.
The disaster is kept secret for thirty years.
Woo, guys! Would have been cooked on that one.
That wouldn't be good.
Fried like an egg.
They made me smashed as well
Okay, gentlemen, if I could have your attention, please.
What I have to say to you is confidential.
I would like you all to keep it that way.
Alan Shepard will make...
the first sub-orbital Redstone flight.
When do we go?
We've penciled it for April twelfth,
if everything goes well with the next test.
That's in twelve weeks' time.
Thank you, gentleman.
Congratulations.
NASA now has just twelve weeks
to answer one critical question.
Can Alan Shepard, or indeed any human being,
survive the physical
and mental stress of space flight?
Five, four, three, two, one.
To find out, another Redstone is launches.
This time it's not just von Braun's reputation is at risk,
but also the life of his passenger.
Fuel is go. One point eight G. Cabin pressure. Fourteen PSI.
Heading for space is chimp number sixty-five.
If the flight is a success,
Shepard is next.
Oxygen is go.
Looking good.
If chimp sixty-five survives the fifteen-minute flight,
NASA will give him a name.
If not, he'll remain just a number.
4gees, cabin pressure holding at 5.5
Speed accelerating to Mach
1.2
1.3
1.4
1.5
The acceleration's much too quick.
We've got bad, very bad vibrations.
She is shaking hard.
Nine G, Mach two point eight.
- Still accelerating. - What now?
Von Braun, do we abort?
Escape tower fired.
Capsule detached.
17G, it's still to G-loc.
G-loc: the moment
when chimp sixty-five will lose consciousness.
Death will follow swiftly.
Hold on there, little fellow.
After a near disaster flight,
astro chimp Ham splashed down safely.
He was rescued by Navy helicopters.
The little chimp didn't seem too worried about his ordeal,
but tonight NASA chiefs must be asking themselves
is it safe enough...
...yet to send a man into space?
Today a contraceptive pill which women take orally went on the market for the first time.
Gentlemen, you don't need me to tell you we're not exactly in NASA's good books today.
What went wrong?
Well, first study of the data suggests the fuel pumps were overdriven,
causing excessive acceleration.
The rocket rose too steeply.
The abort system triggered,
pulling the capsule away from the rocket.
The chimp was lucky to survive.
So we need to look at the pump system and find out why they ran so fast.
Now, we have a difficult decision to make.
Are we ready to send a man,
or do we need another test flight?
If we delay, well, we risk losing out to the Communists.
If we go,
a fatality could cost us our entire space project.
Raise your hands if you are ready to proceed with a manned flight.
I need a unanimous decision.
We need another flight.
We must have one flight with hundred percent success.
I absolutely believe this.
Al. They want another flight.
What?
Von Braun and his team want another test flight
before you go.
It's been established what the problem was
- and it can be fixed. - Right.
Well, so why don't we go ahead?
Why don't we man the next one?
When it comes to rockets, Wernher is king.
You've got to be joking.
Now I've viewed all the data from that flight and even with all the problems,
I would have survived like Ham.
For Christ's sake, let's just fly!
Like I said, Wernher is king.
Oh, shit.
Another Redstone test
will delay Shepard's flight for a month.
Meanwhile, The Soviets are now very close to sending a real man into space.
The question is, who?
For such a historic mission,
Korolev needs the approval of the Politburo.
While they decide, each cosmonaut is filmed giving his farewell speech.
People of all countries and continents.
In a few minutes, this spaceship
will carry me off on a historic mission.
Gherman Titov. Intelligent.
Physically resilient.
But his background, well, too bourgeois.
How about Yuri Gagarin?
Confident, intelligent, well-liked, ideologically sound.
Dear friends, fellow citizens.
His parents hard-working,
father was a carpenter. son of the people.
To be the first to enter the cosmos,
could one dream of anything more?
Until we meet again.
Perfect.
The Soviets have their cosmonaut,
but there are doubts about the spacecraft.
Two more dog flights have failed,
another pair burned to death on re-entry.
Korolev needs time,
or this could be Gagarin's fate.
And the Americans are catching up fast.
a perfect launch and a perfect flight.
Dr. Wernher Von Braun was delighted.
The flight was a great success.
Now we can proceed to put the first American into space.
That could have been me.
We had 'em by the shorthairs and we gave it away.
The Mercury capsule was recovered by
Navy vessels and winched aboard.
It can't be long now before the spacecraft carries aloft Commander Alan Shepard
In just four weeks Shephard could have flown.
The R7 is prepared for Gagarin's historic attempt.
After the recent failures
Korolev knows Gagarin's chance of survival
is little better than 50%.
Senor Leftenant Gagarin, ready for the first flight in Spaceship Vostok.
come back.
I'm not seeing the KP Three light showing the hatch is sealed.
Cedar this is Zarya.
Remember, Yuri.
Everything you say is being recorded.
It's time.
The side boosters have separated.
Pressure in the chambers is stable.
The flight proceeds well.
Three minutes after lift off,
the central booster accelerates Gagarin
to seventeen thousand five hundred miles per hour.
Five minutes after lift off,
and Gagarin is the first human ever
to look back on our planet from space.
The earth is covered by clouds, covered by rain clouds.
Nine minutes into his flight, all sensations of speed stop,
and the effect of gravity is lost.
Everything is going well.
The feeling of weightlessness is great.
It doesn't make you feel sick, I like it...
Cedar, Cedar.
We can hardly hear you.
I feel safe.
Yuri, I can hardly...
Gagarin travels beyond the range of the television receivers of the launch site.
Less than thirty minutes after launch,
Vostok sweeps out over the Pacific,
and towards the vast shadow of night.
Soon Gagarin is orbiting above a sleeping America,
its citizens unaware
of the Communists' triumph.
After just an hour,
Calculations for re-entry are made.
Too steep and Gagarin will burn up.
Too shallow, and he will move into a higher orbit,
never to return.
Prepare to fire retros.
Fire!
Now the service module, containing the used retro rockets must be detached from his capsule.
Has the service module detached?
No separation.
Check again.
No separation.
If the two parts remain joined,
Gagarin will be spun to his death.
Radio contact is lost.
All Korolev can do now is wait.
At the final moment,
the heat of re-entry had burnt through the cables,
and the Vostok had broken free of the service module.
Moments later, four miles above the Earth,
a shaken Gagarin ejected from his capsule.
In a flight lasting one hundred and eight minutes,
Gagarin had traveled twenty-five thousand miles,
the first human to orbit the Earth.
Dear comrades, To our success.
Wait! The chief designer could do that.
But comrades, we can't.
Who would answer to the supplies division?
Gagarin flies to Moscow
to be greeted by Premier Khrushchev and ecstatic Soviet people.
Korolev is forced to watch from the sidelines,
the KGB still insisting his identity
is kept a secret.
This is coming live from Moscow,
and now we see major Yugi Gagarin, the first man into space.
- Dr. von Braun? - Yeah.
Are you watching?
It's live from Moscow.
The Soviet cosmonaut is meeting Premiere Khrushchev.
Yes. Thank you, Debus.
Gagarin received a warmth welcome from the Premiere.
Less than a month after Gagarin,
NASA is almost ready to send Alan Shepard.
Okay.
Well, gentlemen, can I have everyone's attention?
Due to adverse weather conditions,
I'm going to delay the flight.
Hold countdown.
Did you Copy that, Alan?
Sit tight, buddy.
Copy. Sittin' tight with nowhere to go.
Shepard's contact with the outside world
is through fellow astronaut Gordon Cooper.
When the weather finally clears,
Shepard has been sitting in his capsule for five hours.
Okay, guys, I've been up here too long now.
I got to take a leak.
I can't hold on anymore.
How 'bout it, Wernher?
No, no,
there's no time to get him in and out of the suit.
No way, Alan.
Wernher says you're in there to stay.
Well, shit, Gordo, we've got to do something.
Tell Wernher I can't wait.
Damn it, tell him I'm gonna let it go in my suit!
Rather than lose another flight,
von Braun relents.
Okay, power's off. Go to it.
Thank God.
I'm gonna go ahead.
T minus ten, and counting.
Nine, eight, seven.
Six, five four, three, two, one.
Ignition sequences go, Engines go.
We have lift off.
The clock has started.
You're underway, Jose.
Roger that. Read you loud and clear.
Go baby, go!
During his sixteen minutes aboard the flight,
Shepard travels just three hundred miles
And experiences weightlessness for six minutes
Freedom seven is still go.
Just Long enough for von Braun to claim
America too has put a man in space.
But a bolder initiative is needed to beat the Soviets.
The new president, John F. Kennedy, soon announces
The eyes of the world now look into space.
And we have vowed that we shall not see it governed
but by a banner of freedom.
We choose to go to the moon.
We choose to go to the moon in this decade
and do the other things.
Not because they are easy,
but because they are hard.
America cannot afford to lose.
A few months after Shepard's flight,
East German border guards start erecting the Berlin wall.
The possibility of all out nuclear conflict intensifies.