- People who make
the best astronauts
are people who are
like, educated,
perfect bodily health, physical
health, perfect eyesight.
- I think that fearless people
make the best astronauts.
- Heard the right
stuff is what it takes.
- [Narrator] For
more than 60 years,
the right stuff for astronauts
has meant 18 years of training,
sitting above 5 million
pounds of exploding fuel,
and working 250 miles above
the surface of the planet
in an environment
that can k*ll them.
- They're willing
to risk everything
to be on humankind's most
ambitious adventure of all time.
- [Narrator] As of
2021, just 574 people
have made into space,
but a few billionaires
are changing
what it means to
be an astronaut.
- The astronaut goes
from a military person
to a science person to
a wealthy elite person.
- [Narrator] So how
did we get here?
This is the story of how
astronauts led humanity
on an adventure into the cosmos
at 17,000 miles per hour.
(exciting music)
(beeping)
Life on Earth exists
thanks to the
protective layer of gas
that surrounds our planet.
Leaving the embrace
of our atmosphere
challenges our
bodies, our minds,
and the human spirit.
Astronauts are the people
who choose to face
those challenges.
- We've developed the
capability to go to a place
that does not have water,
it does not have air,
it does not have pressure,
the basic things that make
human life possible don't exist.
And so it takes a really
special kind of human
to want to do all of that.
- Getting out of our comfort
zone, pushing back frontiers,
that's just part of who we are.
I don't define myself
as an astronaut.
I define myself as an explorer.
- [Narrator] Before
reaching outer space,
astronauts face the
most dangerous moment
of their journey
right here on Earth,
sitting on the launchpad.
The danger begins
with the number 10.
(beeping)
- Six seconds before liftoff,
the shuttle's three
main engines ignite
and the whole stack
starts to shake.
Boom!
The two solid rocket boosters
immediately reach full power.
It's like a kick in
the seat of the pants.
After eight and a half minutes,
the engines are shut down.
We arrive in space.
We undo the seat harness
and then just a gentle push
off the back of the seat,
and we float up into the cabin
and we just survived one
of the more adventurous
and dangerous activities
that human beings do.
- [Narrator] This isn't
a job for just anyone,
but just about everyone
would like to do it.
(rapid beeping)
(upbeat music)
86% of kids are interested
in space exploration
and 11% want to be astronauts.
- [Man] Pick me!
- [Narrator] And
plenty of grown-ups
would still love to go to space.
- [Woman] Pick me!
- [Narrator] But your
odds of making it there
are only 0.06%.
- Hell yeah, I'm going to
space if given the opportunity.
Please, billionaires,
make that happen.
- It would have to be like
a luxury type of thing.
Like yes, a space suit,
but can it be cashmere?
- [Narrator] In 2016,
NASA has an open call
and 18,300 people
submit applications
to become astronauts.
120 of them get an interview.
Just 12 become astronauts,
a success rate of just 0.06%.
- [Man] Aw, man.
- [Narrator] Hmm, slim odds,
but you're still 10 times more
likely to become an astronaut
than you are to be
struck by lightning.
- [Woman] Hehe, you missed.
- There was this
ad that appeared
in all the major newspapers
that said that Canada was
recruiting astronauts.
My application was in
the mail very quickly.
In addition to me, there
was 4,000 other people
who applied for six positions.
- I still can't believe,
I pinch myself every
once in a while,
but geez, here's Bob Thirsk
applying to be an astronaut.
- [Narrator] In the early
days of the space program,
NASA didn't have an open call.
The government had to figure out
who would make the
best astronauts,
and they bet on 50%
of the US population.
In 1959, the USA thinks that
only half of their citizens
have the right stuff.
- So the Mercury program is
NASA's very first program
that really just is intended
to learn about how to
get people into space.
- They didn't know
if the human body
could withstand the
rigors of rocket flight.
- [Narrator] NASA
begins their search
by screening
military test pilots
for mental and physical stamina.
(rapid beeping)
Dr. Randolph Lovelace is in
charge of administering tests
to prospective Mercury
astronauts at his clinic.
He notices that
the Mercury program
is overlooking about
half of the population.
Eh, they're only
considering men.
- [Man] There's your problem.
- If you look at a picture
of NASA back in the 1960s,
the makeup of those
running the program,
it's pretty much all white men
in white shirts and skinny ties.
Women were really sidelined
for the Mercury program
intentionally so.
- [Narrator] Lovelace
gathers 19 women
and puts them through exactly
the same testing as the men.
- Jerrie Cobb was selected
as one of a few women
to see if women had the same
physiological stamina as men
to go into space.
- [Narrator] Cobb is about
to set three world records,
log 10,000 flight hours and
be named pilot of the year
and she's about to show these
men just what she can do.
- She went through these
grueling medical tests
over the course of a week,
and one of these was
an isolation test.
- [Narrator] The staff
believe the maximum
anyone can stand is six hours.
- [Woman] Just watch me.
- [Narrator] Jerrie goes
for nine hours, 40 minutes
before they call it.
- [Woman] That's right, honey.
- [Narrator] Next,
she faces the Mastiff,
a stomach turning
gyroscopic nightmare
designed to stress test
astronauts' ability
to retake control of
a spinning spacecraft.
Alan Shepard, first
American man in space,
bailed as soon as the
Mastiff started spinning.
(buzzer buzzes)
Cobb rides the machine
like a pro for 45 minutes.
She finishes all of the tests
in the top 2% of candidates,
- [Man] Congratulations.
- [Narrator] Female and male.
- Women did actually perform
better on average than men
in a number of the
different tests.
- What Dr. Lovelace proved
was not only are
women equal to men
in head to head competition,
but many women outperformed men.
- [Narrator] Out of 19 women,
13 past the qualifying
tests with flying colors.
Of the 32 men in the Mercury
program, 18 past the tests.
That means men had
a 56% success rate
while women outmatched them
with a 68% success rate.
But this isn't about fitness.
It's about politics.
John Glenn, the first
American to orbit the Earth,
testifies to Congress
that men fight the wars,
fly the planes and go to space
and women, the 13 women
who pass Lovelace's test,
become known as the Mercury 13,
but for them, 13 is
their unlucky number.
None of them will ever
make it into space.
- Even though Jerrie Cobb
and some of these other women
passed with flying colors,
they were ultimately not
selected to go to space
because of very sexist
ideas of female physiology.
- [Narrator] The only
official publication
that comes from
Lovelace's research
suggests women can
never be astronauts
because of their
menstrual cycles.
- Miss Jenson,
what about dancing?
Can you when you're
menstruating?
- Yes, you can.
- So when you see a
group of astronauts
that's all male and all white,
that doesn't mean
that those bodies
are medically best
for outer space.
It means that those
are the types of people
that American society circa 1959
trusted to sit inside
the Mercury capsule
and represent the nation.
(beeping)
- [Narrator] The
USSR was way ahead
of the west on this one.
On June 16th, 1963,
Valentina Tereshkova becomes
the first woman in space.
She orbits the Earth
48 times in 71 hours,
more time in space than
all NASA astronauts
to that date combined.
She is still the youngest woman
who has ever been to space
at 26 years old.
In the early 1960s,
Soviet cosmonauts
are making all kinds
of breakthroughs,
including Yuri Gagarin,
the first man to travel
into space in 1961.
- I think the early astronauts
function on a tier
above what I do,
and that is because they're
doing things for the first time.
- [Narrator] One of the reasons
the USSR's space program
is moving so fast
is because they're willing
to use their cosmonauts
as guinea pigs.
Don't know if it's possible
to survive in outer space
in an experimental space suit?
Throw someone 295
miles above the planet
and see what happens.
(splashing)
- If you're an astronaut, you
have to be kind of suicidal,
'cause there's this chance
you're never coming back.
- Oh, by the way, you have
this experimental suit.
May or may not work, you may
or may not die, but have fun.
(rocket rumbling)
- March 18th, 1965, Alexei
Leonov is on Voskhod 2,
and the USSR wants to try
the world's first space walk.
- [Narrator] He squeezes
out of the three foot hatch
in the Voskhod 2 space capsule.
His experimental EVA
suit barely fits.
- [Man] There we go.
- He's holding on to the
edge of the space capsule,
but this mission requires
a true leap of faith.
He lets go and floats freely
in the void of outer space.
He's only connected by
a 4.6 meter long tether.
The first time a human
being has ever done this.
- [Narrator] Leonov
floats 295 miles
above the Earth's surface
with just a space
suit to protect him,
a space suit that is beginning
to inflate like a balloon.
- [Man] I did not have
beans for a launch.
- The differential
pressure between
the gases inside the suit and
the vacuum of space outside
has caused his suit to puff up,
and he's no longer able to
fit back inside the hatch.
- [Narrator] The three
foot hatch may doom him
to the worst nightmare
of any astronaut,
being lost to the
vastness of space.
- If he didn't stay
calm and methodical
and find a solution,
he was going to die.
If he freaked out,
he was going to die.
- So he had to take
a very gutsy move
and deflate the suit so
that the suit would deflate
and would allow him to get
back into the spacecraft.
- [Narrator] As the
oxygen his life depends on
escapes into the void,
the suit shrinks.
He squeezes into the hatch,
but he's not safe yet.
- Nitrogen bubbles are coming
out into his bloodstream
and he begins to experience
a painful version
of the bends or
decompression sickness.
- These bubbles of nitrogen
that form in joints,
but also conform in blood
vessels of the heart
and even blood
vessels of the brain,
and it can be very
painful if not fatal.
- But he is able to close
the hatch, he does survive.
- [Narrator] How
does a space program
end up with an astronaut
like Alexei Leonov?
They count on the number 18.
Astronauts aren't
born, they're made
through years of
intense training.
- The training process
to become an astronaut
starts with a medical screening.
Every orifice of your
body is inspected.
- The first two
years after selection
is what we call basic training,
and that's because astronauts
come from a variety of
professional backgrounds.
All of these people from
different disciplines
need to be brought
up to a common level
of understanding
about astronautics.
After that, astronauts get
into advanced training.
- And that includes
trying to simulate
what microgravity will be like,
how the body will react
to that environment.
- [Narrator] Underwater
training is one way
to simulate lower gravity,
but real weightlessness?
Today, you can try
it out for $4,950.
(laughing)
The technology was
invented in 1959
and it hasn't changed
much since then,
except now we call
it the vomit comet.
- The vomit comet is the name
that's given to a
special kind of aircraft
that's used to simulate
weightlessness.
- Most of the seats
inside have been removed
and all the walls
and the ceiling
have been padded to protect us.
The vehicle then flies these
roller coaster trajectories
in the sky, we call
them parabolas.
And over the top,
we experience 20 to 25
seconds of weightlessness
because the aircraft
and we inside
are falling at at the same rate.
- You can even feel it
when you're going down the
hill on a roller coaster.
You can feel a sense of
your body lightening.
- You pay for that though at
the bottom of the trajectory,
when the aircraft
has to pull up again.
That's when we experience
two Gs of force.
- [Narrator] Each arc-
- [Man] Yeehaw!
- [Narrator] gives you 25
seconds of weightlessness.
A typical flight
does 40 of them.
- [Man] No more.
(retching)
- [Narrator] That's the
total of 16 minutes,
36 seconds of weightlessness.
(retching)
And that's a lot of barf bags.
- Like if I could like
feel for one second
that I was like, zero pounds,
I'd be like, oh my
gosh, sob, right?
- I do wanna experience
weightlessness.
I do not wanna be in the
vomit comet to do it.
- [Narrator] Today, you
can buy your own ticket
for the vomit comet for $4,950.
But sometimes learning to
work at 340 miles above Earth
means starting at zero
feet above sea level.
(rapid beeping)
- Going out into
the wilds on Earth,
whether that be a
tropical rainforest
or a tundra or a desert,
there is a utility to being
put in that environment,
especially with your
fellow crew mates.
They need to be put in scenarios
where they cannot get help.
- [Narrator] In
2009, Mike Massimino
is on a mission to work
on the Hubble telescope,
when his survival training
suddenly becomes very important.
10 years earlier, he was in a
kayak off the coast of Alaska
being battered by a storm
and fighting for his life.
- [Man] Help!
- He wonders what in the hell
this has to do outer space.
- You know, a lot of
the training that we do
is not just on the
technical skills,
but also on the personality
traits that that we need.
So we often put ourselves
into wilderness situations.
- [Narrator] Fast
forward 10 years
and 340 miles above the Earth.
Massimino is carefully
making his way
to an access panel on
the Hubble telescope.
He's been training for this
mission for five years.
- [Man] Okay, remember,
left loosey, righty tighty.
- He's there to do an
important repair job
that's going to
help the telescope
see better into the
depths of the universe.
He runs into a problem.
He strips the final
bolt of the panel
he is trying to remove.
- [Man] Oh, that's not good.
- [Narrator] Tens of
millions of dollars
and years of preparation
are at stake.
- Overall, the most
important thing
is accomplishing the objectives.
You'd don't want to come
back from a space mission
not accomplishing all
of the objectives.
- [Narrator] He pictures
his kids reading at school,
"We will never know if there
is life on other planets
because someone's father broke
the Hubble space telescope."
- He thinks back to that
moment in the kayak,
one extreme
environment to another.
- Fighting a weather
situation in a wilderness area
is helpful to understand what
a person's weaknesses are,
but also how to integrate the
skills of your crew mates.
- [Man] We can do this!
- [Narrator] Massimino
quickly focuses,
determined to
solve this problem.
- [Man] I've got it!
- He turns to his
crew mate Drew,
and they decide to
come up on the fly
with a DIY solution.
They wrap some tape around
the bar that's in the way
and they just yank it
off with sheer will.
- [Narrator] Massimino
completes the repair.
- [Man] Easy money!
- [Narrator] The Hubble
telescope continues to work
for many more years.
If you wanna be a plumber,
you're gonna have to train
and apprentice for five years.
A Catholic priest, six
years of study at seminary.
To be a doctor in the US
requires up to 14
years of training.
Astronauts, they face 18 years
of physical, mental
and technical training.
18 years of training to
turn an Earth dweller
into an astronaut,
and the number 88
shows just how rigorous
NASA's training and
selection process is.
July 16th, 1969.
Neil Armstrong, Buzz
Aldrin and Michael Collins
have been selected by NASA
for the Apollo 11 mission.
This launch is the
culmination of an eight year,
25 billion project to put
Americans on the moon.
- Neil Armstrong, Buzz
Aldrin and Michael Collins,
they were absolutely
the right people
to be selected for
that first flight.
- [Narrator] The three
astronauts sit in a compartment
about the size of a large car.
They are about to try something
that no human
being has ever done
and the whole world
is watching them.
(dramatic music)
NASA is collecting
as much information
during this launch as they can,
so the astronauts are
fitted with heart monitors.
The resting heart rate of a
reasonably healthy 39-year-old
will sit somewhere between
60 to 100 beats per minute.
A brisk walk might raise
it to 120 beats per minute.
Turn that into a run and
it'll rise to around 130.
If they're put in a stress test,
it could rise to above
180 beats per minute.
Buzz Aldrin is
strapped to a rocket
that is hurtling into the
unknown at 6,000 miles per hour.
His heart rate is
88 beats per minute,
the typical resting heart
rate for a man his age.
88 beats per minute separate
Aldrin from ordinary men.
- The ridiculous
amount of training
that those individuals did
really focused them to the point
of not even like
permitting themselves
excitement in a sense.
- [Narrator] A world
changing liftoff
is just another day at
work for Buzz Aldrin.
After a successful launch
and a four day journey,
Aldrin and Neil Armstrong
man the Lunar Landing Module
as it approaches the moon.
- As much preparation
as went into
planning for the lunar
landing of Apollo 11,
it almost completely
flew out the window
once the crew got close
enough to the surface
to see exactly what
was in front of them.
- [Narrator] The
Apollo 11 lander
floats down towards
the lunar surface,
and the eight year
mission to the moon
will be decided in
just 15 seconds.
- Neil Armstrong
is the commander,
Buzz Aldrin is the
Lunar Module pilot.
They've almost us made
it to the surface,
99.9% of the way there.
(alarm buzzing)
When all of a sudden, alarms
start going off inside, 1202.
Mission Control
knows that this means
that the Apollo guidance
computer is being overloaded.
- [Narrator] The guidance
system they're relying on
has just 0.001% of
the processing power
of a smartphone.
- And just when they thought
that that was
their only problem,
Neil Armstrong realizes
that the part of the moon
that they are planning to
set down in is not flat,
but is instead
strewn with boulders.
- [Narrator] Armstrong
takes the controls
and manually changes course.
They are carrying the
bare minimum of fuel,
and each second
they veer off course
burns off more of their
precious reserves.
(alarm buzzing)
- They were dangerously close to
being at the end of their
propellant reserves.
- Mission Control
is counting down
the number of seconds
of fuel that he has left
before they are forced
to abort back to orbit.
60 seconds, 50 seconds,
40 seconds, 30 seconds.
- [Narrator] Mission
Control is a pressure cooker
until they hear the words
they've been waiting for.
- [Neil Armstrong] Houston,
the Eagle has landed.
- There's only 15
seconds of fuel left.
- [Narrator] Those 15
seconds win a victory
for the American space program
that inspires a new
generation of astronauts.
Neil Armstrong steps out
of the Landing Module.
- [Neil Armstrong] I gonna
step off the LLM now.
- [Narrator] Onto the
moon and into history.
- Every human that
was alive back then
remembers that moment.
And I remember running between
our TV in the living room
to the backyard to
look up at the moon
and trying to
reconcile in my mind
there's actually two
people way up there
on the moon walking about.
- [Narrator] 600 million
people watch the grainy footage
that cements the American
astronaut as a national icon
and the USA as winners
of the space race.
- [Neil Armstrong] That's
one small step man,
one giant leap for mankind.
- [Narrator] The capsule that
lands on the moon in 1969
is only 2% of the 500 million
pound rocket that lifted off.
To understand what
that other 98% is for,
we have to go back
to the 19th century.
More than 100 years
before Neil Armstrong
set foot on the moon,
a nerdy teen was figuring out
the secrets to space travel.
1873, Russia, in a
secluded log cabin
125 miles west of Moscow,
16 year old
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
dreams of putting
men into space.
He reads Jules Verne's
"From the Earth to the Moon"
and wonders could Verne's
idea of a giant cannon
sh**ting a spaceship into
outer space really work?
- [Man] Eh, one day.
- [Narrator] He crunches
the numbers to find out.
- [Man] It's math time.
- Konstantin
Tsiolkovsky read this
and figured out the problem
with firing humans
from a giant g*n.
- [Narrator] The problem
with Jules Verne's idea
is acceleration.
No astronaut could survive
this kind of launch.
- You speed up so fast from
that instantaneous acceleration
that the human body is
essentially obliterated.
He needs to find a way
to get fast slower.
- [Narrator] Tsiolkovsky's
astronaut dream is impossible
unless you can safely
overcome Earth's gravity.
In 1903, he publishes a paper
which solves the
Jules Verne problem.
Ah, at least in theory.
- The solution to this problem
was a liquid fueled rocket
that contained the fuel
in different stages,
and as each tank is expended,
speeding up the spacecraft,
it is dropped away.
That lessens the
load at each point.
- [Man] Eureka!
- Allowing the spacecraft
to travel faster and faster
to reach that speed that you
need to escape Earth's gravity.
(beeping)
- [Narrator] 23
Years later in 1926,
American physicist
Robert Goddard
launches the first
liquid fuel rocket
using Tsiolkovsky's exact
specifications and fuel mixture.
Every single space launch since
from Yuri Gagarin to SpaceX
has been founded on
Tsiolkovsky's formula.
(beeping)
- So the general
public might say,
"Oh, we've come leaps and
bounds since the early 1900s."
But people who really know
the history of space flight
would say that we are
really yet to get outside
of that vision that he laid
out over 100 years ago.
- [Narrator] The dreams
of a nerdy 16-year-old
make it possible to get
astronauts into space,
but only 2% of the vehicle
that lifts them off the ground
will reach its destination.
- The difficulty
with chemical rockets
is they take a lot of fuel.
Just imagine a rocket.
Only the very tip top of the
rocket contains the payload.
The rest of that rocket
stack is propellant.
- [Narrator] Apollo 11 shows
exactly how thin the margin is.
The rocket weighs 3000 tons.
95% of the mass of
the Apollo 11 launch
is the fuel needed to
get to low Earth orbit.
Then it's discarded.
Only 140 tons, just
5% make it to space.
And only 50 tons, less than
2% of the initial launch mass
ends up at the moon.
50 years of technological
progress later,
a modern rocket
is still 85% fuel
and only 15%
structure and payload.
A car is only 4% fuel
and 96% structure.
- A rocket launch is essentially
a controlled expl*si*n.
That is what rocketry
is all about,
controlling an
expl*si*n and riding it.
- [Narrator] When
astronauts are sitting
on millions of
pounds of expl*sives,
every single thing
has to go right.
The margins of success are as
thin as a quarter of an inch.
(rapid beeping)
On January 28th, 1986,
the space shuttle Challenger
readies for launch.
The seven person crew includes
Christa McAuliffe,
a school teacher.
She has been selected
from 11,000 applicants
for the Teacher
in Space program.
She is a pioneer in
opening up space travel
to private citizens.
- All of my teachers
in my elementary school
got incredibly excited
and all of the children
in my fourth grade class
gathered around a television
that had been
wheeled into the room
where we sat, you know,
cross-legged on the floor,
watching all this happen live.
- [Narrator] The temperature
on the morning of the launch
is below freezing.
(radio chatter)
A space shuttle has
2.5 million parts.
One of them is a quarter
inch wide O ring.
- Engineers at the company
that built the
solid rocket booster
became quite concerned
that there could be
a problem with that O ring.
They had noticed that
on very cold days,
the rubber of that O ring
had been you getting
very fragile.
- [Mission Control] Time
for a second attempt.
- [Narrator] The
warnings are ignored
and the countdown
marches towards liftoff.
- [Mission Control]
Four, three, two, one
and liftoff of the 25th
space shuttle mission.
- [Narrator] The Challenger
rises from the launchpad
as fiery plumes
explode beneath it.
- As the rubber O
rings heated up,
they almost
instantaneously broke.
- [Mission Control] Challenger,
go with throttle up.
- And hot gases that are
created by the solid rocket fuel
burnt out through the
exterior of the rocket.
- [Narrator] 73
Seconds after liftoff,
The Challenger shuttle explodes.
Children all over the world
witness a quarter
inch piece of rubber
cause NASA's first fatal
in flight disaster.
NASA suspends the
Teacher in Space program,
deeming it too
dangerous to send anyone
but highly trained
astronauts into space.
- To witness it
live on television,
it's just sort of burned
itself into my brain.
The fact that I
developed a career
where I'm working very closely
with the subject matter
that impacted me so much as a,
you know, eight or
nine year old girl
is pretty amazing, really.
(rocket rumbling)
- [Narrator] April 19th, 1971.
The Soviet Union
launches the Salyut 1
and suddenly astronauts have
a home base in outer space,
at least for 23 days.
- Salyut 1 was the world's
first space station.
Before Salyut 1, you
could oftentimes calculate
an astronaut's time in space
in hours, minutes and seconds.
- The first few Mercury
missions were 15 minutes long.
As we continued,
astronauts spent more time
circling the Earth or more
time going all the way out
to the moon and back.
- But after Salyut 1,
it started to become
counted in days and weeks.
- [Narrator] Salyut 1
is occupied for 23 days,
a new record.
The Soviets create a series
of seven Salyut space stations
before launching Mir.
- What is unique about Mir
is it was much,
much, much bigger
than the previous
Russian space stations.
So Mir was sort of
the next giant leap
in the permanent presence
of humans in space.
- With the Mir space station,
there were a number
of near catastrophes,
and there were some very
harrowing moments on board Mir.
- [Narrator] Space wants
to k*ll astronauts,
and as Mir ages, it doesn't
provide much protection.
Mir was designed to
last for five years,
but it remains in use for 15.
In its final years, the oxygen
system doesn't work properly.
It begins to smell of mold,
and for weeks at a time,
the temperature is 90
degrees Fahrenheit.
The residents of
space station Mir
learn that one inch can k*ll you
and one dinner knife might
be enough to save your life.
It's June, 1997 and
cosmonaut Vasily Tsibliyev
works on the Mir space station
to bring a robotic
cargo ship into dock.
- When he realizes
something has gone wrong,
it's already too late.
- [Narrator] The
cargo ship crashes
into the side of the station,
tearing a hole in the
side of the module.
- The hull on spacecraft
are probably only two,
three millimeters in thickness,
so it doesn't take much force
to breach the hull
of a spaceship,
and when you do that,
you're in big trouble.
(alarm buzzing)
- Cosmonaut Aleksandr
Lazutkin's ears pop,
and he starts to
hear a hissing noise.
- [Man] No, no, no, no.
- Which lets him know
that the atmosphere
is quickly venting
out into space.
- [Narrator] The hole
is only one inch,
big enough to k*ll
everyone on board.
- He has precious
minutes to create a fix
that will save them and
the Mir space station.
- Lazutkin and NASA
astronaut Mike Foale
trace the breach to
the Spektr module.
- But when they reach the hatch
to the Spektr module
to seal it off,
they find that cables
snaking their way inside
prevent the hatch
from being closed.
- [Narrator] Lazutkin can
frantically pulls at the cables
as the station's oxygen
is swallowed into space,
but some of the cables
resist his best effort.
- So Lazutkin sees a
glint in the distance
and it's a floating
dinner knife.
- [Man] That'll do.
- He grabs it and starts
sawing through the cables,
eventually cutting
through all of them,
allowing them to close that
hatch and seal off the leak
to preserve the rest
of the space station
and save their lives.
- [Man] That's
that way we do it!
- [Narrator] One dinner knife,
two quick thinking
astronauts and Mir is saved.
It paves the way
for one of humanity's
greatest achievements.
December 4th, 1998.
Two modules link up 250
miles above the Earth.
One from the US,
one from Russia.
The International Space
Station marks the shift
from just surviving in
space to living in space.
- It has brought together
these former Cold w*r enemies
to work on a common vision
that is to extend the
capability of humans in space.
- [Narrator] For the first time,
astronauts from
all over the world
have to learn to work together.
- The most difficult
part of training for me
was Russian language training.
- [Narrator] Over the next
10 years and 30 missions,
Japan, Europe and Canada
join in a collaboration
of over 100,000 people
from five space agencies
representing 15 countries.
- It's an amazing
international laboratory
to do the kinds of research
that we cannot do on Earth.
Animal biology, time
biology, human physiology,
medical experimentation,
fluid physics.
- [Narrator] The price
tag, $150 billion,
the most expensive
man-made object ever built.
It's the second brightest
object in the night sky
outshone only by the moon.
The ISS has made more
than 120,000 orbits
and traveled more than
2.6 billion miles.
- There has always
been a human in space
since November, 2000
because of the
International Space Station.
- [Narrator] Robert Thirsk
spent six months aboard the ISS.
- [Robert] Living in space,
you have to really rethink
a lot of the routine activities
like brushing your teeth,
and of course, using the toilet
becomes a 20 minute
choreography.
- [Woman] You have to
have pretty good aim.
- And the toilet doesn't
work all the time.
- I thought out about this
and I feel like peeing in space
would be really difficult,
but would it get in my hair?
I don't know.
- I think peeing would
be so hard to do.
- Well, I imagine peeing
for sure would be hard.
- Assembling Ikea furniture
would be extremely
difficult in microgravity.
- You're the first
person that said peeing.
- Peeing, true.
- [Narrator] Long term stays
on the International
Space Station
have taught us
that the human body
is just not built for space.
- Our body needs to have
gravity working on it
because that's what
it's evolved to do.
- [Narrator] Astronauts
have to exercise
2.5 hours every day just to
mitigate the worst effects,
and that's just the
tip of the iceberg.
The effects on the human body
of prolonged time in space
include a 1.5% reduction
in bone density,
a 3% increase in height.
Muscle mass can reduce by 30%
and the head swells as
68 ounces of body fluid
shift from the legs.
Oh yeah, and while you're on
the International Space Station,
you're hit by 400
times more radiation
than you are on Earth.
- Every astronaut has to track
how much radiation
they're exposed to
because there are lifelong
limitations on that.
Once you're an astronaut
and have gone to space,
they often are also committing
to being studied for
the rest of their lives
because they've had
this unique experience.
- [Narrator] For all the
challenges of life in space,
the hardest part
might be coming home.
(crashing)
Once you've made
it to outer space,
eventually you
have to come back,
and that means traveling
from the icy vacuum of space
into 3000 degree temperatures.
- You know, at the beginning,
when we're in zero G,
the dust particles
inside the capsule
are just floating
around randomly.
And then as the Gs come on,
they slowly begin to settle
towards the flooring here.
You know, you're
starting to come home.
(rapid beeping)
- [Narrator] As a spacecraft
plunges towards Earth,
it slams into the atmosphere
and that creates enough
heat to melt steel.
- From the ground, if you look
at a returning spacecraft,
looks like a fireball coming
through the night sky.
We need to shed
this massive amount
of kinetic energy
and potential energy
to land with near zero velocity
on some designated landing site.
- [Narrator] But landing safely
is just the beginning of the
challenges of coming home.
Just ask Alexei Leonov.
- [Man] I'm a bubble boy.
- [Narrator] You remember him
from the world's
first space walk.
He barely survived.
And coming back to Earth,
his margin of survival
is only nine millimeters.
The Voskhod 2 is hurtling
back towards Earth
at 17,000 miles per
hour and Alexei Leonov
and Pavel Belyayev
of are being engulfed
by 3000 degree temperatures.
The cosmonauts feel a sudden
tug in the wrong direction.
- [Man] Oh, what now?
- They look back and they
see that their spacecraft
is still tethered to
the orbital module,
something that had been
supposed to detach long before.
- [Narrator] The ship starts
to spin out of control.
Leonov and Belyayev have 10
Gs pounding down on them,
10 times Earth's gravity.
- Re-entry is probably
the most dangerous
part of the mission
because it is potentially deadly
to a vehicle and to a human.
- [Narrator] The
cable burns off,
but they are thrown
way off course.
- They end up landing
1500 kilometers
west of their
intended landing site
in two meters of snow in
the middle of the taiga.
- [Narrator] They're in
one of the most hostile
landscapes in the world,
roamed by wolves and
thousand pound bears.
- [Man] Seriously?
- You never think that a
space flight is gonna end
with you freezing
in the wilderness
worried about wild animals.
They have a nine
millimeter p*stol.
They have a knife from
their survival kit
and they have each other.
- [Narrator] They ski
five and a half miles
to a rendezvous point
and spend 24 hours
clearing a landing pad
for a helicopter in
the six foot deep snow.
- It's one of the most
complex recovery operations
in the history of space flight.
- [Narrator] Welcome
back to Earth, comrades.
- [Man] I just want a bath.
(rapid beeping)
- [Narrator] Even after
a nice gentle landing,
you'll need two months of
physical rehabilitation
for every one month
you are in space.
But the psychological
effects can be even worse.
- For many, space
flight is the pinnacle
of human experience.
And after you reach that, the
question becomes what next?
- [Narrator] After his
return from the moon,
Buzz Aldrin fell into
a profound depression.
- Imagine Buzz on the moon.
He's looking back over this
magnificent desolation,
this landscape of the moon
and looking back on it
and seeing Earth back there
and knowing all the
people on the Earth
are watching what he's doing.
You know, what comes close
to that kind of experience
in any other profession?
- Sometimes space flight
breaks astronauts.
- [Robert] My wife says that
I've never returned back home
after my second flight.
(beeping)
- [Narrator] NASA now
includes psychological
and cognitive assessments once
astronauts return to Earth.
But the psychological
effects of space travel
are not always negative.
Sometimes they lead
right to number one.
- There's this idea called
the overview effect,
which is that humans who observe
the Earth from outer space
undergo a positive mental shift
in perspective or worldview.
- From space, you can see
how the land, the ocean,
the freshwater cycle,
the flora and the fauna
all interact to maintain
this livable environment
that we have.
You see that so
clearly from space
that it's not just
our natural ecosystem,
but it's our society as well.
We're all one.
- [Narrator] We may be all one
on this beautiful blue marble,
but we're still competing
to get into space.
The next space race
is already here
and it starts with a $20
million golden ticket.
April 28th, 2001.
American entrepreneur
Dennis Tito
straps himself down
in a Soyuz spacecraft
and a awaits
countdown to launch.
(rocket explodes)
- It used to be
that you had to be
either a military pilot
or an elite scientist,
engineer or medical doctor
engaged in cutting edge
research to reach outer space.
When Dennis Tito became
the first space tourist,
it created this idea that there
was another path to space.
- [Narrator] Dennis Tito doesn't
have decades of training.
His qualification for space
travel, he's really rich,
and he shelled out $20 million
for his seat on the Soyuz.
- We've gotten to watch
space exploration from afar
and now there's this tiny inkle
that maybe you could
also participate in that.
- [Narrator] The new space race
isn't between
adversarial countries.
It's between private companies,
Elon Musk's SpaceX, Richard
Branson's Virgin Galactic
Virgin Orbit, and Blue
Origin by Jeff Bezos.
And it's saving
NASA $30 billion.
- In the summer of 2020,
SpaceX began to send
humans to the ISS.
This meant that NASA could
send astronauts to orbit
using SpaceX's launch systems,
and this is saving NASA,
billions of dollars.
- Some of these activities
that the commercial
sector is taking over
are cargo delivery in space,
Earth observation,
telecommunications,
and then more recently tourism.
By doing that, it frees up
the traditional
government space agencies
to explore further into space.
There is no business
plan that makes sense
for the private sector
to explore Mars.
- [Narrator] Mars, the next
target for space travel
is 300 million miles away.
- Mars as a planet
has been a draw
for scientists and astronomers
and writers and thinkers
for well over a century.
- [Narrator] But going to Mars
isn't like going to the moon.
It's on a completely
different scale.
The moon is a 475,000
mile round trip from Earth
versus a 600 million
mile round trip to Mars.
12 days to the moon and back.
But if you wanna get to Mars,
book off 630 days from work.
- [Man] You're fired.
- Yeah, I would absolutely
buy a one way ticket to Mars.
My grandparents were
like poor immigrants.
They bought a one way
ticket to the new world.
- Seems weird to have
like a second planet
when we have this like first
one that's pretty good.
- I'm more of a Jupiter person.
- We're not exactly
back to square one.
There is plenty of technology
that has been developed
during the space age
that will allow humans to
survive and operate on Mars
and there is a legacy
to build on here.
- [Narrator] Mars would
be the second planet
humans have stood on,
the second out of 700
quintillion planets
in the universe.
There's a lot of
exploring left to do.
- In 1903, we had
our first flight.
My grandfather was able
to see the first flight,
see people go to outer space
and see people go to the
moon in one lifetime.
I don't think there's any limit
to where we can
go at this point.
- We're at an inflection
point in aerospace history.
The large nationalistic
space agencies
left over from the Cold w*r
are being replaced by smaller
private space companies.
A rupture like this is an
opportunity to get things right.
(cheering)
- The astronaut of the future
is really just anyone who wants
to be doing this activity.
You can be a good communicator,
you can be an educator,
you can be an administrator
and be part of the space
program in some way.
And really that makes space a
place for just about anybody.
- I think seeing
Earth from that view
would give me the
perspective of like,
"Yeah, let's protect our
planet while we can."
- Space is like
the ultimate freak,
'cause it's just
vastness and you.
- I mean, this planet is dying.
We should get off this
thing as fast as we can.
- It'd be fascinating to see
like how tiny we really are,
how small everything really is.
And then maybe like appreciation
of knowing that like we
built a lot of stuff.
(upbeat music)
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01x17 - Astronauts
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This series is loaded with mind-blowing factoids and stats, entertaining expert interviews, and infographics injected with cheeky humor.
This series is loaded with mind-blowing factoids and stats, entertaining expert interviews, and infographics injected with cheeky humor.