01x08 - Deep Space

[bunniefuu]

Throughout time,

governments and the

people who work for them

have done strange

and even terrible things

in the name of national interest,

especially in the race to control space.

Tonight, the daring theft

of an enemy spacecraft

at the start of the cold w*r.

There are so many

places where this could fail.

At worst, you're going

to be caught in the act

and they're going to sh**t you.

The plan to nuke the moon.

If the Russians really are planning

to hit the moon with a nuclear

weapon, then guess what?

America needs to

beat them to the punch.

And a shocking cover-up of

the space age's worst disaster.

70 coffins have been delivered

to a Russian space center.

Something catastrophic has taken place.

It's time to bring the

secrets of deep space to light.

It's 1959.

The U.S. and the Soviet union

are locked in fierce competition

on earth and in space.

So when the CIA gets the chance

to steal some Russian

technological secrets,

the agency doesn't think twice.

The summer of 1959,

the cold w*r was still

very much an active conflict,

but things were thawing just a little bit.

Both sides decided that they

should do a cultural exchange.

First stop is New York.

The Soviet union mounts a large display

of some of their main

technical advances.

What's particularly interesting

to the American government is a display

of the Soviet lunar spacecraft.

The Soviets are blazing

ahead in the space race.

In January 1959, they

launch the first spacecraft

to leave earth's orbit.

From the Americans' perspective,

the Soviets can do no wrong.

And they want to find out

how they're so successful.

So American spies

are sent to the exhibition

to check out a replica of the Luna.

But when they get to the display,

they're hit with a pretty big realization.

What they're looking at is not a model.

It's the actual spacecraft

that is being presented to the public.

They're presented with

this incredible opportunity

to get up close to the

Soviets' crown Jewel.

If American space engineers

can somehow take a look inside,

they could work out the

secret of Soviet success.

There's just no way to inspect the Luna

while it's in New York.

It's guarded 24/7 by kgb officers.

But the Soviet exhibition is on tour.

It's moving to Mexico City,

where the CIA have

a much better chance

of getting a closer look.

The Americans decide

to try the unthinkable.

The question is how

do you steal something

the size of a school bus from

under the nose of the kgb?

The CIA come up with a plan.

Wait for the exhibition to finish.

Distract the guards.

And intercept the

Luna while it's in transit.

And if they can get the

truck with the Luna in it,

somehow separate from everything else,

they just might be able to take a look.

And then return it

without anyone realizing.

This is an insane plot.

You're trying to steal a

spaceship from the kgb.

If you do get caught,

they have grounds to

sh**t you on the spot.

It sounds like the plot of

a Hollywood heist movie.

But on December 15th,

the CIA makes it happen.

The exhibition is over.

The exhibits are loaded onto trucks

to be stored overnight at a train depot.

CIA already had operatives in place

that were positioned perfectly

to assist in the kidnapping of the lunik.

They make sure the

Luna is on the last truck,

and it heads straight

into rush-hour traffic.

The guards have been working hard.

They're following this truck,

but they want the day to end.

They want to clock out.

There's a farewell party at their hotel,

and nobody wants to miss out.

But what they don't know

is that this big blowout

has been organized by the CIA,

because the plan is to keep

the kgb distracted all night

with beautiful women

and rivers of Tequila.

The Soviet guards leave

the Luna with the truck driver.

What they don't know is that

he's working with the Americans.

The CIA has kidnapped the spaceship

and the plan is working perfectly.

With the Luna now in their possession,

the CIA divert its route.

They've commandeered a

private salvage yard for the night

that's fenced off from prying eyes.

So while the kgb are having a party,

the American engineers

have the opportunity

to get their hands on modern technology

that's devised by the Russians.

They only have until dawn

to learn everything they can

about the Soviet space ship.

The men take their shoes

off so they don't leave

any kind of debris and

they get right inside.

They start taking it apart bolt by bolt.

Photographing everything.

It was a chance for them

to steal as much information

as they needed to boost

the American space program.

But there's a huge problem.

The Soviets have

placed a tamper-proof seal

inside some of the most important parts.

In order to photograph it,

they're going to have to break this seal.

The Russians are going to know

that they were inside the Luna.

The operatives have no

choice but to pull in a favor.

So what they do

is get a local forger

to remake it overnight.

The forger must turn around

an exact copy of the seal

in a few hours.

By daybreak, the Luna

is back in one piece.

The Soviet guards roll out of the party

nursing these k*ller

hangovers with no clue

that their prize exhibit has

spent the night with the enemy.

It's incredible to think that

this whole thing worked.

The Luna continues its global tour,

with the Soviets none the wiser.

The question is

did the heist advance

america's space program?

According to CIA documents

declassified in 1994

The answer is yes.

The Americans used the intel

to calculate the weight of the spacecraft

and from that, they can

work out the size and weight

of the m*ssile the Soviets

are using to launch it.

It's just the kind of detailed intelligence

the Americans need to

blast ahead in the space race.

And on August 10th,

they launch a corona spy satellite

that orbits 17 times around the earth.

The superpower space

race becomes a sprint

to land a man on the lunar surface.

But both nations have

other plans for the moon

that are so shocking they

remain secret for 40 years.

Throughout the 1950s and '60s,

we lived under constant

fear of a nuclear attack.

You are, every day,

being fed a steady diet of

you need to be terrified

that the world's going to end next week.

There are a lot of outrageous headlines

during this time period.

The one that caught the attention

of the American public the most was

"They'll b*mb the moon."

It's a headline that just looks like

it came straight out of a comic book.

The news has the

white house in a panic.

Are the Russians really

going to go through with this,

or is it just a wild rumor?

For the American military, this is no joke.

It responds in 1958 by

launching secret project a119.

The U.S. air force calls upon

12 of the country's leading

astrophysicists to take part in

a highly sensitive assignment.

The team includes a young

graduate named Carl sagan,

in the days before he was a

world-renowned astronomer.

The plan is simple.

If the Russians really are planning

to hit the moon with a nuclear

weapon, then guess what?

America needs to

beat them to the punch.

One side is planning something insane,

the other side has to match it.

But the U.S. has a challenge.

There's no point in nuking

the moon if no one can see it.

The moon has no atmosphere.

That blast will not produce

the iconic mushroom cloud

that we expect from a nuclear expl*si*n.

They come up with a solution.

Detonate the b*mb along

the moon's Terminator line,

the border between where

the shadow meets the light.

So that bright flash

of light will be visible

to the naked eye and

the resulting cloud of dust

and debris that's kicked

up by the nuclear weapon

is going to be illuminated by the sun.

With a key problem solved,

the American team is ready

in the event the president says go.

In 1958, in perhaps

the most surreal contest

of the space race, American

and Soviet scientists

compete to hit the moon

with a nuclear b*mb.

The question is

will either side blow up

the earth in the process?

If the nuclear payload is

too heavy for the rocket,

the rocket could fall back to

earth and the b*mb detonates.

The big event suddenly becomes

a tragedy on a massive scale

and possibly the start of a nuclear w*r.

But the risk of apocalypse isn't enough

to make the U.S. pull the plug.

The team puts forward this plan

to use a w25 warhead,

which is a smaller device,

but crucially, it will still

be visible from earth.

Problem solved. All

systems are ready to go.

The science works.

Are they actually going to do this?

At the last minute,

there's one more concern

that throws plans into a tailspin.

The nuclear fallout could contaminate

the moon's surface for years.

Which means nobody can go up there.

And that's a big problem

because landing a man

on the moon is looking

more and more scientifically possible.

The U.S. realizes that

stepping on the moon

is a bigger win than blowing it up.

In January 1959,

project a119 is canceled.

And the Soviets also

come to their senses.

That doesn't mean

the space race is over.

The next goal?

Be the first to set up a

permanent base on the moon.

It won't be easy, but in

1959, the U.S. military

launches project horizon

to accomplish the goal.

The moon is an extremely

hostile environment.

The temperature range is huge.

In the sunlight, it can reach

up to 225 degrees fahrenheit,

while in the dark, it

can drop to minus 243.

Plus, the thin atmosphere means

that there is no protection

from cosmic radiation

and there's no protection

from meteorites.

So the safest place is

beneath the lunar surface.

This moon base is planned to consist

of an underground network of tubes.

And they serve as living quarters,

storage, lab space, and the entire facility

will be powered by nuclear reactors.

The move itself will

be a massive operation.

The proposal calls for

about 147 saturn launches

to get not only the

materials up to the moon,

but also the things that will

become the space station

and the crew themselves.

This will take ten years

to do and cost $6 billion.

In today's money, that's $64 billion.

$64 billion.

Why would the government

consider spending an

unthinkable sum of money

building an outpost on the moon?

Classified documents released in 2014

provide the answer.

The Americans know that

the Soviets intend to build

their own moon base,

and they do not want to be

neighbors with these guys.

The Soviets have the

momentum in this space race,

and there's a sense that

the moon is up for grabs,

and they want to claim it.

The Soviet initiative is called zvezda,

which translates as star.

The Soviet designs are

very similar to project horizon.

But there's a little bit more

emphasis on comforts.

They put in video screens

displaying Russian vistas

to comfort homesick cosmonauts.

The Soviets build a prototype

and they stick a group

of cosmonauts in it

for a year as a simulation.

But the U.S. is planning

more than a lunar land grab.

The true purpose of project horizon

is to turn the moon into

an American fortress.

The first one to colonize the moon

could also be the first

one to weaponize it.

The moon's distance from the earth

makes an outpost difficult

to attack and easy to defend.

They even have plans for

armed combat on the moon.

I'm talking about astronauts

armed with weapons

on the surface of the

moon sh**ting it out.

During the cold w*r, it was

a competition to dream up

what's the worst thing

that our enemy can do

and how can we counter it?

And it just led to doing crazy things

or planning crazy things.

Fortunately, lunar

combat never breaks out.

In 1959, project horizon is shelved

by a newly-formed agency,

the dream of militarization of the moon

is over, at least for now.

It's 1960, and as the

contest for space continues,

the Soviets want to

land a knockout punch.

They build a rocket

powered by a new kind of fuel

called devil's venom.

It will end in tragedy.

In October of 1960, an

American news story breaks

about a Soviet rocket engineer's death.

Mitrofan nedelin is a highly decorated

military commander and he's

known as the chief of rockets.

According to the Soviet press release,

he died the previous

day in an air accident.

As Russia mourns an important leader,

the CIA investigates his death.

But it finds no record

of a Soviet air crash.

And the secret report

is full of suspicious gaps.

According to the report,

something catastrophic happened.

70 coffins have been delivered

to a Russian space center.

It's clear the Soviet space program

has experienced a disaster.

But what kind?

Rumors start bouncing

around about nedelin's death.

Some say that it was an air crash.

Some say that it was a fatal expl*si*n.

The one thing that

everyone can agree on

is that it happened in

southern Kazakhstan,

the location of the Soviets'

biggest m*ssile launch site.

The events remain a

mystery for 39 years.

Then a former space officer

decides it's finally safe to come clean.

At the Russian cosmodrome,

chief nedelin is developing

a top-secret new m*ssile, the r-16.

Now, it's a space rocket,

but its purpose has nothing

to do with space exploration.

The r-16 is basically a super weapon.

It's actually an intercontinental

ballistic m*ssile designed

to hit long-range targets.

The weapon enters space,

then falls back to earth

to strike its targets.

It has a range of almost 7,000 miles,

carrying a 5-to 6-megaton

nuclear warhead.

This could decimate the

United States from Russia.

The Soviet union wants

to launch this m*ssile

for the first time on the 43rd anniversary

of the Russian revolution.

It's all symbolism, but the Soviets wanted

to send shock waves about

Russian power around the world

with this new weapon.

It's never been tested

and nedelin is under

increasing pressure to launch it.

Nedelin has hundreds of engineers

working at this ferocious

pace to meet this deadline.

It's a dangerous environment.

The r-16 requires a highly volatile fuel

that's known as devil's venom.

It's so corrosive that

as soon as you put it in the fuel tanks,

it starts to literally

eat away at the rocket.

As the test date approaches,

there are problems with the rocket,

but Soviet scientists

don't want to admit failure.

They want to hit this deadline,

so they keep pressing forward.

On the morning of the

test, the 100-foot-high r-16

is fueled with devil's

venom, ready for launch.

Things start to go wrong right away.

Part of the electrics short-circuit.

Chief nedelin and his staff

are supposed to leave the launch area.

They're just milling around

the launch pad and the m*ssile,

violating every safety protocol,

and the m*ssile begins to spit out sparks

and then it begins to

spit out devil's venom.

What happens next is captured on film,

but the shocking images

are suppressed for 30 years.

The electrical issue sparks the fuel,

which bursts the fuel tanks

and triggers this

earth-shattering expl*si*n.

Anyone near the rocket

was k*lled instantly.

Anyone else had to try to escape

this mass of flames and toxic gas.

But they were all trapped in

the area by a security fence.

Some workers burned to death.

Others died from inhaling fumes.

It was an absolute disaster.

Chief nedelin, along with

many important engineers,

are k*lled.

It's a horrific failure.

In the aftermath, survivors

and relatives of the dead

are ordered to describe

the tragedy as a plane crash.

It's one of the many fatal

accidents that affected

the space program, covered

up by the government.

The exact number of

people who lost their lives

while working on the

Soviet space program

remains unknown to this day.

For six years, the U.S.

and the Soviet union

invest billions on deep

space competition.

Then, in 1963, the U.S.

seems to change tack.

The air force announces

the first-ever space lab.

Called the manned orbiting laboratory,

or mol, it will be launched

to benefit all humanity.

The U.S. develop and

test a two-man operated

scientific research station.

It's designed to remain in orbit

150 miles above the earth's surface,

is 60 feet long, with a

laboratory and a living space.

A program designed to evaluate

man's performance in space

over extended periods of time.

The design team comes up

with incredible innovations.

They develop the next generation

of flexible space suits.

The laboratory simulator becomes part

of NASA's future projects,

as does the mol's

waste generation system.

The individuals who trained on the mol

all later went on to be the pioneers

who manned some of the

early space shuttle missions.

The project's greatest

technical breakthrough

is its own giant camera.

The camera is the size of a car.

It uses an external mirror

that is as tall as a man.

It is described as the perfect tool

for conducting scientific studies of earth.

Things like tracking

tectonic plates or air pollution

or studying the polar caps.

All to benefit humankind.

The benefits seem endless.

In November 1966,

the first prototype is

ready for test launch.

All launch commit lights are green.

T-minus 10 seconds.

The mol enters orbit

and remains in contact

with the earth for 30 days.

It's a huge success.

But behind all the excitement

hides a stunning secret.

In 2015, the military

declassifies documents that

expose the science project

as an elaborate cover story.

The real intent of the camera,

to spy on the Russians.

Since 1960, the American military

has been monitoring

Russia's nuclear capabilities

from surveillance satellites.

Photographs from space

of value to strategic intelligence

completely revolutionized

the intelligence process.

After the cameras take the pictures,

the film needs to be

processed back on earth.

By that point, it could

be too late to react.

What good is intel on an enemy attack

if it arrives too late to respond?

One solution is a spy camera

operated by astronauts.

The crew on the mol could

actually direct the camera

at exactly what they

wanted to take a picture of.

They can report what they are looking at,

and then the crew back on earth

knows exactly what

photos they'll be getting.

From its orbit between 150 to 170 miles,

it can resolve places and

objects 9,000 feet across.

That's easily big enough to get detail

from military installations

and other really important sites

that the United States is trying to spy on.

The camera works, but at a huge price.

The mol costs a whopping $13 billion.

It was too expensive, and

the evolution of technology

was making modern day

satellites better equipped

to carry out the same operation

that the mol was supposed to carry out.

The mol is mothballed

after just one flight.

But there is one more twist in this tale.

The cover story that the

mol will make discoveries

for the benefit of the

planet ultimately comes true.

Technology from the mol

would be used in "sky lab,"

america's first space station.

Launched in may 1973,

it proves humans can live

in space for weeks at a time.

The space race was never just about

getting a man on the moon.

It was about fighting wars on earth.

In 1966, the Soviets test a

weapon of mass destruction

that can dodge america's

early warning system

by using the physics of space.

By 1961, the U.S. is protecting itself

by building a network of giant radars

that can detect incoming

weapons launched from Russia.

If the Soviets are going

to attack the United States

via m*ssile launches, they're going to fly

those missiles on the most direct route,

and that's over the north pole.

The radar system gives

the U.S. a big advantage.

It has time to respond.

It would give them 20 minutes.

20 minutes doesn't sound like much,

but that would be enough for us

to get a retaliatory strike underway.

For the Soviets, this warning

system poses a big problem.

They no longer have the capability

to unleash a secret, decisive attack.

Now the Soviets need to

find a new way to attack.

If they could launch an

attack from someplace else,

the Americans would

not be able to detect them

and we won't be prepared for it,

and so they come up

with this brilliant idea.

The Soviets have already

launched satellites into space.

Why not do the same

with a nuclear b*mb?

And it's called the

fractional orbital bombardment system.

The idea is simple and terrifying.

The m*ssile enters

orbit, circles the planet,

and can be directed to strike

in any direction at any time.

The way the system works

is it's launched into orbit,

and then it just waits.

Once the signal is given to attack

It leaves orbit, enters

earth's atmosphere,

and then it releases its warheads.

And what's so deadly is that

they're very close to the target.

It could drop a nuclear

weapon on us at any point.

And in this way, the Soviet union would

win the chess game and get checkmate.

That is terrifying.

At first, the Soviets need

to test to see if it works.

In the bleak midwinter

in the Kazakhstan desert,

the Soviets launched

their brand-new m*ssile.

It's programmed to land

4,000 miles away in kamchatka.

To avoid destroying northeast Russia,

the tests are conducted

without a warhead.

The fobs tests begin to

go wrong immediately.

The missiles go off target,

they break apart in the air,

they rain down on parts of the earth.

The embarrassing setbacks threatened

to derail the project.

The mechanics of rerouting the m*ssile

into its attack position

are difficult to perfect.

But the Soviets keep pushing

and the m*ssile improves

with each launch.

In the summer of 1967,

American spies deliver

a highly classified report

with news the Pentagon

has been dreading.

The secret orbital m*ssile actually works.

The successful tests

travel across the south pole,

but most importantly,

they dodge those arctic radar systems.

The test is non-nuclear,

but it provides a powerful

proof of concept that they can do it.

And if they decide to do it,

what they're going to

swing toward the earth

is a 5-megaton

strategic nuclear weapon.

5 megatons is not going to look pretty

if it's directed at southern California.

In November 1967, the

Soviets unveil their new m*ssile

at a red square parade,

announcing they can deliver a

nuke to anywhere in the world.

Their secret weapon

is no longer a secret.

The Soviets have created

something so frightening

that the UN steps in.

In 1967, both superpowers

signed the outer space treaty,

which prohibits the placement

of nuclear weapons in orbit.

But that doesn't stop the Soviets

finding new opportunities,

like arming a space

station with a secret Cannon.

The Soviet military is in

the middle of developing

a space station, the almaz,

and they want it in orbit

as soon as possible.

But NASA is ahead of the

game with the imminent launch

of their "sky lab" space station.

You've got Russian space stations,

American space stations.

What happens if they eventually meet?

And then if they meet,

what happens if that

contact is not friendly?

The Soviets don't take any chances.

They set up a highly

classified military project

to prepare for enemy attacks in space

by arming the "almaz 2" space station

with a fully-functioning space Cannon.

They approach a

Soviet weapons designer

to create a g*n that can fire in space.

Normal a*tillery is really heavy.

And weight is at a

premium in space flight,

so they needed something a lot lighter.

The Soviet space engineers

decide to adapt an

autocannon, the rikhter r-23.

It's the fastest firing

single-barrel Cannon

ever used by the Soviet air force,

dispatching 2,500 rounds per minute.

The r-23 was designed

for the first Soviet supersonic b*mber,

so it's already compact and lightweight.

It's also brutally effective.

You've got 23-millimeter rounds that are

punching these holes from a mile away.

So if it can do that on earth,

it's going to do enough

to cause serious damage

to any American space

station that tries to approach.

But fitting a g*n to a spaceship

is a little different from

fitting one to a plane.

On a plane, you have a rotating turret,

and the g*n can be

turned to follow the target

and to sh**t it down from any angle.

But the engineers can't

figure a way to achieve this

in a space vehicle.

The Cannon has to be fixed

in place, so for the

operator to line up the target,

they'd have to pivot

the entire space station,

which is a big problem if

the target is moving at speed.

And there's another challenge.

When the Cannon

fires It's going to recoil.

And that's a huge problem in space.

When it's fired in zero gravity,

the recoil could inadvertently

force the orbiting space

station well off course.

There's only one way to be sure.

In 1974, the Soviets

conduct a secret live test.

The Soviets launch an

almaz that has a g*n on it.

The crew spends about

three weeks in orbit

running various tests,

and then they go home

because the Soviets don't

want to have a crew on board

in case the test of this

g*n goes badly wrong.

The crew's off the vessel,

but the space station is still in orbit.

It's time to test the Cannon.

Officials on the ground fire

the g*n by remote control.

They sh**t it once.

They sh**t it twice.

They sh**t it three times.

It's the first time a g*n has

ever been fired in space.

But firing a g*n in space

has unexpected downsides.

If you miss your target,

that b*llet would have so much

energy and momentum behind it

that it would potentially keep going.

There could still be Russian

b*ll*ts orbiting the earth.

The test is never repeated

and the g*n is decommissioned

and stored secretly for 40 years.

It's a weapon that many people

didn't even believe existed.

Then in 2015, a Russian TV show

visits a private military collection

and the almaz space Cannon

is finally revealed to the world.

In 1983, a final showdown

of the space race begins

when Ronald Reagan announces a plan

to put laser g*ns in space.

It's called the strategic

defense initiative.

Most people know it as star wars,

and Russia strikes back

with a plan of its own.

My fellow Americans,

thank you for sharing

your time with me tonight.

Tonight, we're launching an

effort which holds the promise

of changing the course of human history.

Ronald Reagan makes

this announcement

that shocks the world.

He's launching a

strategic defense initiative.

The plan is to launch

a network of satellites

armed with defensive lasers,

lasers that can sh**t

down Russian missiles.

If a laser could sh**t down a m*ssile

before it ever reached the homeland,

it would make all nuclear weapons

Impotent and obsolete.

The program requires

radical new technology

that doesn't even exist yet.

Critics around the

world started to see this

as a science fiction tale.

So Reagan's program

started to be called

the star wars program.

The western media poked fun.

But the reaction in

Moscow is deadly serious.

When the Soviets found

out about Reagan's plan

to put a laser in space,

they see it totally different.

What they see is a chance

for the Americans to launch

nuclear weapons against Russia,

but then the laser would incapacitate

only Russian nuclear

warheads in response.

They see it as a

one-sided threat that doesn't

nullify the nuclear arms

race, but instead intensifies it.

So they go about

creating their own platform.

If america is planning star wars,

then the Soviets must find an answer.

They set up a secret project

to build a space battle

station armed with lasers.

Within a year of Reagan's

"star wars" speech,

Soviet scientists are commissioned

to provide a laser capable of

destroying American satellites.

This 1 million-watt

laser is the first weapon

on their planned orbital

weapons platform,

essentially a space station

that is armed with

cutting-edge weaponry.

It's a radical new technology.

No one has put a laser in space before.

The mysterious weapon

is called "polyus skif,"

which roughly translates

to north pole barbarian.

Whatever the name, it's a k*ller.

The "polyus skif" is massive.

It's two tractor trailers

long and weighs 80 tons.

It requires a huge rocket to launch it.

The Soviet space laser is way ahead

of Reagan's star wars,

and it's a potential game-changer.

Some call it a Battlestar

that will weaponize space.

They've essentially created a death star.

A real death star.

In 1987, it's ready

to be launched into orbit and tested.

But there's been a change at the kremlin.

The Soviet union has a new leader

who's looking to slow

down the space race.

Mikhail gorbachev has

publicly proposed an end

to the development of space weapons.

Because he's promising

to reduce the cold w*r,

the development of a space-based laser

is going to blow a hole in peace talks.

But gorbachev doesn't

want to pull the plug

on "polyus" quite yet.

The Soviet union has already

sunk a lot of money into this,

so the launch is going to go ahead.

But he orders them to

not test the laser in space.

It's not a good look.

On launch day,

gorbachev's so concerned

about western reaction to the

laser that he bans any photos.

All the journalists and photographers

could only stand on the

opposite side of the rocket.

That was gorbachev's solution

to making sure that history

only told the tale of what they could see,

which was a clean

rocket going into space,

when in fact, there

was a covert death ray

on the other side of the rocket

that was trying to be hidden.

- The launch goes ahead

- As discreetly as possible.

The day that the "polyus" is

set to launch, it's a big day.

The officials are out there.

The launch proceeds.

And it's looking good initially.

But then

Something goes terribly

wrong, spins out of control,

plunges back to earth,

burning up in the atmosphere.

Everything is lost.

It's a complete disaster.

In the end, both programs failed.

Reagan ran out of funding

for his star wars program,

and the idea of space-based lasers

still remains a thing of science fiction.

But the question is for how long?

In 1991, the collapse of the Soviet union

puts an end to the cold

w*r phase of the space race.

But the contest to control

deep space is far from over.

New players from SpaceX in america

to China, India, and Japan

are looking to the moon.

And beyond.

From covert plans to nuke the moon

to tragic attempts to cover

up shocking disasters,

competition in deep space

will continue to inspire strange,

terrible and sometimes

inspiring missions.