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    The Race to Space: Countdown to Liftoff (Epic Fails #2)
    The Race to Space: Countdown to Liftoff (Epic Fails #2)
    The Race to Space: Countdown to Liftoff (Epic Fails #2)
    Ebook163 pages2 hours

    The Race to Space: Countdown to Liftoff (Epic Fails #2)

    By Ben Thompson, Erik Slader and Tim Foley

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    About this ebook

    In this second installment of the Epic Fails series, explore the many failures that made up the Race to Space, paving the way for humanity’s eventual success at reaching the stars.

    Today, everyone is familiar with Neil Armstrong’s famous words as he first set foot on the moon: “one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.” He made it look easy, but America’s journey to the moon was anything but simple. In 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the world’s first satellite, into orbit, America had barely crossed the starting line of the great Space Race. Later that year, our first attempt was such a failure that the media nicknamed it “Kaputnik.” Still, we didn’t give up. With each failure, we gleaned valuable information about what went wrong, and how to avoid it in the future. So we tried again. And again. And each time we failed, we failed a little bit better.

    The Epic Fails series by Erik Slader and Ben Thompson explores the humorous backstories behind a variety of historical discoveries, voyages, experiments, and innovations that didn't go as expected but succeeded nonetheless, showing that many of mankind's biggest success stories are the result of some pretty epic failures indeed.

    This title has Common Core connections.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateJul 10, 2018
    ISBN9781250150639
    The Race to Space: Countdown to Liftoff (Epic Fails #2)
    Author

    Ben Thompson

    Ben Thompson has run the warhammer of a website badassoftheweek.com since 2004, and has written humorous history-related columns for outlets such as Cracked, Fangoria, Penthouse, and the American Mustache Institute. Even though he's never flown a jetpack over the Atlantic Ocean or punched someone so hard that his head exploded, he is considered by many to be the world's foremost expert on badassitude. He is the author of Badass and Badass: The Birth of a Legend.

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      Book preview

      The Race to Space - Ben Thompson

      Begin Reading

      Table of Contents

      About the Authors

      Copyright Page

      Thank you for buying this

      Roaring Brook Press ebook.

      To receive special offers, bonus content,

      and info on new releases and other great reads,

      sign up for our newsletters.

      Or visit us online at

      us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

      For email updates on Erik Slader, click here.

      For email updates on Ben Thompson, click here.

      For email updates on Tim Foley, click here.

      The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

      To the future

      Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.

      —John F. Kennedy

      INTRODUCTION

      Failure Is Not an Option

      In 1970, Flight Director Gene Kranz told his team at NASA’s Mission Control that failure is not an option. They needed to bring a group of stranded astronauts home from lunar orbit. If Mission Control didn’t solve the problem—and fast—the astronauts would die.

      But failure is always an option, of course, and there probably isn’t a worse place for something to go wrong than in the vacuum of outer space. A human can only survive a few seconds out there without a space suit, and in the 1960s and ’70s, the only thing that separated brave American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts from certain death was a thin sheet of metal and a bunch of technology that looked as if it came from a cheesy sci-fi movie.

      As of 2018, eighteen people have died in spaceflight accidents over the course of history. Thirteen more died during training or in practice missions. The dangers are real. The possibility for failure is always there. But heroic astronauts around the world face these dangers head-on, refusing to let the fear of failure stop them from trying to accomplish incredible things.

      The intrepid men and women who go on these missions have all the bravery of the adventurers, explorers, and pioneers who first made important discoveries right here on planet Earth. For them, it was never about violence or conquest, but rather about finding new worlds, exploring the depths of space, and furthering scientific understanding. And, hopefully, using that knowledge to make life better for humanity and our planet as a whole.

      Many of the first astronauts had no idea if their new technology could actually carry them into space. The first time anyone had crossed the Atlantic Ocean in an airplane was in 1919, and just forty years later people were orbiting the Earth in outer space. That’s not a very long time! These pilots (and most of the early astronauts were pilots) were using new tech like jet engines and rockets, fearlessly strapping themselves onto a few thousand gallons of jet fuel and blasting off through the stratosphere at thousands of miles per hour.

      But getting the first men into outer space required more than just the astronauts—it was a team effort that required a massive number of people. On the ground, mechanics, scientists, and engineers all worked together, doing incredibly complex mathematics (by hand), and building spaceships out of materials that you could only find in a junkyard today.

      The story of the space program isn’t about failure not being an option; it’s about humanity coming together, knowing full well that failure is always an option, and then persevering anyway.

      CHAPTER 1

      It’s Just Rocket Science!

      1920

      How many things have been denied one day, only to become realities the next! —Jules Verne, From the Earth to the Moon

      Have you ever looked up at the moon and wondered how far away it really is? To the naked eye, it sometimes looks as if you could just reach out and grab it, but the moon is actually 232,271 miles away from us! What’s even crazier is that between 1969 and 1972, twelve men actually made it to the surface of the moon and back! That said, it wasn’t exactly a smooth journey from the Earth to the moon.

      As it turns out, the hardest part of space travel is actually getting off Earth. So far, the most efficient way to escape Earth’s gravity is to use rocket propulsion, which is easier said than done.

      The first rockets were invented when Chinese alchemists accidentally discovered gunpowder while trying to create an elixir of life. In 1232, the Chinese fought the Mongols at the Battle of Kai-Keng and used rockets on the battlefield for the first time in history. The Chinese Army built weapons that looked (and acted) like gigantic bottle rockets and launched them at the attacking Mongol Army. The rockets weren’t superaccurate and probably didn’t do a ton of damage, but the explosions, smoke, and fire were so terrifying that the Mongols turned back and fled!

      And according to legend, during the midsixteenth century, a Chinese official named Wan-Hu wanted to visit the moon. Wan took a wicker chair, strapped forty-seven rockets to it, and planned to use a set of kites to steer himself through the air. On his signal, servants quickly lit the fuses on the rockets, each filled with highly explosive gunpowder. A moment later, a boom louder than thunder sent everyone around diving for cover. When the smoke cleared, there was no sign of Wan-Hu or his trusty chair.

      A depiction of Wan-Hu in his rocket chair, on display at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.

      Needless to say, rocket science has come a long way since then.

      Early rockets were based on a simple concept: an aerodynamic cylinder with two fuel tanks, each with a reactive substance that once combined and ignited would create a chemical reaction. The resulting explosion would be funneled downward to create enough lift to compensate for the rocket’s mass and propel it upward. Simple, right?

      Nope. A metric ton of variables has to be accounted for—including but not limited to temperature, size, weight, design, amount of fuel, durability, weather, etc. The slightest miscalculation could result in catastrophic failure (and in the early days, it often did). In fact, the entire process of perfecting rocket technology is a repeated exercise in failure: make a rocket; launch it; if it blows up, figure out what went wrong; repeat. The scientific method itself is built

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