History UsefulNotes / TheSpaceRace

The start of the Space Race actually dates back to the [[TheThirties 1930s]]. The Treaty of Versailles having banned them from research on cannons, the German Army instead began experimenting with the use of rocket-propelled artillery. Many prominent scientists (most eminently Wernher von Braun) were accordingly recruited into large-scale rocket development in 1932. It was the work of these scientists during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII which eventually led to the creation of the V1 "buzz bomb" (a precursor to the modern cruise missile), and later the infamous [[UsefulNotes/NazisWithGnarlyWeapons V2 rocket]]. The V2, first successfully launched in 1942, became the first man-made object to make it out of Earth's atmosphere. Soon after, it was fitted with a payload of high-explosives and fired at London and other Allied targets, becoming the world's first practical ballistic missile as well.

In 2022, Creator/TomCruise announced his plans to produce a big budget feature length film shot in majority in space with the help of NASA and [=SpaceX=], which would have been the first of that kind. Russians beat him to the punch in 2023 with ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Challenge_(2023_film) The Challenge]]'' (''Вызов''), which has many scenes shot onboard ISS.

In 1967, the US Apollo missions began. The very first, Apollo 1, ended in disaster when a fire broke out in the capsule during a ground test. The "[[ObviousBeta Block 1]]" Command Modules were rife with design problems, including faulty wiring.[[note]]which, wasn't necessarily a Block 1/2 thing - each individual spacecraft was different from one another to a certain degree, and for instance, the first Block 2 spaceraft (CM-101, which flew on Apollo 7) when first shipped had a lot of the same issues that doomed Apollo 1 (flammable materials, inward-opening multi-piece hatch, etc), before getting upgraded. The pre-Apollo 1 spacecraft was dangerous in general, regardless of its production block, even if the Block 1s were considered *more* dangerous.[[/note]] Nominally everything was fireproof, but the capsule used a pure-oxygen atmosphere at greater than sea-level pressure to simulate the vacuum of space, [[MadeOfExplodium soaking the internal materials]] and turning them super-combustible. The three astronauts (Mercury veteran Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Edward White--who had made the first US spacewalk--and space rookie Roger B. Chaffee) all died in the capsule due to smoke inhalation. One of the reasons was that the hatch wouldn't open (it opened ''inward'', which meant that the increased pressure held it shut) and couldn't be blown off by explosive bolts in an emergency (as the flames spread in the capsule, the astronauts attempted to unbolt it from its mountings). Ironically, Grissom himself was responsible for this feature. During his Mercury flight, there had been problems with the hatch. His capsule was lost in the Atlantic and he nearly drowned when the hatch prematurely blew open while it was still in the water. Thus, a "safer" version had been installed on Apollo 1. NASA's technical expertise quickly shone through, as, within ''hours'' of the accident, they had identified the more serious problems that had caused the disaster, and within days, they had solved most of the issues[[note]]in the design process, anyway. The actual manufacturing and correction of parts took longer[[/note]].

In 1967, the US Apollo missions began. The very first, Apollo 1, ended in disaster when a fire broke out in the capsule during a ground test. The "[[ObviousBeta Block 1]]" Command Modules were rife with design problems, including faulty wiring. Nominally everything was fireproof, but the capsule used a pure-oxygen atmosphere at greater than sea-level pressure to simulate the vacuum of space, [[MadeOfExplodium soaking the internal materials]] and turning them super-combustible. The three astronauts (Mercury veteran Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Edward White--who had made the first US spacewalk--and space rookie Roger B. Chaffee) all died in the capsule due to smoke inhalation. One of the reasons was that the hatch wouldn't open (it opened ''inward'', which meant that the increased pressure held it shut) and couldn't be blown off by explosive bolts in an emergency (as the flames spread in the capsule, the astronauts attempted to unbolt it from its mountings). Ironically, Grissom himself was responsible for this feature. During his Mercury flight, there had been problems with the hatch. His capsule was lost in the Atlantic and he nearly drowned when the hatch prematurely blew open while it was still in the water. Thus, a "safer" version had been installed on Apollo 1. NASA's technical expertise quickly shone through, as, within ''hours'' of the accident, they had identified the more serious problems that had caused the disaster, and within days, they had solved most of the issues[[note]]in the design process, anyway. The actual manufacturing and correction of parts took longer[[/note]].

Operation Osoaviakhim (the NKGB analogue to Paperclip) wound up with mostly mid-level engineers and technicians, and a large amount of parts and manufacturing equipment from the manufacturing bases (which mostly ended up in the Soviet sector of Germany). Native rocket researcher and [[MiscarriageOfJustice former gulag resident]] Sergey Korolyov ([[SpellMyNameWithAnS Sergei Korolev]]) was selected [[note]](though "conscripted" may be a better description than "selected"; he did get Colonel rank, though)[[/note]] to turn the massive influx of workers and material into an independent Soviet military rocket program. The USSR was characteristically paranoid about Korolev's identity; he was referred to only as the "Chief Designer" to shield him from US espionage. Even some of his own cosmonauts were unaware of his name prior to his death in 1966.

The ''Venera'' series was continued with an equally successful ''[[PortmanteauSeriesNickname Vega]]'' series (a portmanteau of [=VEnus=]+[[SpellMyNameWithAnS HAlley]]'s Comet[[note]]Standard Russian doesn't have the sound [h], so /g/ frequently stands in because some prominent dialects debuccalize word-initial /g/ to [ɦ] (which is very similar to [h]). This is especially common when the word entered the language in pre-Soviet times (like the comet's name). (Russian translators from the Soviet era and onward prefer to use [x]--usually transcribed as "kh"--for [h].)[[/note]]), utilizing similar hardware, which was aimed at the further study of the Cytherean atmosphere by the means of weather balloons, and, on the second leg of their journey, a flyby of the Comet Halley. Both spacecraft were quite successful, transmitting the first images of a comet's core and spectroscopy measurements of its coma.

In 1967, the US Apollo missions began. The very first, Apollo 1, ended in disaster when a fire broke out in the capsule during a ground test. The "Block 1" Command Modules were rife with design problems, including faulty wiring. Nominally everything was fireproof, but the capsule used a pure-oxygen atmosphere at greater than sea-level pressure to simulate the vacuum of space, [[MadeOfExplodium soaking the internal materials]] and turning them super-combustible. The three astronauts (Mercury veteran Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Edward White--who had made the first US spacewalk--and space rookie Roger B. Chaffee) all died in the capsule due to smoke inhalation. One of the reasons was that the hatch wouldn't open (it opened ''inward'', which meant that the increased pressure held it shut) and couldn't be blown off by explosive bolts in an emergency (as the flames spread in the capsule, the astronauts attempted to unbolt it from its mountings). Ironically, Grissom himself was responsible for this feature. During his Mercury flight, there had been problems with the hatch. His capsule was lost in the Atlantic and he nearly drowned when the hatch prematurely blew open while it was still in the water. Thus, a "safer" version had been installed on Apollo 1. NASA's technical expertise quickly shone through, as, within ''hours'' of the accident, they had identified the more serious problems that had caused the disaster, and within days, they had solved most of the issues[[note]]in the design process, anyway. The actual manufacturing and correction of parts took longer[[/note]].