The history of space travel

The History Hour

BBC

History, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 22 March 2025

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Max Pearson presents a collection of this week's Witness History episodes from the BBC World Service. This week we’re looking at the history of space travel, including the 60th anniversary of the first ever space-walk by Russian cosmonaut Alexei Leonov. Also, the speech that would have been given if the Apollo 11 astronauts didn’t make their way back from the moon; the founding of the European Space Agency and how Brazil came back from tragedy to launch their fist successful rocket. The Sky at Night’s Dr Ezzy Pearson joins us to tell us about the history of robot’s in space and the Soviet Union’s exploration of Venus. Contributors: Archive of Alexei Leonov – the first man to walk in space Dr Ezzy Pearson – Features Editor for the BBC’s Sky at Night magazine Felix Palmerio – engineer for Brazil’s space programme Archive of William Safire – speechwriter for US President Richard Nixon Bill Holland – former historian for NASA Andrea Amaldi – grandson of Edoardo Amaldi, one of the founding fathers of the European Space Agency

(Photo: Alexei Leonov on his first space walk in 1965. Credit: Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:26.4	Good bad billionaire.
0:27.4	Listen first on BBC Sounds.
0:34.7	Hello and welcome to The History Hour podcast from the BBC World Service with me, Max Pearson,
0:40.3	the past brought to life by those who were there. Now, there's been a lot of coverage this past week
0:45.2	of the return to Earth of Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams. The two astronauts who found their
0:50.7	planned eight-day stay on the International Space Station extended to nine months.
0:56.6	So we thought we'd give you a bit of historical context to that event
0:59.5	with some stories from the history of space travel,
1:02.9	including the tragedy and the tension surrounding Brazil's effort to join the Space Club.
1:08.2	You have to wait for the countdown and then to see many people just for the takeoff.
1:14.5	They are happy.
1:15.9	They clap their hands and so on.
1:18.6	Well, I wait until the mission is finished.
1:22.0	Also, how the dream of a European space agency first began to evolve back in the 1950s. We'll recall the famous
1:29.1	US-Soviet handshake in space in the 1970s. Plus, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin returned
1:35.6	after being the first on the moon, but we hear the speech that was written in case they didn't.
	...

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