Space

The start of the Cuban revolution & the launch of Apollo 8

The phrase “history is human” was coined by two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian David McCullough. He says “History is about life. It isn’t just about dates and quotations from obscure treaties and the like; it’s about people”, which is exactly what Cold War Conversations is about. I discovered this phrase listening to the History … Read more

The Cold War handshake in the heavens – the Apollo-Soyuz mission

On 17 July 1975 the first manned international space mission, carried out jointly by the United States and the Soviet Union. Millions of people around the world watched on television as a United States Apollo module docked with a Soviet Union Soyuz capsule. The project, and its memorable handshake in the heavens, was a symbol … Read more

The forgotten cosmonaut

This week it’s the 60th anniversary of the flight of Gherman Titov on Vostok 2. The forgotten 2nd cosmonaut overshadowed by the exploits of his friend Yuri Gagarin. Titov’s 25.3 hours and 17 orbits flight was much more ambitious than Gagarin’s and more dangerous. It was also a very political flight, intending to distract the … Read more

Yuri Gagarin – the first human in space

9.07 a.m., April 12, 1961. A top-secret rocket site in the USSR. A young Russian sits inside a tiny capsule on top of the Soviet Union’s most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile – originally designed to carry a nuclear warhead – and blasts into the skies. His name is Yuri Gagarin. And he is about to … Read more

76 – The early days of the US Space program and origins of GPS

  Richard Easton is the co-author of GPS Declassified which examines the development of GPS or Sat Nav as some of us call it now, from its secret, Cold War military roots. Roger Easton, Richard’s father, assisted in laying the foundations for the GPS system.  However, Roger Easton also worked on the early US space program and … Read more

72 – Chasing the Moon – The Apollo 11 Moon Landing

  In a world divided by the ideological struggles of the Cold War, the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement, more than one-fifth of the people on the planet paused to watch the live transmission of the Apollo 11 mission. To watch as humanity took a giant leap forward exactly 50 years ago. Now … Read more