Short History Of... cover image

The Space Race

Short History Of...

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Von Braun's 90 Days in Space

Vanguard blew up on the pad in spectacular fashion, and this tiny little satellite much smaller than Sputnik ended up in the grass at Cape Canaveral. The press just were merciless. They called it Flopnik and Kaputnik and all kinds of things like that. So they finally relented and turned to von Braun and said, go ahead and see what you can do. In Pasadena, California, at Mission Control, 30-year-old Barbara Paulson is hunched over her light table, tracking Explorer 1's location.

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