The Space Race
Short History Of...
00:00
The Death of a Chimpanzee
Glushko had gone off to work with a guy called Yangle to develop a competitive launch system. But by October of 1960, the R16 was being fueled with hypergolic propellants which were incredibly dangerous. There was this devastating explosion on the launch pad in October 1960 that blew up on R16 and killed 126 people. The Americans realized they were potentially about to lose another political one-up by putting a human into space. In January 1961, no cutie redstone tube is about to attempt a launch into suborbital flight. Ham will help von Braun measure reaction times in space. That is if he survives the launch.
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