ShortHand: The Space Race

**SPEAKER_2** (0:12)
Hello.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:13)
Hello.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:14)
We're going to space.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:16)
Something I have always wanted to do, but I'm scared to do.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:20)
Would you still do it? Yeah.
Yeah.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:22)
I would do it.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:23)
What would be your upward budget limit?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:25)
Oh, I've got to pay for it.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:27)
Yeah.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:27)
Oh, fuck.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:28)
No such thing as a free lunch, my friend.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:30)
I thought somebody was just going to Katy Perry me.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:32)
No.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:32)
And just give me... I thought I was going to be the next Lauren Sanchez and marry Jeff Bezos and get to go up in that fucking... What was it? Blue Horizon? Is that what it was called? I don't know.
But no, then everyone will just hate me on the Internet.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:47)
You can do it in secret.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:48)
I can do it in secret.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:49)
But you have to pay for it. Or you can do it for free, but everybody knows.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:53)
Oh, I do it for free. Okay. And I should be like, you. I went to space, bitches. No. Oh my God. If it was free, I'd totally go. Paying for it, I don't know. It's a bit tricky right now. But yeah, I would love to go.
I'd love to see the Earthrise.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:09)
Well, apparently, it's quite common for people who have actually been to space to become like...

**SPEAKER_1** (1:15)
Disillusioned.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:16)
Yes.
But really hardline environmentalists, because they're like, I've seen it. I've seen how amazing it is. I've seen it in its entirety.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:25)
Isn't that interesting? I'd feel like what would different personalities become if they went to space? Because I suspect some people also might become quite nihilistic because you're like, I've been to space. Like none of this fucking matters, but just a blob in nothing.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:38)
I mean, I already feel like that when I haven't been to space.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:40)
Quite. Or would you become like a super believer in something because you're like, it was so magical. This must be divine. I don't know. It's interesting. It's interesting what would happen to you.
So do you think you would become more nihilistic?

**SPEAKER_2** (1:54)
Don't think that's possible.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:57)
I don't know what I'd become. Just be like, cool, tic.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:03)
Anyway, we're only having this conversation because of the space race.
When two rival camps of human beings don't like each other, usually they go to war to hash it out. It's always been that way ever since homo sapiens started throwing rocks at each other to secure the darkest cave or whatever. That is, except for a few decades in the 20th century when weapons got so advanced that the world's two strongest superpowers had to find some other way of outdoing each other. And they chose to do that by going to space.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:38)
In the 50s, this idea was frankly pure insanity, the idea of going to space had us. The very concept that a human being could stand on the moon felt about as realistic as time travel or teleportation. And now, here were the US and the USSR, sworn ideological enemies of the highest order, entering into the world's most consequential pissing contest, saying that they could shoot a man into space and get their flag on the moon.
And they did it. Or they didn't, and Kubrick filmed the whole thing in a bunker in New Mexico. This is the ShortHand.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:18)
World War II was the biggest war there had ever been. More advanced warfare, using more troops across more of the world than any conflict in history.
And by 1942, it was getting down to the wire. So both sides decided that if they were going to win it, it had to be by developing a bomb so enormous, so landscape-ruiningly catastrophic, that the enemy would have no choice but to surrender.
You've seen Oppenheimer, the war ended, the Americans won, but after the war ended, the atomic bomb still existed. Before 1945, wars could only be fought over long, protracted campaigns with bombs and gunfire hurled at the other side in strategic ways for years until one side admitted defeat. After 1945, we lived in a world in which a head of state could destroy an entire city at the touch of a button. So, the world had a big meeting, and everyone promised each other that they'd never, ever use them.

**SPEAKER_1** (4:29)
But, just because the goodies won doesn't mean that the world was now all buddy-buddy. The US and Soviet Union both considered themselves to represent the new post-war world order, and they were vying for dominance. So, not wanting their enemies to have more bombs than them, even if they weren't really allowed to use them, they both scrabbled to build and stockpile as many nuclear weapons as possible. Now, the unfortunate truth was that during the war, Germany had been way ahead of us on long-range missiles. The Nazis had been pummeling us with V2 missiles for years, while the US was still scrabbling to get them off the ground.