In this final episode of this miniseries, we get a sense of the magnitude of the Soviet success in space by going through all of their firsts. It's a long list! Thank you so much for listening to this podcast, and I really hope to hear back fro

Episode 8 - Setbacks

Dec 30th, 2021 28m 12s

Episode 8 - SetbacksThe Soviets paid a price for all their firsts in space, and there were victims to their secrets on both sides of the Space Race. But if we remember them and talk about them now, we do the right thing. Listen to the story a

Episode 7 - To Venus and Mars

Dec 23rd, 2021 20m 5s

Episode 7 - To Venus and MarsThe Soviets hoped to put a red cosmonaut on the Red Planet, and this may have lost them the race to the Moon. But their unmanned missions to Venus and Mars were astounding successes, especially in light of the lim

Episode 6 - The First Woman in Space

Dec 16th, 2021 20m 15s

In the Soviet Union, everything was different -- even sexism. Sending the first woman to space was a natural fact of Communism, but like everything else in such societies, egalitarianism had a dual, paradoxical nature. Listen to the story of Va

Episode 5 - First Man in Space

Dec 9th, 2021 53m 31s

Until April 12, 1961, nobody had known what the outer space would do to a human being. Some people thought that it would cause insanity; others, blindness. But the first human ever to go there returned home with only the slight side effect of t

Episode 4 - To the Moon

Dec 2nd, 2021 31m 10s

Episode 4 - To the MoonThere was a time before July 12, 1969 when the race to the Moon was still very much on -- and the Soviets were winning. Listen to the story of how the Soviets lost the Moon race by winning almost every milestone!My na

Episode 3 - Space Dogs

Nov 25th, 2021 20m 15s

The Americans had sent fruit flies to space, and figuring that insects aren't all that closed to humans, the Soviets reused a Sputnik capsule to experiment with dogs instead. Some lived, some didn't, and the most famous of them was Laika, the f

Episode 2 - Sputnik

Nov 18th, 2021 17m 36s

The first thing humanity ever sent to Earth's orbit was a shiny metal sphere with four whiskers, and it rocked the world. It was called Sputnik 1, and it led President Eisenhower to declare that "the Soviets had surpassed America and the rest o

Episode 1 - The Space Race from the Soviet Side

Nov 11th, 2021 16m 10s

Episode 1 - The Space Race from the Soviet SideThe story of space exploration begins with bombs -- because of course it does. Listen how the Soviets went from appropriating Nazi research to creating the biggest rocket ever made at its time.

Introduction

Nov 7th, 2021 8m 7s

Welcome to the Soviet Space Saga, a podcast of nine episodes (plus an introduction) where I tell one of the most fantastic stories in modern history!My name is Alex Deva. I am a novelist, and I work as an IT Architect. I live in Sweden. My we