The Space Race

by Colin Brake, Patrick Chapman, Richard Hollingham

About This Audible Original
The 1960s space race captured our imaginations and our dreams. Today’s efforts to revitalize and expand space travel is being driven not just by government agencies such as NASA, but also by visionaries such as Richard Branson (Virgin Galactic), Elon Musk (SpaceX), and Jeff Bezos (Blue Origin).

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1969 moon landing, this major documentary-drama series brings to life the past, present, and future of man’s exploration of space. Between 1969 and 1972, twelve Americans walked on the moon. You’ll get to experience the thrill of that era and much, much more.

Narrated by Kate Mulgrew (Emmy Award and Golden Globe nominee for Orange Is the New Black; Obie Award winner for Iphigenia 2.0); TV: Star Trek: Voyager, film: Star Trek: Nemesis), The Space Race uses actual audio, original interviews, dramatic reconstructions, and first-hand accounts to tell the story of mankind’s first amazing steps off our world and onto the lunar surface.

With unprecedented access, The Space Race takes listeners to Virgin Galactic’s space program in the Mojave Desert, features conversations with Buzz Aldrin, Gene Cernan, Sergei Krikalev, Tim Peake, and numerous key players at mission control. This Audible Original and takes you behind the scenes to see how these exciting adventures in outer space came to be.

©2019 Audible, Ltd (P)2019 Audible, Ltd

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Audiobook, Science, Space, Historical, Astronomy

9 pages, Audible Audio

First published July 12, 2019

About the author

Colin Brake is an English television writer and script editor best known for his work for the BBC on programs such as Bugs and EastEnders. He has also written spin-offs from the BBC series Doctor Who. He currently lives and works in Leicester.

Brake began working on EastEnders in 1985 as a writer and script editor, being partly responsible for the introduction of the soap's first Asian characters Saeed and Naima Jeffery. From there, he went on to work as "script executive" on the popular Saturday night action adventure program Bugs, before moving to Channel 5 in 1997 to be "script associate" on their evening soap Family Affairs.

In the early 2000s, Brake wrote episodes of the daytime soaps Doctors and the revival of Crossroads.

Away from television, Brake had his first Doctor Who related writing published as part of Virgin Publishing's Decalog short story collection in 1996. He then had his first novel Escape Velocity published by BBC Books in February 2001 as part of their Eighth Doctor Adventures range based on the television series Doctor Who. At the time, Brake was quoted as saying how appropriate it was that he was now writing for Doctor Who, as he was briefly considered as Eric Saward's replacement as script editor on the show - a job that eventually went to Andrew Cartmel instead.

Brake followed Escape Velocity with the Past Doctor Adventure The Colony of Lies in July 2003, and then with the audio adventure Three's a Crowd from Big Finish Productions in 2005. His Tenth Doctor Adventure The Price of Paradise was released in September 2006. He has also written an audio for their Bernice Summerfield range, and a short story for their Short Trips range.

Reviews

[Boudewijn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first encounter with Audible's new concept of the "Audible Original": a new audio format that offers interviews with past participants, current researchers working on the different space programs and audio from previous missions. And some dramatisation, which I found a little bit corny now and then. Still, detailed and entertaining, this concept promises a lot for the future, and I certainly will be picking up the next one in this format if I so happen to be interested in the Audible catalog.

Anyway, this books starts of with some futuristic scenario, where astronauts are conducting some future training mission. However, in chapter 2 we are already at the start - Germany's V2 rocket program, the USSR with Laika the dog and Youri Gagarin and ultimately the Apollo astronauts on the moon. But it doesn't stop there - apparently there are a lot of nations attempting to land a man on the moon (China for example) which I wasn't aware off and perhaps this will result in a new 'Cold Space War'. Well, always nice to see we might be glued to our television sets in the near future to see some Chinese and its Shenzhou programm waving at us from the moon.

[Charlene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to Kate Mulgrew's excellent narration and Audible's new way of making history feel like a tv show, this audiobook was rather entertaining, while it recounted the history of space exploration. More of this please Audible!

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice summation of human exploration of space past, present, and possible future.

The dramatizations of future scenarios were a little corny, though. They came across as so-so science fiction.

I enjoyed it for what it was.

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a full-production audiobook, blending history and fiction to tell the story of humans and their progress going to space. It is firmly focused on the United States with Russia as the adversary, while in the end being a joint contributor to the International Space Station.

I enjoyed the historical aspect, not so much the fictional portion. It felt displaced and bit hokey to include that. I understand what the authors were trying to do, show where we may go in the far future, but still felt oddly placed with the rest of the book.

Kate Mulgrew was the main narrator and her role was much like a documentary tv show. There were numerous interviews with a multitude of people and voice actors for roles of people who could not be interviewed, such as past presidents or astronauts or scientists who have since died.

Each chapter focused on a specific part of the space history, generally starting with the race to get to the moon. The final chapters dealt with the International Space Station and plans for the future, such as going to Mars. However, this book is already a bit dated as private space ventures were not mentioned other than foreseeing what could happen in the future. Also, nothing was mentioned about Artemis, the plan of the United States returning to the moon, nor any of the other countries who have since gone to the moon. So the book isn’t fully encompassing of human-space ventures.

This was not a quick read for me, as I listened to it off and only mostly when going on road trips. It ended up taking about a year doing it this way. I finally decided to just finish the last bit, not on a road trip. It’s the type of book that it doesn’t matter too much of there are long delays between chapters.

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Do I really need yet another book/documentary/audio production about the Space Race? Well... yes, obviously! While most of the historical stuff was often trodden, quite familiar ground for me, it was a good overview and I did learn some tidbids. What was more interesting to me by far was learning more about recent efforts and future ambitions of various space agencies as well as private companies, especially non-US based efforts (as those are all one ever hears about otherwise). The fictional / fictionalised pieces of dialogue sprinkled throughout this production were a source of some confusion at first, but I eventually came to enjoy them.

[Stephen Heiner · Rating 4 out of 5]

A *very* well-produced series of episodes chronicling men's race to the stars, starting with the V-2s of Nazi Germany under Werner von Braun to the work of SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic to this day. The only downside is the narration by Kate Mulgrew, who is as lifeless now as she was when she was Captain Janeway all those years ago.

[Jim Sharp · Rating 3 out of 5]

It covers a lot of ground. A book that would probably be best for someone fairly new to the history of manned space exploration.

I was not a big fan of the fictional narrations. Its like being on a crappy EPCOT ride.

[Soo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Notes:

Currently on Audible +

The audio production for this was great. However, content wise? It's an interesting supplement for people who are already interested in the topic, but not a good start point for those who are learning about the space race.

[Victor N · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dubious start with a rather unsettling praise of Elon Musk and a nationalistic pride which I worried would color the narrative of history. But after that, the story was excellent.

[Nanuka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting and informative. It was fascinating to listen to original recordings from space missions. The dramatization and fictional dialogues were not my favorite part however.

[Alan (on December semi-hiatus) Teder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Space Non-Fiction with some Science Fiction
Review of the Audible Original audiobook (July 2019)

The Space Race is a 10-part documentary that covers the beginnings of rocketry through to the Cold War race to the moon by the Soviet Union and the USA, the moon landings, the Space Shuttle and International Space Station programs. It includes voice actors to create various scenes some of which are fictional speculative enactments such as a return to the moon in the future by a descendant of Neil Armstrong and a star ship journey to other star systems. Even with the amount of well documented information already in the public domain there was still a interesting variety of earlier historical events which were completely new to me, such as the story of rocket sled tester John Stapp and of the independently funded physiological research testing of potential female astronauts such as Mary Wallace 'Wally' Funk in the Mercury 13 program.

The chapter headings were as follows:
Episode 1 Return to the Moon
Episode 2 Cold War in Space
Episode 3 Space Warriors
Episode 4 Reaching for the Moon
Episode 5 Tragedy to Triumph
Episode 6 For All Mankind
Episode 7 United in Space
Episode 8 Space Shuttle
Episode 9 Home in Space
Episode 10 Infinity and Beyond

The narration by Kate Mulgrew and the performances by the audio actors were all excellent.

The Space Race was originally released in July 2019. It was one of eleven free Audible Originals available to members in July 2020. It is available to everyone for a standard price.

[Debbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of the very few books I would actually listen to again.
I loved the history of the space race between the US and USSR. Listening to the actually transmissions between the astronauts and command control was great. (some of the actor filled in parts were pretty bad!).

Definitely worth the read/listen if you want to learn more about the Apollo missions and the Space Center. Loved it!

[Gilbert Stack · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book, narrated by Kate Mulgrew of Star Trek Voyager fame, walks the reader through the history of the development of the space programs in the U.S. and the USSR with the final chapter being an imagining of an interstellar future for humanity. It’s a credible overview, but nothing special, and I thought that the final chapter was particularly weak, spending more time on imagining philosophical issues with interstellar travel rather than focusing on how it might actually happen.

[Catherine Puma · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Space Race" is an audio documentary-drama series production of the era during which twelve American astronauts went to the moon (1969 - 1972), released in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the first human moon landing. This includes narration of some historical facts, excerpts of command recordings or interviews from the time period, as well as speculative scenes acted out to try and give this production more flavor and originality.

This is fun to listen to, does not take too long, and I definitely recommend to lifelong fans of space exploration.

As advertised in the book description, this work "features conversations with Buzz Aldrin, Gene Cernan, Sergei Krikalev, Tim Peake, and numerous key players at mission control. This Audible Original takes you behind the scenes to see how these exciting adventures in outer space came to be." The strongest parts are when this work explains the history of the Space Race and includes sections of interviews with people who were really there, especially never-before-heard audio and inputs from important, yet underrepresented, figures.

The weakest parts of this audio production are when the content deviates from the facts of what really occurred during this crucial period in man's history. The scenes within aircraft where actors portray conversations between astronauts etc., for which we have no official record of, are so fake and unbelievable. The writing and acting of these scenes are so bad. I just do not see what they bring to the table other than to just take up airtime and give Audible Originals copyright permissions for the "original content" of this documentary-drama piece.

All of the "drama" bits should have been cut, and this would have been much better served as a straight no-nonsense nonfiction discussion of history, science, and technology. As it has been released, I can only give this 4 stars. I expected better.

OVERALL:
This is a great listen for super space exploration fans, especially those excited for plans for new operations to the moon and Mars. I really liked the interviews with people who lived during the Space Race and were either astronauts themselves or worked on the ground crew team. Having real recordings from the COMS were also really powerful in explaining key moments of this important and inspiring history. However, I did not like the narrator's voice and some of the reenactments were significantly overacted and therefore silly. I thought this would have been stronger if it stuck to what had actually happened, though the final chapter about possible futures was thought provoking. This is fun to listen to, but not the best product about the Space Race.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this production a lot. There were two things that kept be from giving it 5 stars. Also, just as a warning, there is some language in the context of historical conversations.
Things I didn't like:
~ Why did we need to stop the story in several places to talk about who women were wronged and should have been a part of things? It honestly detracted from the story and sounded like a kid throwing a temper-tantrum because they weren't invited to a friend's party. Yes, perhaps it would have been good to include women, but don't stop a story to throw a fit about it.
~ The fictional scenarios for the future were interesting but thrown in sometimes without a lot of warning.
~ A couple of derogatory comments were made about faith in general. However, I will also say that they were respectful when talking about the Christian faith of the astronauts

Good things:
~ Great historical overview
~ Brillant audio production
~ The extensive use of first-hand accounts was so great! Even though they sometimes recorded their own version of the audio, it was so cool to hear extensive pieces of original Mission control/Astronaut conversations.

[Ida Wilcox · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was bored out of my mind with this one.

It should have been named "Space, a fictional history"

It got a little interesting at the last chapter when they were in the future. But there was no build up to how they got there and why.

This just was a flat for me. I am all for inserting real historical events into a fictional book but this just didnt hit the mark.

[Martti · Rating 3 out of 5]

Audible Originals provides a 2020 overview of the history of Space until so far. Many of the details better and more thoroughly written out in some other places, but maybe the most interesting part being a lesser known era of post-Moon space station race and working together in space.

Lets say a good catch up documentary in the style of "story so far".

[Ben Vahle · Rating 2 out of 5]

They managed to make the history and near future of space travel into a marginally interesting textbook. It still *might* have been worth three stars but for their tendency (read: insistence on) to pronounce Werner von Braun's name as (I'm not making this up) "von Brown" and NASA as (again, Scout's honor) "NA-SAW." Criminal.

[Cindy Belden · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting "book." The look back at the history of the world's space programs is good. Although thought provoking I was not overly impressed with the dramatization of the future of space exploration.

[Ty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Listening to this felt exactly like listening to a documentary playing in the next room where I can't see the screen. Fun, but a little long.

[Rasheed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very nice in-depth explanation of the space race across the world. I am excited to see if the 2030 Mars flight works out lol.

[Audrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating compilation of history and perceptions for the future of space travel. The dramatizations were fantastic. Kudos to the voice actors!

While there were ideas and suggestions I didn’t agree with, they were mostly confined to the final episode and wouldn’t be fair to judge the entire series on those moments. Going in, I thought this was going to focus solely on Moonshot and recent proposals to return to the moon. I was pleasantly surprised to find it covered other NASA missions as well as Soviet missions. The past was intertwined with what these events meant (or could mean) for the future as well as the evolution from a race of nations to a worldwide collaborative.

[Kara · Rating 4 out of 5]

All the “current events” when this was made in the long, long ago of late 2019 are now obsolete – it was really quite painful to hear about things like “planning to launch in the spring of 2020”. Christ. If they only knew.

Also, there isn’t much of the future – I was thinking this would be half-and-half history and dramatized imagined future, but instead we get just a tiny few scenes sprinkled here and there imaging future scenarios, and the rest is the history.

However, this is a good overview of the history of space exploration, going all the way back to the Treaty of Versailles, which, due to that quirk of the type of legal documents that don't cover what hasn’t been invented yet, directly leads to the V2 rockets, and from there it’s off to space.

Solid covering of all the important points, especially the ones that don’t always get covered as much – the politically gray Operation Paperclip, the disgracefully treated Mercury 13, the hidden figures, Valentina Tereshkova, Apollo 8, Helen Sharman, etc.

There’s a lot of interviews with historians and with those still alive from the various space programs, interspersed with mini radio dramas of actors re-creating conversations that probably happened behind the scenes during key events. The dramas work, because it reminds the listening how young many of these people were at the time, as opposed to the actual people giving interviews, now hard to imagine.

I loved how across the board, everyone who’s been to space describes the joys of looking out the window, of the blacker-than-black of space, and looking at the jewel-like Earth and how it’s down-right transcendent to see our planet from the outside.

However, there was another theme across the board – all countries and all eras - that was quite jarring in how much people interviewed talked about how ground control and people in space don’t see themselves as one team – there is very much a conflict there that has been there since the beginning and up to today. People on the ground want those in space to be happy little cogs and cargo who do what they are told in robotic fashion and just let the computers run things, while those in space want to, you know, actually fly the ship! So, interesting tension infusing the entire industry.

The shuttle program was hard to hear, given both the disasters and the political missteps and spite, but the space station history were more uplifting as we see what happens when everyone works together.

And then Mars. Some talk of the robots that have gotten there so far, but more of the lots and lots of talk about how to get humans to mar, with one person interviewed who out right says the only real stumbling block is a lack of will and money.

So, we shall see what’s next…

[Zhelana · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a weird mix of science and fiction. It told about the space race from the 60s, Donald Trump's assertion that we'd go back to the moon sometime soon, and then an interstellar journey with people arguing whether kids born in space should be taught history and philosophy and art from Earth. It was a little odd. I would have liked either the history or the space journey, but not the two mixed together. It was narrated by Kate Mulgrew and I kept expecting some kind of Star Trek reference, but it never happened.

[Sohvi · Rating 1 out of 5]

I realize that perhaps this book was written and the interviews were done before he went completely coconuts, but listening people praise Elon Musk is weird during these days when instead of funding science he spreads misinformation and endangers people working for him.

Also this had way too much bad dramatization. Kate Mulgrew is an excellent narrator, but actually there is quite little of her narration, and way too much bad acting.

[Nicholas Zhu · Rating 3 out of 5]

An epic narrative covering modern humankind's space exploration activities with an emphasis on the competition along the way.
From the V-2 rocket conception to orbital conquer and moon race, and to the cooperation of human habitat in orbit, and finally to the interplanetary and beyond. It presents a landscape of how space exploration has been evolving and how a common effort can push back the limit.
The highlight of this audiobook is that it combines factual recordings and fictional performances which makes it easily receivable rather than a pure documentary.
The drawback of this book is that its storyline stops at the dawn of commercial space competitions, ie. Space Race 2.0. Honestly, if it ever has a sequel ( maybe just name it 'The Space Race 2.0'), it would be terrific.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was fine. It was informative and interesting. I was surprised that it started at the beginning for the space race and went all the way to modern day. The fictional and reenactments parts really held this back from being great.

[Blake · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good overview of the history of manned spaceflight. More like a podcast than a book, but informative and entertaining nonetheless.

[Lamadia · Rating 2 out of 5]

This wasn't really what I expected, but it was still okay. Firstly, it isn't a book, but a podcast, I guess. It has episodes anyway. Also, the first episode seems to be about just how cool it would be to go back to the moon just because, isn't it cool, say it's cool. It's really a cheerleading moment. Then, before I nearly turned it off, it started the real meat and potatoes, which was a summary of the NASA space program versus the USSR program. The rest of it goes more or less chronologically with a little back and forth for the purposes of focusing on an aspect of the program, such as focusing on the shuttle program to its end-of-life, then going back and focusing on space stations. I really liked listening to the interviews and old audio recordings, but the dramatic reenactments were stupid. Especially the imagined future ones. It would have been better with just a discussion of the issues with long term space flight rather than a dramatic play.

The information was really a summary. If you're like me and really didn't know a whole bunch, then it was useful information, but there was a lot I would have liked expanded. If you already know the basics of what happened when and in what order, you probably won't get any new information out of this.

And then the one thing that really stuck in my craw started at the beginning when they introduce the dramatic hypothetical long distance voyage to another star in the massive ship they called the "Von Braun". I already knew about Von Braun, so I immediately thought, wait, they named it after the Nazi? There are a whole bunch of people from the early days and later who they could have named it after and they chose the Nazi? The narrator then calls Von Braun a "controversial" figure and both tells about his early Nazi days, his transfer to the US program after WWII, and then explains away his Nazi status as someone who just did what he had to do to get his beloved rockets built. He was a member of the SS. People who were forced to join the party didn't become members of the SS. Yes, the US would not have been able to build rockets and accomplish what they did without him, but that's generally considered shameful, and Project Paperclip isn't regarded as something to be proud of. They then go back to the imagined ship "Von Braun" at the end of the story for the more elaborate dramatic story. Seriously, you could have called it anything else you wanted. I sincerely doubt that in the future they'll pick Von Braun to name stuff after. Yes, there was an attempted rehabilitation of his background in the early days and he even hosted a science TV show, but he was still a NAZI! Anyway, that was a very small part.

[Lindsay Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Free Audible Original. Ten episodes about the history of the US and Soviet space programs, from Von Braun's rockets to the international space station and a final chapter theorizing the future. In addition to the main story as read by Kate Mulgrew (Captain Janeway of Star Trek, who bizarrely pronounces NASA as "Nassau", but is otherwise good), there are reenactments of famous audio (One small step for man, We came in peace for all mankind, Houston we have a problem, etc) and imagined conversations as well. The reenactments are kind of weird - the actors do a good job, but I've heard the real audio so many times that it was obviously different. I don't know if they couldn't get permission to use it, it was too expensive, or the quality was bad, but it was strange.
The title is a little odd too, as the "space race" only applies up to the moon landings. After Apollo, the US and USSR stopped racing and mostly worked together. As with most of these programs, there wasn't any new ground covered, but it's been 50 years since Apollo 11 so a refresher is welcome.