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[Music]

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talk about reclaiming this history about

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our space program and about mars in

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particular

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sure so you're completely right alex

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that in the early 20th century it was

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sort of self-evident that

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we assumed that when we eventually got

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to mars or when we built a telescope

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that was powerful enough to see things

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that we would see ruins in the remains

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of a civilization or even one that still

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existed

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so here then is gordon and dr john

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brandenburg on reclaiming

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space history

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mars

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[Music]

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always fascinated me as a

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child growing up in the space age

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in america where we were

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mesmerized by the mercury you know the

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moon race the

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whole drama of the mercury program the

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gemini program following the apollo the

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landing on the moon

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um and watching of course the russians

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um

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be ahead at first and then struggle you

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know the very brave cosmonauts

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uh out there in space also and uh

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finally fall behind with the destruction

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of their

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big n1 rocket so they couldn't make it

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make make they couldn't make it to the

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moon whereas we did

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and in the middle of this is werner von

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braun

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a rather anomalous uh character

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uh didn't he used to work for the nazis

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sort of the question that came to my

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mind when i was a kid

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and uh but there he was

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now transformed into an all-american

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hero

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and uh

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he wants to go to the moon but he really

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wants to go to mars

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that is his real goal

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and then he says something very cryptic

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in the middle after landing on the moon

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successfully

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he says um

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well the first people we should send to

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um

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and i remember hearing

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of that when i was young and thinking

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that's a peculiar thing to say

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uh the nasa

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the u.s government was heavily

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influenced by the work of pushable

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lowell as it turns out

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it and

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even though many scientists uh

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basically

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discarded the work of percival lowell

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uh and of course the canals

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within the u.s government

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there was

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um a kind of view that

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well personal law may very well have

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been right uh because it mars gave the

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appearance of being a

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um a planet that was once like earth i

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mean we found uh

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upon investigation on mars um

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uh well the first thing we saw was

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craters and that was uh

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when we we didn't see any canals we

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found a lot of craters

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and so we're we're sending probes to

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mars in addition to the big moon ray the

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big drama of the moon race

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and it's

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every every american knew that our

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eventual goal was to go to mars

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and all the science fiction movies

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were about going to mars and finding

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civilizations there and everything like

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that was all very uh i don't know how

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many grade b science fiction movies i

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saw about going to mars

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as a kid and uh saturday afternoon

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matinee

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popcorn and a hot dog

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for lunch that was

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that was the way to spend the afternoon

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in my hometown yeah i mean

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it's

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the verna von braun court is interesting

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and and when you mention the sort of

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widespread belief in canals on mars it

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really was widespread i mean the new

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york times in in i believe it was the

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30s was running articles about

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hypothetically how we could communicate

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with these evident cultures on mars by

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doing things like burning pie

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into the grasslands in eurasia so that

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they could potentially see it so it's

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always struck me very interesting and

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we'll get onto this story

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in the show it's always struck me as

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very interesting in the first half of

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the 20th century

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it was take it well not maybe first

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third taken is self-evident and not that

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big of a deal

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that there was either an existing

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culture on mars or previous cultures on

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mars

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uh and it's only as as we move into

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the cold war

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period or the post-war period

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that um

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that starts to get a bit fishy but it's

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important your um verna von braun quote

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is correct it's not just there i mean

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it's nasa's founding documents well

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the think tanks that were providing

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sort of strategy to nasa

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uh had in them the expectation that we

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would find

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um ruined artifacts it was part of

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nasa's dna from the beginning that we

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were it was our expectation to find