Space Race (TV series)

Infobox Television
show_name = Space Race


caption = BBC DVD Cover
aka =
genre = Docudrama
creator =
writer = Christopher Spencer
director = Mark Everest
creat_director =
developer =
presenter =
starring = nowrap beginRichard Dillane·wrap John Warnaby·wrap Ravil Isyanovnowrap end
voices =
narrated = Robert Lindsay
theme_composer =
opentheme =
endtheme =
composer = Samuel Sim
country = UK
language = English
num_seasons =
num_episodes = 4
list_episodes =
distributor = BBC
executive_producer = Jill Fullerton-Smith
co_exec =
producer = nowrap beginVictoria Gregory·wrap Jules Hussey·wrap Sias Wilsonnowrap end
sup_producer =
asst_producer =
cons_producer =
co-producer =
editor =
story_editor =
location =
cinematography =
camera_setup =
runtime = 60 minutes
channel = BBC One
picture_format =
audio_format =
first_run =
first_aired = September 14, 2005
last_aired =
preceded_by =
followed_by =
related = "Nuclear Secrets"
website =
prod_website =
imdb_id = 0461887
tv_com_id =

"Space Race" is a BBC docu-drama series first shown in Britain on BBC2 between September & October 2005, chronicling the major events and characters in the American/Soviet space race up to the first landing of a man on the moon. It focusses on Sergei Korolev, the Soviets' chief rocket designer, and Wernher von Braun, his American counterpart. The series was a joint effort between British, German, American and Russian production teams.

Reception

Awards

*Royal Television Society 2006
**Nominated: RTS Television Award for Best Production Design (Drama): Alan Spalding

*Sir Arthur Clarke Award 2006
**Won: Sir Arthur Clarke Award for Best Presentation (TV & Radio)

Episodes

Episode one: "Race For Rockets" (1944–1949)

We see the results of Wernher von Braun's work on the V-2 for the Nazis at Mittelwerk and Peenemünde, and his final activities within Germany during the last years of the Second World War, as both American and Soviet forces race to capture German rocket technology. When the Americans gain the upper hand by recovering von Braun and most of his senior staff, along with all their technical documents and much other materiel, we see Sergei Korolev's release from the Gulag to act as the Soviets' rocketry expert alongside former colleague Valentin Glushko, and how he is set to work bringing Russian rocket technology up to date with that of von Braun, working with what material and personnel are left after von Braun's escape to the US.

Episode two: "Race For Satellites" (1953–1958)

As the Cold War intensifies, Korolev is asked to build a rocket capable of carrying a five-ton warhead to America - he designs and constructs the R-7 Semyorka, the first ICBM, and is later allowed to use it to launch the first satellite, Sputnik 1, quickly following up with the rushed Sputnik 2. Meanwhile, von Braun struggles to persuade the US government to allow him to launch his own satellite - after Sputnik's launch and the failure of the US Navy to launch a Vanguard satellite, he is finally allowed to launch the first American satellite, Explorer 1.

Episode three: "Race For Survival" (1959–1961)

Both the Americans and Soviets are planning manned space flight, and we see both sides preparing to do so with the development of the Vostok programme (USSR) and Project Mercury (USA). As well as basic details about the capsules and their delivery vehicles, we also see some of the selection and training of the Russian cosmonauts, and rather less of that of their counterparts in the US. After difficulties and failures on both sides, the Soviets succeed in putting Yuri Gagarin into space first, with the Americans putting Alan Shepard up shortly afterwards.

Episode four: "Race For The Moon" (1964–1969)

Both sides now plan to put a man on the Moon - the Americans pull ahead in the space race with Project Gemini, but then suffer a disaster with the Apollo 1 fire. Meanwhile, despite a few notable successes such as the first space walk by Alexei Leonov, the Soviet space programme struggles to keep up amid internal strife. Glushko and Korolev permanently fall out in an argument about fuel; Korolev turns to Nikolai Kuznetsov to develop engines instead. Kuznetsov delivers the NK-33, very efficient but much less powerful than the Americans' F-1. The Soviet program suffers further blows when Korolev dies during surgery, Gagarin dies in a jet crash, Soyuz 1 crashes and kills Vladimir Komarov, and the prototype booster for the moon shot, the N-1 rocket, fails to successfully launch. In America, von Braun has continuing difficulties with the Saturn V, especially combustion instability in the large F-1 engine, but these are ultimately overcome almost by brute force at great expense, and the rocket successfully launches the first manned lunar mission, Apollo 8, and the first manned lunar landing, Apollo 11. The final episode finishes with brief textual summaries of the remaining careers of the various people involved.

Production details

BBC filmed the "Space Race" in and around the town of Sibiu, Transylvania (now Romania). Romania has signed the EU co-production treaty which allows for EU co-productions. [ [http://www.romfilmpromotion.ro/publications.php#whychoose Romanian film promotion: why choose Romania] ] Compared to other locations, Romania attracted BBC with unspoiled natural locations, experienced crews and moderately priced production facilities.

The series was filmed with the Panasonic SDX 900 DVCPro 50 professional camcorder. [ [http://www.vmi.tv/equipment/product-details/?pid=11 DVC Pro 50 Camcorder SDX-900] ] This allowed keeping to the speedy shooting schedule and provided the ‘gritty’ look appropriate to the the time period. Shot in widescreen 25fps progressive mode, the series deliver rich, filmic feel, which compares favourably with high definition. [ [http://www.vmi.tv/HD-today/back-issues/HDTodayno5.pdf Rome wasn't shot in a day, it was shot in HDX!] ]

Cast

*Richard Dillane – Wernher von Braun
*Steve Nicolson – Sergei Korolev
*John Warnaby – Vasily Mishin
*Ravil Isyanov – Valentin Glushko
*Rupert Wickham – Kurt H. Debus
*Tim Woodward - Marshal Mitrofan Nedelin
*Eric Loren – Castenholz
*Chris Robson – Dieter Huzel
*Mark Dexter – Staver
*Oliver de la Fosse – Staver's Lieutenant
*Vitalie Ursu – Yuri Gagarin
*Oleg Stefan – Alexey Leonov
*Mariya Mironova – Nina
*Jeffrey Wickham – Kuznetsov
*Robert Jezek – Gilruth
*Robert Lindsay – Narrator
*Stuart Bunce – Lev Gaidukov
*David Barrass – Helmut Gröttrup
*Simon Day – Kammler
*Nicholas Rowe – R. V. Jones
*Mikhail Gorevoy – Ivan Serov
*Stephen Greif – Colonel Holger Toftoy
*Anna Barkan – Ksnenia Koroleva
*Max Bollinger – Russian cosmonaut (VO)
*Todd Boyce – Alan Shepard
*Emil Măndănac – Viacheslav Lapo, Russian sound technician
*Mihai Dinvale – German Scientist
*Anthony Edridge - Chris Kraft

Difference in releases

It seems that the series is edited differently for various markets. For example, in one version of the scene where Colonel General Serov finds the abandoned V-2, the missile is shown as being found by Polish guerrilla fighters. After Serov appreciates the importance of the missile, he orders his assistants to kill all Polish fighters and to pack and ship the missile to Moscow. In the official Region 2 DVD release the Polish fighters are not shown nor mentioned.

Inaccuracies and errors

Most of the historical and technological data presented in the series is very heavily simplified, and sometimes contains outright untruths or errors. The series would best be described and interpreted as giving a general impression of the subject matter, rather than rigorous factual account.

Factual errors

* It was Tupolev, the aircraft designer, who rescued Korolev from the prison. When the "German team" was being created at the end of the war, both Glushko and Korolev became members of this team as peers.

* Key figures are entirely missing from the presented history - in addition to Tupolev, Chelomei and Yangel are also conspicuously absent, for example, even in the sequence depicting the disastrous explosion of one of Yangel's prototype R-16 ICBMs - in the series, Glushko is generally identified with all rocket projects competing with Korolev within the USSR, even those for which he had only partial responsibility or was a subcontractor.

* The narrator said twice that the Mercury-Redstone could put an astronaut into orbit. In reality, the best the Mercury rocket could do was putting an astronaut into a 15-minute "suborbital" ballistic trajectory, which peaked out around 120 miles up. The first orbital flight of an American astronaut did not occur until February 20, 1962, when the Mercury capsule was put into orbit with a more powerful Atlas rocket.

Unconfirmed statements

* The series stresses out multiple times that Korolev was denounced by Glushko. There is no factual evidence of this statement. Glushko had been imprisoned himself before Korolev was arrested. Both Glushko and Korolev were denounced by their former comrades and managers. In a documentary shot by Russian TV, Alexey Leonov claims that he personally heard from Korolev about Glushko's denouncement. Even so, Korolev could not know the whole truth beyond what he was told by KGB officers. There are no known documents that prove Glushko's denouncement besides rumors and hearsay.

Filming inaccuracies

* Korolev's last name is mispronounced badly and inconsistently, despite Russian participation in the series. It should be pronounced "kor-ol-yoff", but is often mispronounced "kor-yel-off".

* It is not explained why Glushko and Korolev wore military uniform during their stay in Germany. They never served in the military, but were issued military uniform and assigned fake military ranks after they arrived to Berlin. In 1945 Berlin was run by military, this way civil engineers were able to blend in.

* Vasily Mishin is depicted as an unsuccessful drunkard and merely as Korolev's friend and sidekick. In fact Mishin was a gifted engineer, but he did not possess management talent that Korolev had.

* The whole atmosphere of Korolev being threatened and disrespected by the generals is cliché and inaccurate. People were highly impressed by him and his management and engineering skills. After the Second World War Korolev became a creator and a manager of a new industry; he became a powerful figure and was respected by Communist Party leaders and by military command.

* The reason for using staged boosters is extremely vaguely explained in one sentence by Korolev, as reducing weight and hence increasing range and speed. In reality, the reasons are numerous and more complex, one of the dominant ones being that conventional rocket engines only operate at maximum efficiency at a particular atmospheric pressure, and lose net efficiency when lifting a payload over a large altitude range.

* The depicted final configuration of Sputnik 1 is oversimplified - it contained two radio transmitters, not one, and the famous beeping signal did in fact carry encoded data from sensors on board, though this is not mentioned.

* The depiction of the Soviet side of the moon race in episode 4 is extremely simplistic - despite numerous competing programmes within the USSR, only Korolev's N-1 is even mentioned, its developmental history is mostly skipped (along with that of Von Braun's Saturn V), only one of its four prototype launches is mentioned, and many other underlying causes for the outcome of the moon race are ignored - only the rift between Korolev and Glushko, and the latter's refusal to develop large cryogenic engines for the N-1, is mentioned in any detail, along with Korolev's death. Only the launch vehicles for the moon shots (and the Soyuz capsule) are mentioned in detail; the development of other mission hardware such as the lunar landers themselves is not covered.

* Usage of period footage is inconsistent, in particular with regard to the R-7 and its variants - most often, footage of the R-7 in its modern Soyuz configuration is used to depict its use in earlier programmes with different hardware.

* Soldiers from the United States Army shown in action in Germany at the end of the war are carrying a mixture of German World War II weapons, and Soviet post World War II weapons, namely the SKS Carbine.

* The scene in the first episode depicts a German V-2 being transported to a firing position. Later the start of the missile is shown. Instead of a V-2 a different missile was used for filming, possibly the [http://www.energia.ru/energia/launchers/im/r11-02_b.jpgR-11] , being transported with a Soviet ZiL-157 truck. This truck went into production in 1958, its styling was influenced by Studebaker and GMC models, and its look is very un-German. Unlike the V-2, the R-11 did not use liquid oxygen, thus it did not require a time-consuming pre-start fillup. Therefore the launch sequence is not true to historical facts. The same ZIL-157 vehicle is used in the scene of Peenemünde evacuation.

* Some of the inconsistencies appeared in the movie probably because the movie was filmed in Romania. For example, in the sequence with the steam train leaving the German station with scientists, one can read "CFR" on the locomotive, which stands for "Caile Ferate Romane" (Romanian Railways).

* The scene depicting a launch from Kapustin Yar, which is dated by 1948, includes vehicles that were not produced at that time, in particular the ZiL-157 (1958), the ZiL-131 (1967) and the UAZ-469 (1973).

* The scene in 1945 Texas shows the team of German engineers driving into the restaurant parking lot. The car they are being driven in seems to be either a Russian GAZ M-20 Pobeda or Polish Warszawa, which was the same car made under license, or British Standard Vanguard. Neither car was imported to United States. The same car is used in Episode 3 as Korolev's personal car.

* The space race is not unanimously considered to have ended with the first moon landing; US-Soviet competition continued with programmes such as the development of space stations and space shuttles. The race could be said to have finally ended with a transition from competition to cooperation in the Apollo-Soyuz joint project, or perhaps with the collapse of the USSR and thus the de facto end of the Soviet space programme, but neither stations, shuttles, Apollo-Soyuz nor Soviet collapse are mentioned in the series.

Companion book

A companion book to the series was written by Deborah Cadbury.

elected editions

* cite book
date = Sep 5, 2005
title = Space Race
last = Cadbury
first = Deborah
publisher = Fourth Estate (hardcover)
id = ISBN 978-0007209958
* cite book
date = Aug 7, 2006
title = The Space Race: The Battle to Rule the Heavens
last = Cadbury
first = Deborah
publisher = HarperPerennial (paperback)
id = ISBN 978-0007209941

Notes

*The National Geographic Channel broadcast the series as a 2 part mini-series in 2006.

References