ShmoopTube

Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.

Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos

History of Technology 2: Space 21 Views


Share It!


Description:

Where we're going, we don't need roads. ...Oh, that was misleading. We're not going to the future. We're going to space. Sorry for any disappointment.

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:00

by the 1950s humanity figured it only had one more place to go.

00:07

Kalamazoo. what? No who wrote that this is? why you should never let the interns do

00:12

anything around here. schmuck. not Kalamazoo space. space was the actual [businesswoman gives presenation]

00:18

answer we were looking for. home of eternal cold darkness and intelligent

00:23

beings with a penchant for giving out free probing colonoscopies. yeah aliens

00:29

might not have been impressed but we Earthlings had seriously come a long way

00:32

by the time the 1950s rolled around. in fact we'll just go ahead and shoot this

00:38

one right here transportation technology was spectacularly advanced. yeah - - no

00:44

we weren't beaming each other up Scotty not quite yet we still got a long way to

00:48

go on that one but we've come a long way from the hunter-gatherer days when our

00:52

main source of transportation was running or walking for those not in a [caveman walks]

00:58

rush but by the 1950s Jets could take us across the ocean in a few hours.

01:02

more and more Americans owned cars there was a massive national highway system

01:07

and heavy goods were shipped by trains and steam ships. with a little bit of

01:11

money humans could go anywhere on the planet in less than a day

01:14

so just because tootin it was so fun the first time we'll do it again.

01:19

transportation technology had come a long way, but humans had one giant leap

01:25

left. and it wasn't Kalamazoo. space final frontier. well we had to explore strange

01:30

new worlds seek out new life and civilizations and yes boldly go where no

01:35

man or woman has gone before. Shatner would be disappointed if we didn't.

01:40

in 1961 the first human was sent into space. by 1969 Neil Armstrong had played

01:46

golf on the moon. even though most people on the planet won't get within a hundred [man walks on the moon]

01:50

miles of a space shuttle the era of space travel had opened new doors for

01:55

Humanity as a whole. if we want to fly into space pointing our bowling airliner

01:59

up and pressing the gas pedal isn't quite gonna work. there's no air in space

02:04

and a puny jet engine isn't strong enough to overcome gravity. anyway what

02:08

we needed was a rocket. easy-peasy right? actually

02:12

at all opposite of that Hardy party. lots of different guys around the world

02:16

experimented with different fuels nozzles and materials to build rockets

02:21

that might be able to get a heavy hunk of metal into space. by 1926 Robert

02:26

Godard had managed to find the magic combination a certain kind of hourglass [rocket under construction pictured]

02:31

shaped nozzle and liquid fuel. over the next two decades. Rockets got bigger and

02:36

better and people started to think seriously about getting into space which

02:41

is impressive considering we have to think seriously about whether or not

02:44

we're motivated to move off the couch to use the bathroom. [child eyes the bathroom]

Up Next

GED Social Studies 1.1 Civics and Government
39794 Views

GED Social Studies 1.1 Civics and Government

Related Videos

Fake News
11938 Views

How do you tell fake news from real news?

Jane Eyre Summary
123033 Views

When you're about to marry the love of your life, not many things could stop you. However, finding out that your future hubby is keeping his crazy...

What is Shmoop?
91405 Views

Here at Shmoop, we work for kids, not just the bottom line. Founded by David Siminoff and his wife Ellen Siminoff, Shmoop was originally conceived...

ACT Math 4.5 Elementary Algebra
492 Views

ACT Math: Elementary Algebra Drill 4, Problem 5. What is the solution to the problem shown?