Space Disasters

S01E06 Failure To Launch

Every launch is a high-wire act over an inferno—one miscalculation and a billion-dollar mission becomes a fireball. This is a look at spaceflight’s most explosive beginnings, from America’s notoriously unreliable early boosters like Vanguard, Atlas, and Titan II to the Nedelin disaster, a blast so catastrophic the Soviet Union buried the truth for decades. But out of those ashes came hard-won wisdom, paving the way for history’s greatest triumph: the mighty Saturn V, the rocket that carried humanity to the stars.