Failure To Launch

The ISS is the greatest product of international space cooperation ever achieved. It is also a product of happening at exactly the right time to actually be possible. Today, we’re talking to space policy expert Nik Proxima about the history of the ISS. We cover its conception as a post-Cold War recycling program, why it continued to operate even as member nations became adversaries, and how space...

This is a preview of a bonus episode. To hear the rest of the episode and unlock more bonus content, support Failure To Launch on Patreon at any tier. A formative game from our childhoods, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, has a very controversial moment that some have argued could negatively influence young minds. We are of course talking about the mission where you destroy the ISS with a hijacked n...

In 1947, Georg Rickhey, General Director of Mittelwerk, was charged with war crimes. He was acquitted for lack of evidence. Today, Quinn and Chris are talking about Operation Paperclip and the deliberate efforts made by its staff to protect post-war Nazis from justice and war crimes trials (conducted by other US military officers).   Find our merch store here Support FTL on Patreon to unlock bonus...

This is a preview of a bonus episode. To hear the rest of the episode and unlock more bonus content, support Failure To Launch on Patreon at any tier. I do not much like the Federation of Central Usea (FCU). They’ve done some bad things.  This week, Quinn, Chris, and Other Chris cover Ulysses from discovery to impact to the decades of fallout we still live with today. How humanity faced a possible...

What with all the history talk, we haven't really yet tackled the space elephant in the room: that the space industry is increasingly run by billionaires and open fascists. So today, we're chatting with Ziggy , a post-graduate student studying fascist movements and their ties to scifi, on how reactionary movements in the past and present have co-opted space for their political ends. Find o...

This is a preview of a bonus episode. To hear the rest of the episode and unlock more bonus content, support Failure To Launch on Patreon at any tier. In the months before the Bombs Fell, the American space program was preparing for its greatest challenge yet: reaching the Red Planet. But the program wasn't as innocent as it seemed. This week, Scribe Quintus is taking Chris and Other Chris thr...

Capsule: check. Monkey: check. Downers: check. To celebrate our 5th anniversary as a show, Quinn, Chris, and Other Chris are going back to the well to talk about our first ever topic: Project Albert. Or “that time the US Government launched a half dozen doped-up monkeys on captured Nazi V-2s”.  Find our merch store here Support FTL on Patreon to unlock bonus content and join our Discord community...

In the summer of 1966, work at China’s top-secret space program ground to a halt as every worker spent every day putting up posters, making denunciations, and murdering each other. This week, Quinn, Chris, and Other Chris are joined by November Kelly to talk about Project 714, China’s secret crewed space program and the incredibly dumb reason it died.  Check out November's work here (TF) , and...

The first space food was made by veterinarians instead of dieticians and was so bad that many astronauts chose to fast through their missions. And it could've been *so* much worse. This week, Quinn, Chris, and Other Chris are talking to Dr Kaveh Hoda , gastroenterologist and host of the House of Pod podcast about the wonderful, disgusting world of astronaut kibble.  Check out Kaveh's work...

This is a preview of a bonus episode. To hear the rest of the episode and unlock more bonus content, support Failure To Launch on Patreon at any tier. Count the moons, duster! Today, Quinn (Belter), Chris (Martian), and Other Chris (Earther) are talking about the largest ship ever built by humans, the LDSS Nauvoo aka the OPAS Behemoth aka Medina Station. We cover its transformation from an ark for...

While most of NASA was focused on the Apollo Moon Program, a separate division was hard at work building then deliberately blowing up nuclear rocket cores all over Nevada. This week, we’re talking to train and nuclear knower Scooter about the weird and convoluted story of American nuclear rockets.  Support FTL on Patreon to unlock bonus content and join our Discord community! SOURCES: - Nuclear pr...

A secret military space station, a rookie crew, a flaky autopilot, insufficient batteries, a freak winter storm, and a frozen lake. We’re joined by space and KSP youtuber Matt Lowne to talk about Soyuz-23, the only water touchdown of a Soviet spacecraft and how it very nearly killed its entire crew.  Check out Matt’s videos here! Find our merch store here Support FTL on Patreon to unlock bonus con...

This is a preview of a bonus episode. To hear the rest of the episode and unlock more bonus content, support Failure To Launch on Patreon at any tier. In the wake of Operation:REVIVAL, House Kurita embarked on a crash WarShip development program to try and match the naval superiority of the Clans. Today, we are joined by Dr. Randolph P. Checkers, one of the Periphery’s finest historians, to discus...

The guy who made the Ultima games owns a space tank. We’re back with auto journalist and podcaster Victoria Scott to keep talking Lunokhod. In Part 2, we go over the journey of Lunokhod 2, lives saved in the Chernobyl Disaster, and the post-Soviet desperation that led to a Moon rover being sold for $68,500.  Check out Victoria’s work here and listen to Tran Girlismo ! Find our merch store here Sup...

In a desperate bid to one-up the American Apollo missions, the Soviets built nuclear Moon tanks. We’re joined by auto journalist and podcaster Victoria Scott for a series on the Soviet Lunokhod rovers. In Part 1, we talk about the three-pronged Soviet lunar program, how they built the first space tank, and how you can stay warm in winter with a kilo of Polonium-210.  Check out Victoria’s work here...

On July 9th, 1962, the US Navy lit space on fire from Hawaii to New Zealand and fried a quarter of all active satellites in orbit. This week, we’re joined by engineer and friend of the show Ian to talk about Starfish Prime, the largest nuclear test ever conducted in space, and all the satellites that test killed. Find our merch store here Support FTL on Patreon to get bonus content and join our Di...

This is a preview of a bonus episode. To hear the rest of the episode and unlock more bonus content, support Failure To Launch on Patreon at any tier. For June’s bonus, we’re joined by Ani Mejlumyan of the Lions Led By Donkeys podcast to talk all about The Lesson, a strange Soviet-Armenian animated short about environmentalism. Or possibly John Lennon. Or being so relentlessly horny that you short...

The earliest manned spaceflights were universally cramped, uncomfortable, and dangerous. What if your job was to do that multiple times a year underwater? This week, we're joined by Dr. Alan Jamieson, an accomplished marine biologist, veteran of many deep sea dives, and a host of the Deep Sea Podcast to compare our respective environments and see how they line up. Check out the Deep Sea Podcas...

More Ace Combat announcements are coming out and we're very excited about that, so we're unlocking our bonus episode from earlier this year on the Gleipnir flying stealthing aircraftlasermissilebattlecarrier. The final boss of superweapon development. A weapon worth double digits of the GDP of Laesath. The universe's most powerful Blue Angel. This time, we're tackling a fan request...

This is a preview of a bonus episode. To hear the rest of the episode and unlock more bonus content, consider supporting Failure To Launch on Patreon .

A lot of people know that the Soviets canceled their manned lunar program after losing the Moon Race to Apollo. What most don’t know is how that program ended: in a backroom, cloak-and-dagger palace coup that made one man the unquestioned King of Soviet Space. This week, we’re joined by Joe Kassabian to talk about The Coup of OKB-1 by 𝓜𝓞𝓜.  Listen to Lions Led By Donkeys here and check out Joe’s u...

In April 2026, while the crew of Artemis 2 was still travelling around the Moon, the Trump administration put forward a budget proposal to gut NASA. This week, we’re joined by space policy analyst and host of the Talking Space podcast, Gene Mikulka, to go over the threats to space science and the grassroots resistance to the cuts.  Check out the Talking Space podcast here and follow Gene on Bluesk...

Alternate title: Railing Rockets. We're joined by Gareth Dennis , host of the RailNatter podcast, to talk about the intersections of rockets and trains. Gareth came prepared with a wonderful story of horses' arses and the NASA Railroad. Quinn, meanwhile, got sidetracked and wrote about how Soviet OKB head Sergei Korolev accidentally bankrupted a city. Check out RailNatter and Gareth's...

This is a preview of a bonus episode. To hear the rest of the episode and unlock more bonus content, consider supporting Failure To Launch on Patreon .

The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a motorcycle. We're back for part 2 of our series on Viktor Ilyin and the story leading up to the attempted assassination of Leonid Brezhnev in 1969. Find our merch store here! Support FTL on Patreon to unlock bonus content and join our Discord community! SOURCES: - Into the Cosmos, Asif Siddiqi and James Andrews - The First...