Lex Fridman: belief

Transcript context

…I’m a big fan of Gagarin’s though. And in fact, I think his first words in space I think are incredible. He purportedly said, “My God, it’s blue.” And that really drives home. No one had seen the Earth from space. No one knew that we were on this blue planet. No one knew what it looked like from out there, and Gagarin was the first person to see it. One of the things I think about is how dangerous those early days were for Gagarin, for Glenn, for everybody involved. How big of a risk they were all taking. They were taking huge risks. I’m not sure what the Soviets thought about Gagarin’s flight, but I think that the Americans thought that the Alan Shepard flight, the flight that New Shepherd is named after, the First American in space, he went on his suborbital flight, they thought he had about a 75% chance of success. So, that’s a pretty big risk, a 25% risk.…

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