16 Sunsets

• Columbia Rising

  April 12 1981. STS-1. Space Shuttle Columbia now stands proud on pad 39A at Cape Canaveral. After more than a decade of development, planning and assembly, NASA approaches its moment of truth.The most complex flying machine ever built, two and half million moving parts, hundreds of mission critical components with no back up, brought together in a two thousand tonne stack of propellant, boosters and rocket engines which - when lit - will unleash energy enough to carry its astronaut crew and their vessel into orbit around the Earth. The first all up test of a NASA space vehicle with a human crew aboard. But for its two astronauts, John Young and Bob Crippen, it is worth the risk. The future is here. And nothing now can stop it.Ever wondered how the Space Shuttle came to be? Welcome to a new podcast series, 16 Sunsets. In this episode, Host Dr Kevin Fong guides us through the lead up to STS-1. Will everything go to plan? Featuring: Tom Moser, Stokes MacMillan, Bob Crippen, Robert Kelso, John Young, Jeff Hoffman, Gerry Griffin, Charlie Bolden, Bonnie Dunbar, Neil Hutchinson, Chuck Lewis, Jennifer Levasseur, Lowell Zoller, Tonya Witt, Marion Dyson, Dottie Lee.Credits:Written and presented by Dr Kevin FongProducers: Rami Tzabar, Andrew Luck-Baker and Dave Giles.Assistant Producer: Kate Arkless GraySound Design and Mixing: Richard CourticeMusic: Christian Lundberg, part of Hans Zimmer’s Bleeding Fingers Composer CollectiveWith special thanks to Sandra Johnson at Nasa’s Johnson Space Centre Oral History ProjectThanks also to William Reeves and Herb Baker; Stephen Slater for additional archive and to Lunar Module 5.Executive Producers: Stuart Coxe, Kevin Fong, Jago Lee and Rami Tzabar16 Sunsets is an Antica and TellTale Production 2024Check out our website at https://sixteensunsets.com Instagram: @sixteen_sunsetsBluesky: @16sunsets.bsky.socialX: @16sunsetsWant more 16 Sunsets? Become a premium member of our community and unlock exclusive content, including early and ad-free episodes, by subscribing to 16 Sunsets on Supercast. Learn more at https://16sunsets.supercast.comHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Bonus Episode: Terry White – Tile by Tile – Protecting The Shuttle

  As we get nearer to STS-1 and that first all-up test of Space Shuttle Columbia, we wanted to take a look at one of the technical challenges that caused that first launch to slip back from 1979 to 1981: the thermal protection system that kept the extreme temperatures of launch, life in orbit, and re-entry from damaging the spacecraft and putting the crew at risk.So today, we’re sharing an interview that Kevin Fong and Andrew Luck Baker did with a former Orbiter Mechanic at Kennedy Space Center, Terry White. Terry worked on the shuttle from its arrival at the space center in 1979 until its retirement in 2011. In this fascinating interview we’ll hear what it was like to prepare a space shuttle for flight, and the enormous challenges that the team had to overcome to get it ready for the STS-1, the shuttle fleet’s first mission.Credits:Written and presented by Dr Kevin FongProducers: Andrew Luck-Baker and Rami Tzabar with additional production by Dave Giles.Assistant Producer: Kate Arkless GraySound Design and Mixing: Richard CourticeMusic: Christian Lundberg, part of Hans Zimmer’s Bleeding Fingers Composer CollectiveWith special thanks to Sandra Johnson and Nasa’s Johnson Space Centre Oral History Project Executive Producers: Stuart Coxe, Kevin Fong, Jago Lee and Rami Tzabar16 Sunsets is an Antica and TellTale Production 2024Check out our website at https://sixteensunsets.com Instagram: @sixteen_sunsetsX: @16sunsetsWant more 16 Sunsets? Become a premium member of our community and unlock exclusive content, including early and ad-free episodes, by subscribing to 16 Sunsets on Supercast. Learn more at https://16sunsets.supercast.comHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Abort, Abort, Abort!

  The command ‘Abort RTLS’ was the last thing that astronauts on board the space shuttle wanted to hear from mission control. It meant that one or two of the shuttle’s main engines had failed in the first couple of minutes after lift-off and that the crew’s only hope of a safe landing was a blood-curdling manoeuvre at super-sonic speeds. The Return to Launch Site abort mode was an astronautic U-turn, aimed at getting the hobbled spacecraft back to the launch site at Kennedy Space Center. RTLS was one of several abort scenarios for which shuttle crews had to train, and it was not even the scariest.Ever wondered how the Space Shuttle came to be? Welcome to a new podcast series, 16 Sunsets. In this episode, Host Dr Kevin Fong delves into the range of options which shuttle crews had if they were forced to abort a mission during their ascent to space. He talks to former NASA staff and astronauts about the gruelling training and simulation exercises for flying aborts and dealing with malfunctions, and he explores why shuttle needed such exotic and hair-raising abort modes.Featuring: Gordon Fullerton, Stokes MacMillan, Tim Terry, Robert Crippen, Robert Kelso, John Young, Jeffrey Hoffman, Craig Sumner, Gerry Griffin, Roy Bridges, Gene Kranz, Mike Coats, Don Pettit, Barney Roberts, Robert Stewart, Christopher Kraft and Howard Hu.Credits:Written and presented by Dr Kevin FongProducers: Andrew Luck-Baker, Rami Tzabar and Dave Giles.Assistant Producer: Kate Arkless GraySound Design and Mixing: Richard CourticeMusic: Christian Lundberg, part of Hans Zimmer’s Bleeding Fingers Composer CollectiveWith special thanks to Sandra Johnson at Nasa’s Johnson Space Centre Oral History Project, to Stephen Slater for additional archive material, and to William Reeves and Herb Baker. Executive Producers: Stuart Coxe, Kevin Fong, Jago Lee and Rami Tzabar16 Sunsets is an Antica and TellTale Production 2024Check out our website at https://sixteensunsets.com Instagram: @sixteen_sunsetsBluesky: @16sunsets.bsky.socialX: @16sunsetsWant more 16 Sunsets? Become a premium member of our community and unlock exclusive content, including early and ad-free episodes, by subscribing to 16 Sunsets on Supercast. Learn more at https://16sunsets.supercast.comHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  1:02:55
• Anatomy of a Firecracker

  Getting the 100 tonne space shuttle orbiter from the pad to orbit demanded a launch system like no other before it. A huge external fuel tank containing hundreds of tonnes of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen fed the orbiter’s three powerful main engines. But that wasn’t enough to lift the fully fuelled shuttle off the launch pad. Two towering booster rockets, bolted to the fuel tank, were needed for most of the necessary thrust. Compared to the Apollo Saturn vehicles, this was a novel and complex configuration of rocketry. Designing and building the shuttle launch system required multiple engineering frontiers to be advanced, and some challenging and controversial decisions to be made. Ever wondered how the Space Shuttle came to be? Welcome to a new podcast series, 16 Sunsets. In this episode, Host Kevin Fong explores the awesome and explosive anatomy of the space shuttle launch system - and its vulnerabilities - with former NASA engineers who built its component parts. The podcast takes you through the violent journey from final countdown to orbit in the company of shuttle engineers and some of the astronauts who rode on their handiwork. Featuring: Mark Mullane, Lowell Zoller, Craig Sumner, Mark Craig, Jeffrey Hoffman, Gerald Smith, Warren Wiley, Matthew Hersch, Jennifer Lavasseur, Robert Stewart, Robert Crippen, Ivy Hooks, Barney Roberts and David Mindell.Credits:Written and presented by Dr Kevin FongProducers: Andrew Luck-Baker and Rami Tzabar with additional production by Dave Giles.Assistant Producer: Kate Arkless GraySound Design and Mixing: Richard CourticeMusic: Christian Lundberg, part of Hans Zimmer’s Bleeding Fingers Composer CollectiveWith special thanks to Sandra Johnson and Nasa’s Johnson Space Centre Oral History Project Executive Producers: Stuart Coxe, Kevin Fong, Jago Lee and Rami Tzabar16 Sunsets is an Antica and TellTale Production 2024.Check out our website at https://sixteensunsets.com Instagram: @sixteen_sunsetsX: @16sunsetsWant more 16 Sunsets? Become a premium member of our community and unlock exclusive content, including early and ad-free episodes, by subscribing to 16 Sunsets on Supercast. Learn more at https://16sunsets.supercast.comHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  1:01:50
• Bonnie Dunbar: Orbit By Design

  Before we get back on the road to the historic launch of STS-1, we have another special episode to share with you. This time an interview recorded by Kevin Fong and Andrew Luck-Baker with former mission specialist astronaut Bonnie Dunbar while they were touring the U.S. gathering material for this podcast. She’s now a professor of aerospace engineering at Texas A and M university and they spoke to her there. Dunbar studied engineering at college and went on to work for Rockwell constructing the first Shuttle Orbiters, Enterprise and Columbia. Bonnie flew in something of a golden era of human spaceflight, logging five space shuttle missions aboard Challenger, Atlantis, Endeavour and twice aboard Columbia, the shuttle that she had worked on while an engineer. We hear about that tale of moving from the state of Washington to the high desert in California, watching the first space shuttle come to life. From there to her selection in the 1980 astronaut class and on to her first mission on, STS-61a in the autumn of 1985. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  39:16

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