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 Fong

Producers: Andrew Luck-Baker, Rami Tzabar and Dave Giles.

Assistant Producer: Kate Arkless Gray

Sound Design and Mixing: Richard Courtice

Music: Christian Lundberg, part of Hans Zimmer’s Bleeding Fingers Composer Collective

With 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 Tzabar

16 Sunsets is an Antica and TellTale Production 2024

Check out our website at https://sixteensunsets.com 

Instagram: @sixteen_sunsets

Bluesky: @16sunsets.bsky.social

X: @16sunsets

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.