April 12th 1981.  Bob Crippen and John Young are in orbit around the Earth.  Travelling at 17,500 miles an hour, with the world turning majestically beneath them, they witness 16 sunrises and sixteen sunsets every 24 hours.    They have survived the violence of launch but the mission has run into a potential life-threatening problem. Crippen has just beamed footage down to mission control of missing tiles on the Shuttle’s OMS pods. If tiles are missing there, what about the underside of the orbiter, where the heat of reentry could cause catastrophic damage? Whilst Gene Kranz tries to re-assure the world’s press that everything is under control, elsewhere in NASA, a covert operation is underway to discover whether or not Clumbia’s maiden voyage into space could be its last.       

Ever wondered how the Space Shuttle came to be? Welcome to a new podcast series, 16 Sunsets. In this episode, Host Dr Kevin Fong reveals the inside story of the plan to save the first Shuttle mission from disaster. 

Featuring: Tom Moser, Chuck Lewis, Dottie Lee, Marianne Dyson, Gene Kranz,  Bob Crippen, Robert Kelso, Bob Stewart, Don Pettit, Gerry Griffin, Charlie Bolden, Bonnie Dunbar, Neil Hutchinson, Tonya Witt, Ken Young.

Credits:

Written and presented by Dr Kevin Fong

Producers:  Rami Tzabar,  Andrew Luck-Baker 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

Thanks 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 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

Want 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.com

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

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