The Space Shuttle: 1. The spaceplane

13 Minutes Presents: The Space Shuttle

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, History

9.5 • 4.7K Ratings

🗓️ 14 July 2025

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Can Nasa build the most complex flying machine in space history? The plan is to create a permanent human presence in space.

It’s Spring 1969 - two months before the launch of Apollo 11 – the first US mission to land humans on the moon. But meanwhile, hidden away from public view, Nasa is thinking the unthinkable.

Maverick engineer Dr Max Faget is already a legend within Nasa. He’s fascinated by what could be next for human spaceflight. In a backroom, of Building 36 at Johnson Space Center, he invites a handful of engineers to a meeting. One of them is Ivy Hooks, a mathematician and engineer. And one of the first female engineers at Nasa.

Some scenes in this series use recreated sound effects.

13 Minutes Presents: The Space Shuttle is a BBC Audio Science Unit production for BBC World Service.

Hosted by space scientist Maggie Aderin-Pocock.

Theme music by Hans Zimmer and Christian Lundberg, and produced by Russell Emanuel, for Bleeding Fingers Music.

Archive: Richard Nixon launches Nasa’s space shuttle programme, CBS News, 1972 Mission audio and oral histories, Nasa History Office

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Mariana Spring, the BBC's social media investigations correspondent.
0:06.0	In my podcast, I've been investigating what happened to the daughter of a conspiracy theorist who died having rejected chemotherapy.
0:13.0	It would mean the world to me if I could make it that she wasn't just another in the long line of people that die in this way.
0:19.0	How does this reflect the rise of health conspiracy theories on social media and beyond?
0:24.8	The new series of Mariana in Conspiracy Land, listen on BBC Sounds.
0:30.1	Episodes of 30 Minutes Presents the Space Shuttle are released weekly, wherever you get your BBC
0:35.8	podcasts.
0:37.2	But if you're in the UK, you can listen to the full season
0:40.8	right now, first on BBC Sounds. Some scenes in this series use recreated sound effects.
0:59.9	This is shuttle launch control at T-minus 9 minutes, 30 seconds and counting. It's the 12th of April 1981.
1:04.0	Door.
1:05.2	Just a few seconds away now from our final build-in hold at the T-minus nine-minute point in our countdown.
1:12.8	A machine, as tall as a 14-floor apartment block, stands bathed in beams of brilliant white light.
1:21.4	It is dramatic if you go out before sunrise. It kind of looks unreal. It really does.
1:28.3	It's a tower filled with nearly 2,000 tons of solid and liquid fuel.
1:36.3	We are approximately 26 seconds away from picking up the countdown at the T-minus nine minute point.
1:44.3	Nine minutes remaining between now and 7 a.m.
1:47.6	When we expect to have a lift off of America's first space shuttle.
1:54.4	Strapped into this machine are two men.
1:58.1	One is a rookie, Bob Crippen.
2:00.7	I grew up wanting to fly.
2:02.9	Focused and quick-witted.
	...

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