Trailer. 13 Minutes Presents: The Space Shuttle
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 3 August 2025
⏱️ ? minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The epic space story of a sci-fi dream that changed spaceflight forever. Told by the Nasa astronauts and team who made it happen. Our multi-award-winning podcast is back, hosted by space scientist Maggie Aderin-Pocock. She tells the story of triumph and tragedy - of a dream that revolutionised modern space travel forever.
You can listen to the trailer here. To hear episodes, search for 13 Minutes Presents: The Space Shuttle, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. 13 Minutes Presents: The Space Shuttle is a BBC Audio Science Unit production for the BBC World Service. Theme music by Hans Zimmer and Christian Lundberg, and produced by Russell Emanuel, for Bleeding Fingers Music. Archive: Mission audio and oral histories, Nasa History Office.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | 12th of April, 1981, Cape Canaveral, Florida. |
| 0:10.0 | A radically new spacecraft sits on the launch pad. |
| 0:14.0 | Unlike anything that had ever flown in space. |
| 0:17.0 | Every single system, every piece of instrumentation, all of it, it was the first time |
| 0:25.3 | anybody had ever seen any of that. Two astronauts wait to be launched into space. This is the |
| 0:35.3 | boldest test flight in history. |
| 0:38.3 | We're gonna fly this new rocket, |
| 0:43.3 | never been floated before, and we got people on it. |
| 0:47.3 | We got inside of a minute to launch, and I said, |
| 0:52.3 | John, I think we might really do it. |
| 0:57.2 | That was when my heart rate went up to around 130. |
| 1:05.0 | The multi-award winning podcast returns. |
| 1:07.0 | 13 minutes presents. The Space Shuttle. The Space Shuttle. |
| 1:13.6 | And the shuttle has cleared the tower. |
| 1:16.6 | And it was like something being bombed. |
| 1:19.6 | This vehicle was saying, I'm alive, let me go. |
| 1:23.6 | I mean, we're just hooting and hollering and screaming and yelling for the sure joy of what you were taking in. |
| 1:30.7 | What a view, what a view. |
| 1:33.0 | Glad you're enjoying it. |
| 1:35.9 | I'm space scientist, Maggie Adairn Pocock. |
| 1:38.9 | I grew up with the dream of one day becoming an astronaut. |
| 1:43.1 | And through my teenage years, I watched in awe |
... |
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