The Space Shuttle: 2. The greatest test flight

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Speaker 9 Episodes of 30 Minutes Presents the Space Shuttle are released weekly, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. But if you're in the UK, you can listen to the full season right now, first on BBC Sounds.

Speaker 9 This episode contains scenes some listeners might find upsetting.

Speaker 9 And some scenes in this series use recreated sound effects.

Speaker 9 Every big event needs a dress rehearsal, including the launch of a new spacecraft.

Speaker 9 It's three and a half weeks before the launch of the first space shuttle mission, STS-1.

Speaker 9 And this morning is the end of a two-day dress rehearsal, the Countdown Demonstration Test. test.

Speaker 9 The shuttle is sitting on the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. On the flight deck of Orbiter Columbia are Commander John Young and pilot Bob Crippen.

Speaker 9 The entire team is involved, including shuttle processing engineer John Tribe.

Speaker 12 We were just about ready for flight. We were within weeks of flight.

Speaker 9 Right from the early days, he he's helped design the launch pad to ensure the shuttle and the pad are completely integrated. This is a chance to check everything works.

Speaker 9 So he's been closely watching the countdown demonstration test.

Speaker 12 At the end of the test, the operations guys were mainly concerned with getting the crew out of the vehicle, getting them off the pad. getting the pad back open.

Speaker 13 It was a successful terminal count. They would make an announcement, all personnel report to your work area.

Speaker 9 Bill Carr is a safety officer at Kennedy Space Center, working as part of a team preparing Orbiter Columbia for launch.

Speaker 9 He's in his mid-20s and he's been with the shuttle program for just a couple of years.

Speaker 13 You know, we're trying to get to a launch. We're trying to drive the work to be ready to go launch as soon as possible.
You know, the managers told the guys, you know, you need to get up there.

Speaker 9 Up there is the 130-foot level, about 40 meters up on the service structure next to the shuttle.

Speaker 9 At 9.15am, a group of ground crew technicians take the elevator up to it. They head for a compartment at the back of the orbiter near the main engines.

Speaker 9 Their job is to inspect and remove monitoring equipment.

Speaker 9 Three technicians walk across the access ramp to the shuttle and climb down a ladder to a platform next to a hatch numbered 50-1.

Speaker 9 Technician John Bjornstad prepares to enter.

Speaker 9 A curtain is slung across the hatch for easier access.

Speaker 9 Bjornstad pushes it aside.

Speaker 9 He crawls into the compartment. Another technician, Forrest Cole, enters closely behind him and turns to the left.

Speaker 9 But within seconds, both slump to the floor, unconscious.

Speaker 9 During a launch countdown, this compartment is filled with nitrogen gas, or GN2, to prevent any potential fires.

Speaker 13 If anybody understands GN2, it's basically two breaths and you're gone. As soon as you breathe in pure GN2, I mean, it displaces the oxygen in your lungs.

Speaker 12 You basically just fall asleep. You know, there's no pain, there's no discomfort, there's no sense of gasping or choking.

Speaker 12 You just pass out.

Speaker 9 Over the course of a few minutes, the third technician and two other workers also pass out, trying to save their colleagues.

Speaker 9 By the time the last worker, Forrest Cole, is rescued, he's been without oxygen for 12 minutes.

Speaker 13 John Bjornstedt and Forrest Cole, you know, they were two great guys. I'd worked with them for a lot of years.

Speaker 13 They lost their life that day. I knew those guys really well.
We were all in a training class just three days before the accident. And

Speaker 13 matter of fact, one of the guys, Forrest Cole, as much as the program had been excited, he was talking about considering to do something different.

Speaker 9 The cause of this fatal accident was miscommunication.

Speaker 9 The nitrogen released into the compartment had been extended to allow for some additional additional tests, but that extension hadn't been properly communicated from the firing room at launch control to ground crews.

Speaker 9 The technicians had no idea of the danger lying in wait.

Speaker 9 The loss of their co-workers hits the whole team hard.

Speaker 9 These are the first deaths in the American space program since the Apollo 1 launch pad fire in 1967, which killed astronauts Ed White, Roger Chaffee and Gus Grissom.

Speaker 9 John Tribe was there for that too.

Speaker 12 In fact, I just talked to Grissom just like 10 minutes before the fire and that was a horrendous shock, very traumatic to all of us. But as time passes, you put it behind you.

Speaker 12 And you start figuring out how to stop that ever happening again and move on. And you do the same thing with the GN2 accident with the shuttle.
Okay, well, that was really bad. We screwed up royally.

Speaker 12 We got to fix that.

Speaker 15 Fix that, press on.

Speaker 13 I don't think any of us who are working on the program at that time recognize that a mistake could be made like that. You know, again, there was just, you're young and everything's trusting.

Speaker 13 You know, there's people that are looking at these things. They know more than we do.
And there were some safeguards missed. And unfortunately, two guys lost their lives.

Speaker 13 you know I think it really made people recognize that safety isn't just a it's not a slogan it's not something that it's nice to have that that without it you know very bad things can happen

Speaker 9 another of the technicians Nick Mullen ultimately becomes the accident's third victim He dies more than a decade later from long-term complications.

Speaker 9 The deaths of Mullen, Bjornstadt, and Cole is a sobering reminder of the risks involved in the Space Shuttle program.

Speaker 9 If things go wrong, people can lose their lives.

Speaker 9 And remember, this is while the shuttle is still on the ground. Once it launches, those risks will be multiplied many,

Speaker 9 many

Speaker 9 times.

Speaker 9 From the BBC World Service, 13 Minutes presents the Space Shuttle. I'm space scientist Maggie Adarin Pocock.

Speaker 9 Episode 2 of 10: The Greatest Test Flight.

Speaker 9 Just weeks after the tragic deaths, astronauts John Young and Bob Crippen are at Johnson Space Center in Houston, training for their mission. It sounds callous, but they have a launch to prepare for.

Speaker 9 Today, the two astronauts are in NASA's motion-based simulator. Young is in the commander's seat on the left, and Crippin in the pilot's.

Speaker 9 The simulator is tilted 90 degrees in the launch position. They're facing up, their knees above them, backs against their seats.
It's a complete recreation of a shuttle's flight deck.

Speaker 9 And

Speaker 3 it moves.

Speaker 2 We had a fixed base simulator, which meant that it didn't move. And then we had the motion-based simulator, which is the one that rocked and rolled as kind of like a carnival ride.

Speaker 9 Marianne Dyson is one of the first female flight controllers.

Speaker 2 They used that one for almost all the ascent. They used that simulator.

Speaker 2 They'd run through some scenario and then the team back in mission control, we would all be at our consoles and there were three teams for the first flight.

Speaker 2 There was ascent team, an orbit team and an entry team. And I was on the ascent team.

Speaker 9 That's the group of mission controllers in charge of the first hours of the mission. In particular, the eight and a half minute ride from Earth into orbit.

Speaker 9 And at the helm is Flight Director Neil Hutchinson.

Speaker 2 He's very intense.

Speaker 2 And this was a good thing. Ascend is the most dynamic phase when the most things can happen and quickly.

Speaker 2 So you don't have time for somebody to sit there and go, hmm, I wonder if we should shut down that engine or not. Hmm, you need to make those decisions quickly.

Speaker 2 And so he was always just pushing us, pushing us, pushing us, pushing us, because he knew we could do it.

Speaker 2 And I appreciated appreciated that, that challenge, that achievement through excellence.

Speaker 9 Picture a man with a full beard and large aviator glasses leaning back on his chair in front of a bank of monitors. That's Neil Hutchinson.

Speaker 15 I think you have to be a person that's not flippant.

Speaker 15 that takes decisions seriously and when you make them, make them crisply

Speaker 15 and in critical phases you answer to no one the buck absolutely stops at dead console

Speaker 9 he and his ascent team practiced that first launch literally hundreds of times

Speaker 9 but let me take you right into the very last simulation

Speaker 9 just before John Young and Bob Crippen leave for Florida to launch for real.

Speaker 9 The simulation supervisors are running the show.

Speaker 9 They're in the room right next to Mission Control and they already have a plan in mind.

Speaker 9 They can introduce a failure at any point during the mission, on any system, on any engine, on any console.

Speaker 9 The crew and mission control have to be ready for anything.

Speaker 15 Let me tell you what, it is so realistic.

Speaker 15 Every one of them takes on a life of its own because the failures are never the same.

Speaker 9 On his flight director's console, Neil Hutchinson has perhaps the most important tool of all, the abort switch.

Speaker 9 At any point, if he thinks the crew's lives are in danger and the mission needs to be aborted, this is the switch he will use.

Speaker 15 The abort switch is a

Speaker 15 toggle switch. It's tall and ugly.

Speaker 15 The abort switch has three positions, detent, which is in the middle.

Speaker 15 In order to throw the switch, you have to lift it up out of detent push it forward keep it out of detent and pull it all the way back to make the second contact

Speaker 15 it's hooked to nothing

Speaker 15 actually it's hooked to a light in front of john and cripp

Speaker 15 it says abort

Speaker 15 and

Speaker 15 It does not control any systems.

Speaker 15 It doesn't control any engines. What it does control is the fingers of the CDR.

Speaker 9 CDR stands for Commander, the astronaut sitting at Columbia's controls, John Young.

Speaker 15 Who then hits the abort switch? It's the ground telling him, you got no other choice if you want to live but to abort and do it now.

Speaker 15 And John did.

Speaker 15 Even sometimes when he thought it was the wrong thing and once in a while it proved it we shouldn't have.

Speaker 9 There are different kinds of abort depending on the height the shuttle has reached at that particular point.

Speaker 15 When the vehicle takes off, it starts at zero feet and pretty soon it's at a thousand feet, then it's at 10,000 feet, then it's at 10 miles, then it's at 30 miles and so on.

Speaker 15 And as it goes upward, we always want to have a way

Speaker 15 If something really bad happens, like an engine quits, and and we don't have the force required to get the vehicle safely into an orbit around the Earth, we want a way to get the crew back safely.

Speaker 9 But on this very last practice run, there are no aborts. The simulation supervisors decide that the run will go perfectly, with no failures.

Speaker 15 We got to orbit exactly as designed and planned. There were no anomalies, and we could have gone on to complete a successful three-day mission with no failures.

Speaker 15 I probably ran 500 acid dress rehearsals before we actually flew, and I probably aborted 499 of them when we ran one good one right at the end.

Speaker 9 Because this launch is going to be unlike anything NASA has ever done before.

Speaker 9 Astronaut Dick Covey, who will fly later in the shuttle program, puts it this way.

Speaker 10 We're going to fly this new rocket, never been flown before, and we've got people on it. And, oh, they're in this new spacecraft, unlike any spacecraft we had ever flown before.

Speaker 9 That decision to have astronauts on board the first flight was made early in the process.

Speaker 6 Somebody asked, well, shouldn't we be able to fly this without the crew on board the first time?

Speaker 9 Astronaut Bob Crippen.

Speaker 6 Myself, John, and quite a few other people, we thought the chance of success was better if we were on board to deal with any problems that came up. And

Speaker 6 that feeling prevailed. It would have been very expensive and very time-consuming to modify the vehicle to be able to fly completely unmanned.

Speaker 9 When Mission STS-1 launches, with Bob Crippen and John Young strapped into Columbia's cockpit, it will be the first time a shuttle will have been tested in space.

Speaker 9 Perhaps Neil Hutchinson puts it best.

Speaker 15 I think it is noteworthy

Speaker 15 it had never been done before,

Speaker 15 and more noteworthy that it's never been done since, and it's not being done now. by any space agency in the world.

Speaker 15 And that ought to be the metric that you look at the level of risk we had with that vehicle the first time out of the chute. Now, did that bother us? Nah.

Speaker 15 We had a job to do, and we knew the capability of the vehicle. We knew how to run it.

Speaker 15 I was pretty confident that we were going to pull this thing off.

Speaker 9 It's been nine years since President Nixon announced the go-ahead of the shuttle program.

Speaker 9 It's taken an army of designers, engineers, ground crew, flight controllers, managers, and backroom staff to get to this point.

Speaker 9 And just weeks ago, two workers lost their lives during a dress rehearsal for launch.

Speaker 9 There's a lot riding on this mission.

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Speaker 1 K634 is complete. Roger, copy.

Speaker 1 OTC, DLT, horizontal ship configuration complete. Roger that.

Speaker 9 It's the morning of launch for the very first space shuttle mission.

Speaker 9 The 12th of April, 1981.

Speaker 9 Roger that's in order.

Speaker 9 The shuttle stands proudly on Launch Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Speaker 9 There's the enormous external tank, much taller than the orbiter itself.

Speaker 9 It's rocket-shaped. and towering almost as high as the service structure next to it.

Speaker 9 Attached to it on either side are the two solid rocket boosters. They're much skinnier, white rockets.

Speaker 9 And on one side of the external tank is the orbiter itself, Columbia, with its two astronauts aboard, John Young and Bob Crippen.

Speaker 9 Ready to defy gravity.

Speaker 9 We had a little cheer go up here in the control center at the Kennedy Space Center when it was verified that all four of the general-purpose computers on board were communicating properly with the backup computer.

Speaker 9 Columbia was due to be launched two days earlier.

Speaker 9 But because of a computer issue, the launch was scrubbed.

Speaker 9 But now the systems seem to be working. Everybody is breathing a sigh of relief.

Speaker 2 On the first attempt, everybody had shown up for work wearing suits and ties, and we were all kind of a little nervous and whatever.

Speaker 9 In Mission Control in Houston, flight controller Marianne Dyson is sitting in one of the back rooms.

Speaker 2 And I had worn a suit on the 10th, and I came in on the 12th. I was just wearing a blouse, you know, and a skirt, a simple outfit, because we were much more relaxed.
And we, we, we really,

Speaker 2 I think we all just sat back and took a deep breath.

Speaker 9 More relaxed, maybe.

Speaker 9 But according to flight director Neil Hutchinson.

Speaker 10 Quiet.

Speaker 15 Not a sound in the room.

Speaker 9 Not that relaxed.

Speaker 15 Nobody walking around.

Speaker 15 Everybody at their console. All of them looking at their data, not looking at each other or looking at me.

Speaker 9 The only people in the room are Neil's Ascent team and a select few others. Right behind him sit NASA's original flight directors, Gene Krantz and Chris Kraft.

Speaker 9 Neil can be particular. Things have to be just right.

Speaker 15 I had a thing about nobody, no one

Speaker 15 could be at a console in mission control unless you were the console primary operator.

Speaker 15 Period.

Speaker 9 But Neil notices someone walking through the door of mission control.

Speaker 9 It's Max Faget.

Speaker 9 The innovator and pioneer who's helped design every single one of NASA's spacecrafts. The man who threw the wooden model plane in Building 36.

Speaker 9 And of course, he's wearing his bow tie, but he's not a member of the flight team.

Speaker 15 Some people come in the room that probably shouldn't be there, that you can't keep out. One of them was Max Viget.

Speaker 15 I don't think he ever came to a simulation, but in the real day, he showed up, walked in the front door, and walked back to the fourth row, the last row in the control center, the far left-hand corner is far so you could get away from everything, which was behind me.

Speaker 15 Thank goodness.

Speaker 9 This is Shuttle Launch Control at T-9 minutes and holding the launch director George Page leads the team at Kennedy Space Center, who are responsible for the shuttle until it clears the pad a few seconds after launch.

Speaker 9 At that point, they hand over to Mission Control, halfway across the country in Houston, Texas. Okay,

Speaker 9 CDR pilot is the launch directory.

Speaker 9 During the nine-minute hold, Paige reads a last message to the crew from the current U.S. President, Ronald Reagan.
All Americans with you.

Speaker 9 You go in the hand of God and draw on the courage of life. As he is speaking, the event is being broadcast live across the United States and around the world.

Speaker 17 Yes, Mike. Hello again from the Cape with the news that we are hoping for a launch on schedule.
All they're thinking about is the word liftoff. They started to...

Speaker 9 An estimated 600,000 people line the coastal area.

Speaker 11 Roads leading to the space center were jammed hours before the scheduled liftoff.

Speaker 9 They've all made a very early start this morning, and now they're standing on beaches and rocks.

Speaker 18 I'd like to be an astronaut, but you know, it takes a lot of courage, and I'd be scared to go up there right now.

Speaker 9 Sitting on bridges and on their cars.

Speaker 19 Anybody can see it on TV but I got the chance to be here live so I really see it live.

Speaker 9 Everyone is waiting to witness the spectacle of the decade.

Speaker 20 May God bless you and may God bring you safely home to us again.

Speaker 9 The launch director ends the message with his own good wishes.

Speaker 20 We sure wish you an awful lot of luck. We're with you a thousand percent and we're awful proud I've been a part of it.
Good luck, y'all.

Speaker 9 This is John Young responding. That's a mighty fine speech, and we sure appreciate it.

Speaker 9 That was a mighty fine speech, and we sure appreciate it.

Speaker 9 There isn't much left for Young and Crippen to do now, but wait.

Speaker 6 On the final minutes of countdown, the crew is not really all that busy. You're primarily watching your instruments and your systems, talking to the Launch Control Center.

Speaker 6 You do a communication check with the mission control back in Houston, and mission control takes over just as soon as you lift off.

Speaker 16 The liquid hydrogen vent valve has been closed, and flight pressurization is underway.

Speaker 9 As the countdown clock ticks closer to zero, the anticipation bills.

Speaker 16 T-minus one minute, mark and counting.

Speaker 6 We got inside of a minute to launch, and I said, John, I think we might really do it. That was when my heart rate went up to around 130.

Speaker 16 T-minus 45 seconds and counting.

Speaker 6 John's was down nice, calm 90.

Speaker 15 I wouldn't be telling the truth

Speaker 15 if I didn't say my heart rate was probably up a bit, as I'm sure everybody's was.

Speaker 15 But boy, your attention is right on the exact same displays and the exact same actions that you have trained and trained and trained.

Speaker 15 Go for auto sequence start.

Speaker 9 This call marks that the four onboard computers are now in charge, running the last half a minute of the countdown.

Speaker 16 T minus 20 seconds and counting.

Speaker 9 Everyone is holding their breath.

Speaker 9 In mission control,

Speaker 9 at Kennedy Space Center,

Speaker 9 and everybody watching on TV screens across America and around the world.

Speaker 9 Will this new machine fly?

Speaker 9 T-minus 10, 9, 8, 7. At T minus 3.8 seconds, the main engines fire.

Speaker 20 Go for minute to start.

Speaker 9 At this point, Columbia is still held to the launch pad by bolts attached to the bottom of the solid rocket boosters. The whole stack, external tank, solid rocket boosters, and orbiter, sways forward

Speaker 9 and then back.

Speaker 9 This is called the twang.

Speaker 6 You could look out John's window, which was on the side toward the swing arm area, and visually see the twang as well as see it on your instrument. And then it springs back.

Speaker 6 And as soon as it springs back, that's when the solids ignite.

Speaker 6 When the solids ignite, it's a nice kick in the pants.

Speaker 9 A force of seven million pounds of thrust lifts the space shuttle off the launch pad.

Speaker 13 You know, I stepped out to watch the launch and beat, you know, as all of us did.

Speaker 9 Bill Carr is watching the launch with the rest of the ground crew.

Speaker 13 And just the sounds and then the sight and then crackling of the boosters.

Speaker 15 I mean, we're just hooting and hollering and screaming and yelling for the sheer joy of what you were taking in. Incredible.

Speaker 6 The thing that surprised me mostly was the shaking. By the nature of solids, they do shake.
They cause a harmonic to set up in the vehicle, even though you're wearing helmets to attenuate it.

Speaker 6 It is noisy.

Speaker 9 As the shuttle clears the launch pad, the torches pass from launch control at Kennedy Space Center in Florida to mission control in Houston.

Speaker 9 Neil Hutchinson and his ascent team are now in the thick of it.

Speaker 15 Mission control is like a tomb.

Speaker 15 It's very quiet in there.

Speaker 15 Everyone is talking over their headsets. No one is talking over the airwaves.

Speaker 9 Only a few seconds into the shuttle's ascent, Capcom Dan Brandenstein, the only person who speaks directly to the crew, confirms Columbia's roll maneuver.

Speaker 9 The onboard guidance system rotates the shuttle and tilts it onto its back, putting the crew in a slightly heads-down position beneath the external tank.

Speaker 5 Roger row complete.

Speaker 9 This is the trajectory the spacecraft will need to reach the connect orbit around the Earth.

Speaker 5 Columbia Houston, you're go at 40.

Speaker 9 The call go at 40 simply means that at this point, 40 seconds after liftoff, every system is looking good.

Speaker 9 The ascent is going perfectly so far.

Speaker 9 The shuttle keeps accelerating, but now the autopilot throttles the main engines down to 65%,

Speaker 9 effectively decreasing the shuttle's acceleration.

Speaker 15 It's like as if you let up on the accelerator on a car on the throttle.

Speaker 9 This happens just before max Q.

Speaker 9 The moment the shuttle experiences the most extreme dynamic pressures from the air around it.

Speaker 15 And that is a point in the flight where the flight path angle, the angle at which you're flying through that atmosphere, is extremely critical.

Speaker 15 In fact, if you don't get it right on, you're going to tear the wings off the orbiter because the orbiter has to be very, very careful the way it flies through that max dynamic pressure area.

Speaker 9 56 seconds into the flight and moving faster now than the speed of sound, the spacecraft reaches max Q

Speaker 9 and everything is still looking good.

Speaker 9 Capcom Dan Brendenstein confirms the shuttle's engines are being increased again.

Speaker 5 Columbia Houston, you're going throttle up.

Speaker 9 And John Young replies.

Speaker 20 Roger, go ahead throttle up.

Speaker 15 So that's a very important call to the crew that say we throttle down, we got through max Q, and we throttle back up and all is well.

Speaker 5 Roger, Columbia on the nice ride, you're lofting a little bit, so you'll probably be slightly high at staging.

Speaker 9 That suggests the solid rocket boosters are outperforming expectations.

Speaker 9 They're even more powerful than the engineers anticipated.

Speaker 9 The only problem is, there's no way to rein them in.

Speaker 15 Once you light them, you're going, and you're going to go somewhere until they shut off.

Speaker 9 If there was an issue now which endangered the crew's lives, the only option would be their ejection seats.

Speaker 9 If they had to do that, Bob Crippen knows that his chances of survival would be close to zero.

Speaker 6 To me, they were more of a placebo than a real safety factor.

Speaker 6 If you tried to eject initially on there, you'd be flying through that big plume from the solid rocket, and so you'd be very crispy before you ever had a chance to get to the ground.

Speaker 5 Columbia, your negative seats.

Speaker 9 As Columbia climbs past 80,000 feet, that's about 24 kilometers, Dan Brendenstein lets the crew know that they can't even use the ejection seats now.

Speaker 9 They're traveling at such a high speed that the friction of the air would melt the plastic faceplates of their helmets.

Speaker 5 Columbia, Columbia, you're go for SRB-7.

Speaker 9 Around two minutes after liftoff, the propellant inside the solid rocket boosters is used up.

Speaker 9 They've done their job. It's time to set them free.

Speaker 6 They have little small rockets on them that push them away from the vehicle.

Speaker 6 And even though the solids themselves are not visible through the cockpit windows, you could see the firing pushing those away.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 when the solids shut down,

Speaker 6 you're going three G's to less than half a G, and it's a dramatic change, and the sound goes completely silent.

Speaker 6 There's no more shaking going on. It's kind of like me sitting here in this chair.
It's very quiet. I initially thought that maybe the main engines had quit as well.

Speaker 6 Checking my instruments, that wasn't the case. It was obvious they were still burning and everything was going okay, but it was a dramatic change for me as on that first flight.

Speaker 5 Roger on the step, Columbia.

Speaker 9 As the boosters tumble back down to the Atlantic Ocean to be picked up and reused, Neil Hutchinson in mission control hears someone behind him.

Speaker 9 It's Max Faget.

Speaker 15 He jumped up and very loudly said they're off.

Speaker 9 Faget has never been a fan of the solid rocket boosters for one simple reason. You can't turn them off.

Speaker 9 In the early days of planning the shuttle, he advocated for other designs which didn't involve the boosters.

Speaker 15 And it was so loud that it... I definitely heard it and Dr.
Kraft heard it who was sitting behind me. And the reason I know Max was standing was Dr.

Speaker 15 Kraft said, for Christ's Christ's sake, Max, sit down.

Speaker 15 And that's a true story.

Speaker 9 The Orbiter Columbia and the external tank continue upwards at ever-increasing speeds, using just the main engines.

Speaker 9 Hutchinson glances at the abort switch on his console. Should anything go wrong at this point, they'd have to perform a return to launch site or RTLS abort.

Speaker 9 This is the one abort mode that both crew and mission control really don't want to do.

Speaker 15 We practice it over and over and over and over again. The crews hate it.
The ground hates it. It's very risky.
It's very difficult.

Speaker 9 In this abort, John Young would have to turn the orbiter around and fly it back to the launch site.

Speaker 9 The bulky external tank, which supplies the shuttle's main engines with fuel, would still be attached.

Speaker 6 The RTLS was a sporty maneuver because what you had to do was to make sure you were going to empty out the external tank. Pretty much empty it.

Speaker 6 And that required you to flip the vehicle around such that you were flying backwards.

Speaker 6 and hopefully expend the fuel in the tank at the right moment where you kick it off and then go into a flying mode to come back and land. Quite often, the simulator, at least, we lost control.

Speaker 6 I actually

Speaker 6 thought that we probably should fly an RTLS

Speaker 6 because it was such a sporty maneuver, even volunteered to fly it. And John Young says, Crip, that's like practicing bleeding.

Speaker 6 So let's not do that.

Speaker 5 Columbia, standby for negative return.

Speaker 9 About four and a half minutes into the flight, Capcom Dan Brandenstein confirms negative return.

Speaker 5 Marked, negative return, and your evap is good.

Speaker 9 The shuttle is now too far away for an RTLS abort.

Speaker 9 The next would be a transatlantic abort to another landing site in Africa or Europe. But the worst is over.

Speaker 9 Bob Crippen, in space for the first time, is clearly enjoying the ride.

Speaker 17 Glad you're enjoying it.

Speaker 9 Eight and a half minutes after liftoff, John Young confirms Miko.

Speaker 9 Main engine cutoff.

Speaker 5 Roger Columbia, Miko.

Speaker 9 The main engines have shut down. Now there's only one essential task left.

Speaker 6 That's when you separate from the external tank. We have little pyrotechnic charges that fire and push the tank away.

Speaker 6 And you could feel that and hear it too.

Speaker 9 The external tank falls away back towards Earth, but it will never make it. It'll burn up as it passes through the Earth's atmosphere.

Speaker 9 And at this point, something magical happens in the cockpit.

Speaker 6 Checklists start to float.

Speaker 6 Maybe some trash in the vehicle starts to come up.

Speaker 9 Everything starts floating.

Speaker 9 And after two burns of the orbital maneuvering system,

Speaker 9 These are smaller engines that get them into the right orbit, Bob Crippen can now release his harness and gets to float himself.

Speaker 9 And

Speaker 6 for me, at least on that first flight, that was my first real experience with being weightless.

Speaker 6 It was pretty enjoyable.

Speaker 6 At that time, you take off your helmet, maybe your gloves,

Speaker 6 and

Speaker 6 I took off my boots. What John said, the first thing you got to do is get rid of those boots because you're going to kick something.

Speaker 6 So I left my boots. I unzipped my boots and left them attached to the seat.

Speaker 9 I can only imagine Bob Crippin's excitement. After more than a decade of waiting, he now gets to be in that microgravity environment, floating serenely in a revolutionary new space vehicle.

Speaker 9 It must have been worth the wait.

Speaker 9 Back at Mission Control, Flight Director Neil Hutchinson has the first and most critical phase of the mission behind him. So does he feel relieved?

Speaker 15 There is never a sense of relief until they're home underground.

Speaker 15 It's just business as usual. Okay, we're in orbit.
Now we've got to get the darn doors open. I mean, that's an abort in itself.

Speaker 9 He's talking about the two doors of the payload bay. That's the shuttle's cargo space, which runs almost the length of the spacecraft.

Speaker 15 If you can't get the doors open, then you can't cool the electronics in the vehicle, and you're going to come right home.

Speaker 15 Spaceflight is like that. There's always something critical in front of you, no matter what.

Speaker 9 He's right, because when Clippin and Young do open the payload bay doors, they find something completely unexpected.

Speaker 9 We do have a few tiles missing.

Speaker 9 Columbia is missing tiles from its vital heat shield.

Speaker 9 We're trying to put that on TV right now.

Speaker 5 Roger Gripp, we can see that good.

Speaker 15 That was probably our oh no moment on SGS1.

Speaker 9 That's next time on 13 minutes.

Speaker 9 This has been episode 2 of 10. Thank you for listening to 13 Minutes Presents: The Space Shuttle from the BBC World Service.
It's a BBC audio science production. I'm Maggie Adarin Pocock.

Speaker 9 13 Minutes wouldn't be 13 minutes without the people who made these space stories happen and then shared them with us. Thanks to every single one of them.

Speaker 9 We'd like to thank NASA for its archive sound. Some scenes in this series use recreated sound effects.
I really hope you're enjoying listening to our story of the space shuttle.

Speaker 9 Where you can, please leave a rating and a review. It really does help new listeners discover our podcast.
And if you're new to 13 Minutes, Seasons 1 and 2 are available right now.

Speaker 9 The extraordinary stories of the first moon landing and the near disaster and rescue of Apollo 13. The 13 Minutes series producers are Florin Bohr and Jeremy Grange.

Speaker 9 The assistant producer is Robbie Wojciechowski with additional research by Fabri Smallhart.

Speaker 9 Technical production is by Jackie Marjoram. Theme music by Hans Zimmer and Christian Lundberg.
and produced by Russell Emmanuel for Bleeding Fingers Music.

Speaker 9 The sound design is by Richard Gould from Skywalker Sound.

Speaker 9 Our story editor is Jessica Lindsay. The senior podcast producer for the BBC World Service is Anne Dixie.
The podcast commissioning editor is John Monel.

Speaker 9 And the series editor is Martin Smith.

Speaker 9 If you're in the UK, listen first on BBC Sounds.

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