13 Minutes to the Moon

[Star One]

I just listened to episode 4 of 13 Minutes. I'm going to write an article comparing the two podcasts. Any comments, ideas, suggestions, observations are welcome so I can shape my article.

They are covering some of the same ground, obviously, so where they differ is what is important to me. I believe that the sound design on 16 Sunsets is better than on the BBC's 13 Minutes.

I note that on 13 Minutes they did not discuss the KH-11 imaging Columbia on STS-1. Just left it as a mystery. There was a lot more to it in 16 Sunsets.

They address the payload bay requirements as regards the KH-9 in a later episode.

Overall I just found 13 Minutes more listenable and better presented. It’s probably just down to me preferring one presenter over the other.

[Blackstar]

They address the payload bay requirements as regards the KH-9 in a later episode.

Yes, I know. I was the expert they interviewed about that.

[Blackstar]

Just listened to episode 5. Surprisingly, it started out with my interview. The transcript that I read a few months ago had me in the middle, not the beginning. I am the only outside expert that they've interviewed in the first five episodes, all the other people worked on or flew the space shuttle.

Most of the episode is about the launch of the Palapa satellite that failed, followed by the test of the MMU. That's a great discussion. Really good part of the episode.

[Blackstar]

I have now listened to episode 6 and it may be the best one so far. After discussing the first test of the MMU in episode 5, in episode 6 they focus on the rescue of the two stranded comsats and how they used the MMU. Some good explanation and audio. It really makes you understand it. I am sure I watched these missions--whatever was televised--as a kid, but I don't remember if I watched them live or just news updates. They were doing something entirely new and untried at the time.

13 Minutes seems to be spending more time with some of the female astronauts in the TFNG class, whereas 16 Sunsets spent more time with some others, focusing more on Ron McNair and then also on Charlie Bolden. It really provides a good insight into how shuttle opened up the astronaut corps to more people. Anna Fisher is prominent in this episode. There's a great story about her bringing her baby to the simulator and practicing with the Canada Arm while the kid crawled around. Big difference to the Apollo era, when the men went off to work and their wives and kids barely saw them at all.

[Blackstar]

I listened to episode 7. Very good. Focuses on Christa McAuliffe. Ends with the accident (doesn't discuss it).

If you have not listened to it, please do so. I don't want to spoil what I thought were the most interesting parts of it. I'll do that later.

[Blackstar]

Okay, so here is the spoilers for episode 7: (text in white below)


The episode is mostly about Christa McAuliffe and features interviews with astronauts Mike Mullane and Anna Fisher. They talk about their views of having non-astronauts fly on the shuttle. Mullane was generally opposed, Fisher's attitude was that it was too soon. McAuliffe was exuberant, always smiling, always having a great time, very enthusiastic. Fisher worried that she did not fully understand the risk. She said that McAuliffe's commander also had that concern. She said she believes he talked to her about it, but Fisher is not sure if McAuliffe fully understood it. We hear what we want to hear, she said.

The episode then discusses the first launch attempt, which was on a nice day. It got scrubbed for a rather mundane reason (they could not remove something from the orbiter's hatch, in part because the batteries on their portable drills were dead). The second try was on a really cold day. There is a good clip from one of the ground people saying that they had called in about all the ice on the pad, but rather than saying that the launch was scrubbed, they took that as an indication they should warn people about slippery surfaces. The episode then proceeds to the launch and ends with somebody from Mission Control saying that when he looked at a monitor he saw a fireball.

I think the hard hitting part of the episode is the discussion about McAuliffe not really understanding the risks. This is all subjective of course, but the impression it left with me is that she was so excited and enthusiastic the whole time that some of the astronauts who knew her thought that she was oblivious to how dangerous it was. Impossible to know, of course.

[Apollo22]

Very interesting - and sad.
Pre STS-51L the Shuttle program was a bundle of conflicting, and dangerous paradoxes
-the Shuttle had to flight 24 times a year in orbit to pay for itself
-the Shuttle was a low risk, mature system with rides not much dangerous than an airliner
-while astronauts and military pilots knew and accepted the risk of flying aerospace vehicles, civilians were different
-"but the Shuttle is safe enough to fly civilians"
-the Shuttle budget was flat, too low to fly those 24 annual missions (Mullane says the Shuttle "standing army" was on its knees: lack of personal, spares and budget, with "only" 10 flights in 1985-86)
-the 1986 launch schedule was heavily constrained by the Halley comet (SPARTAN, March 6, 1986) and the Ulysses / Galileo back to back Centaur launches in May 1986. In fact the schedule was already hopelessly wrecked.

In his book "Riding rockets" Mullane draw a very lucid picture of the 1981-1986 Shuttle era. He even lists a few scary close-calls.
For example, the Columbia flight before STS-51L had a few very scary close calls with disaster (broken probe falling into the SSME - and not enough LOX in the tank).

Columbia should have flown before Christmas 1985 but actually landed on January 12, 1986. Meanwhile STS-51L was delayed again and again. The grueling flight schedule all by itself was a ticking bomb.

[wbianco]

Blackstar et al -

I question the 13 Minutes conclusions about Christa McAuliffe and risk warnings.  Early coverage of the accident said the shuttle commander Dick Scobee explicitly spelled out the risks to the two teacher candidates.

https://www.nytimes.com/1986/04/21/us/risks-were-spelled-out-shuttle-survivor-says.html

Interestingly, Mike Mullane, who's interviewed in the episode, mentions the same Scobee anecdote on his website:

https://mikemullane.com/space-is-hard/

WB

[Blackstar]

They haven't covered this yet:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/29/science/coke-pepsi-nasa-space-shuttle.html?searchResultPosition=1

The First Soda in Space: When NASA Got Caught Up in the Cola Wars

In the summer of 1985, NASA, the Reagan White House and seven talented astronauts were wrangled into an orbital battle over soft-drink supremacy.
By Joseph Dragovich
    Published July 29, 2025Updated July 30, 2025

In space travel, the firsts are often what matter most: the first woman in orbit and the first man to walk on the moon, or, less famously, the first time astronauts grabbed a wobbling satellite with their hands.

Yet in the 1980s, America’s two biggest soft drink companies raced for another milestone: to serve the first fizzy drink in orbit.

One of the greatest excesses of the cola wars happened as NASA was transitioning from the prestige-driven program of the Apollo years toward our modern era of commercial spaceflight, which has been dominated by companies willing to land a Nokia 4G/LTE communications system on the moon, or launch a mannequin-driven Tesla Roadster into deep space. To the Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo, the commercially minded shuttle program was a perfect marketing opportunity.

Forty years on, a NASA astronaut remembers positive moments of the soft drink space race. “We did our job and it was kind of fun,” said Loren Acton, a space shuttle payload specialist.

[wbianco]

Have you listened to the podcast? Fisher was unconvinced that she really understood what Scobee told her.
[/quote]

Yes, I have. More notable to me that Barbara Morgan (McAuliffe's backup), who also got the same briefing from Scobee, indicated that they knew what they were getting into.   

[Blackstar]

Yes, I have. More notable to me that Barbara Morgan (McAuliffe's backup), who also got the same briefing from Scobee, indicated that they knew what they were getting into.   

Just because Morgan did did not mean that McAuliffe did.

[Blackstar]

Episode 8 is titled "A Major Malfunction" and obviously deals with the Challenger accident. I have not listened to it yet, but will post here when I have.

It's interesting to compare what subjects this podcast covered with those covered by 16 Sunsets. This was a tough subject to address in a podcast, because there were so many shuttle missions, where do you cut it off? They both seemed to have decided to restrict it to the early years, which makes sense. A second season could focus on the missions to Mir and then the first ISS missions, leading up to the Columbia accident.

As I mentioned before, the two podcasts are complementary.

[Blackstar]

I have now listened to episode 8 and it is really good. It focuses on the Challenger launch decision, particularly the conference call that happened the night before the launch involving NASA and Thiokol personnel. There was a Challenger accident book that came out last year, but it's different to hear people who were there talk about the experience.

[Blackstar]

I have listened to episode 9, also really good. It addresses the aftermath of the Challenger accident. Some of the astronauts discuss their memories of the crew members and some of the stories they tell are heartbreaking. One (I think) flight controller had the crew sign a photograph, and Ellison Onizuka had written "HELP!" on it next to his name. When she got home after the accident and went inside her house, the photo, with that word, was the first thing she saw.

There's an astronaut talking about the beach house at Kennedy Space Center, and how it's the last place that most astronauts see their families. That was true for the Challenger crew, so it's somewhat of a sacred place for the astronauts. One astronaut tells the story about how he told his family when he became an astronaut that it was the riskiest thing he ever did. I cannot remember if it was him or another astronaut who said that despite the risk, they could not see themselves doing anything else. They were drawn to it.

There's the story about a group of astronauts flying back to Houston in their T-38s and how the air traffic controllers each expressed their condolences and then cleared them through the airspace, essentially giving them a straight path home.

There's some discussion about figuring out what the shuttle was actually supposed to do, and removing commercial payloads from future shuttle missions.

There's also discussion about how the Thiokol engineers redesigned the O-rings. And then a discussion about selecting Rick Hauck to fly the return to flight mission.

These later episodes are pretty good and it might even be possible to mix them in with the 16 Sunsets podcast episodes. I'm not sure exactly how you would do that.

I do prefer Kevin Fong's narration for 16 Sunsets. But they're both good.

[Blackstar]

I listened to episode 10, the last one this season. It was okay, not great. Not as good as several of the previous episodes.

This one focused on the first flight after the Challenger accident and featured commentary from mission commander Rick Hauck. He was talking about his thoughts during ascent. Then there were comments by various astronauts about what they thought of the shuttle program. Was it a success? What did it mean? Some good observations there about how it was always an experimental vehicle and should be judged as such.

There was nothing particularly profound in their observations in this episode, whereas I thought some of the earlier ones had more interesting and unique comments.

The host then ended by mentioning that the shuttle went on post-Challenger to do many other things, including helping to build the space station. They are clearly setting it up for another season where they will probably talk about the flights to Mir and then the early ISS construction, and then maybe lead up to the Columbia accident. They could certainly cover those 15+ years with ten episodes.

Comparing this show to 16 Sunsets, I think 13 Minutes had much more focus on women astronauts, whereas 16 Sunsets had more focus on other minority astronauts, although that was primarily because they had Charlie Bolden (who was fascinating).

I'm going to write up an overall summary of both podcasts, commenting on every episode. But that's going to take me awhile to put together. I think these were good podcasts, but that seasons 1 and 2 of 13 Minutes (on Apollo 11 and Apollo 13) were still superior.