Bonus. 13 Minutes Presents: The Space Shuttle

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0:30so you can monitor and engage with the account while your teen learns how to invest and manage money. Learn more at schwab.com. Hi, I'm space scientist Maggie Adairn-Pocock, and I'm the host of 13 Minutes Presents The Space Shuttle. It's the inside story of the dream to transform spaceflight with a reusable spacecraft, and it's told through the men and women who were there. We're sharing Episode 1 with you right here. To listen to more of the 10 episodes, search for 13 Minutes Presents The Space Shuttle, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Some scenes in this series use recreated sound effects.

1:18This is Shuttle Launch Control at T-9 minutes 30 seconds and counting. It's the 12th of April, 1981. Dawn. Dawn. Just a few seconds away now from our final built-in hold at the T-minus nine-minute point in our countdown. A machine as tall as a 14-floor apartment block stands bathed in beams of brilliant white light. It is dramatic if you go out before sunrise. It kind of looks unreal. It really does. It's a tower filled with nearly 2 ,000 tonnes of solid and liquid fuel. We are approximately 26 seconds away from picking up the countdown at the T-minus nine minute point. Nine minutes remaining between now and 7am when we expect to have a liftoff of America's first space shuttle.

2:17Strapped into this machine are two men. One is a rookie, Bob Crippen. I grew up wanting to fly. Focused and quick-witted. A star of the astronaut corps. And I think, well, you know, hiring faster is better. The other is already a national hero in the United States and one of the very few people to have walked on the moon, John Young. If you're a rookie going flying, you would be happy to have the most experienced guy you can in the seat with you, and John was that person. They lie in their seats side by side. Their eye scan across more than 2 ,000 switches, controls, displays. We wanted to make sure we didn't screw anything up, so you're not doing anything but paying attention to what you've got to do.

3:13T-minus seven minutes and counting. They're waiting. waiting for the fuel beneath them to ignite. And then there's no going back. The crew has been advised to lower their helm advisors. This new machine is unlike anything ever flown before. And on its maiden flight, its test flight, there are people in it. For all previous spacecraft, the US space agency NASA first did an uncrewed test flight to make sure it's safe. But not for this one.

3:56Trippin and Young's lives depend on each of the millions of components doing its job. And on the hard work and planning of every single designer, engineer, team member. Everything has to go right.

4:18If they're nervous about what they're going to do, the two astronauts aren't showing it. Right now, all they can do is listen to the voices from launch control. Hear the countdown clock tick down and hope. T-minus 5 minutes 15 seconds and counting. This is the boldest test flight in history.

4:47This is the inside story of a dream to create the most remarkable spacecraft. Told by the people who made it happen. Their hopes and dreams. their triumphs and their tragedies. This is the story of the Space Shuttle.

5:24From the BBC World Service, 13 Minutes presents the Space Shuttle. I'm space scientist Maggie Adair and Pocock.

5:37Episode 1 of 10. The Space Plane.

5:53Welcome to the new BBC Space Studio from which we're going to be bringing you a whole series of programmes. Let me take you back to the spring of 1969. The world's attention is on the Apollo project. Throughout the flight of Apollo 10, America's final dress rehearsal for the moon landing. A little more than two months before the launch of Apollo 11. The potential end of the space race. The US, the world, reaching the moon. And actually land on the moon in July in Apollo 11. But hidden away from public view, NASA has a new project. One of the few female engineers at NASA is Ivy Hooks. It was April Fool's Day, 1969, and the phone rang and it said, you need to go to Building 36, the third floor at 10 a.m.

6:44This is Hooks speaking to the NASA Johnson Space Centre Oral History Project. It's a brilliant archive that we always use in telling our stories on 13 minutes. And once again, we'll be hearing sections of its interviews throughout this season. It's April Fool's Day. We're having fun here. But two or three others in my group or near me got the same call. So we looked up 36 on the back of the phone book because we didn't know where 36 was. We drove down there and it's only a two-story building. But next door was a high bay that clearly had three stories. And there were people walking in that I knew.

7:19And we went in there. And all they used it for since they built it was to store furniture in, which would have been five or six years. It was filthy. And I was in white. And we just standing around like, what are we here for? She's wondering, is this a joke? It's the first of April after all. There were people there that you would not pull an April Fool's joke. Then Dr. Maxime Faget walks into the room. Max Fuget is the Director of Engineering and Development at Johnson Space Centre in Houston. A brilliant and innovative engineer. He's wearing his trademark bowtie and suit. And without saying a word, he puts down his bag, he unzips it, and pulls out a wooden model plane.

8:11Pulled out this funny-looking bosswood plane, flew it across the rim, and said, we're going to build America's spacecraft. It's going to launch like a rocket and land like an airplane. It's going to be reusable. It's going to go about this high, do this, the whole thing. Max Vachey is an icon in our industry, in the human spaceflight industry. Neil Hutchinson worked on the Apollo missions to the moon. He'd later find himself in charge of mission control as flight director. Max was, he was a kind of a unique guy. He was a major, major designer of Mercury, Gemini, Apollo. Mercury, Gemini and Apollo were NASA's original manned spaceflight programs in the 1960s.

8:57Max Fuget was a key contributor to the design of every single one of their spacecrafts, a pioneer and innovator. He never pulled any punches. He continually, he would argue a point to a fault if he thought he was right. And usually he was right. As an engineer or whatever I am, I would absolutely hold him in awe. Man was superhuman. Superhuman brain.

9:33And remember, Apollo is going on at the same time. A one-shot programme with a single goal, going to the moon. Where none of the machinery, the hardware, the spacecraft, nothing can be reused. It's all thrown away every time. This new dream is perhaps more audacious. It goes back to the early 1950s to Werner von Braun, a German rocket engineer who used to develop rocket technology for Nazi Germany. He later became the mastermind behind the United States' race to the moon. His vision is to build a permanent human presence in space, to make it a place for human beings to live and work. A large space station in low Earth orbit, for scientific research and as a post for exploration deeper into space.

10:32Space stations seemed like an obvious thing to do, to have a laboratory in space. We had leapfrogged from orbital flight to lunar flight and completely left out a space station. This is the voice of Max Fuget. In the 1960s, this idea starts to gain traction. But as we got deeper and deeper into the space station, it became obvious that we needed a better vehicle. Gemini was too small. Apollo was too expensive. So we started looking at a brand new vehicle. An all-purpose vehicle to ferry hardware and people back and forth into low Earth orbit. We wanted a reusable spacecraft which could fly often and could be used over and over again.

11:27To make spaceflight cheap and routine. A reusable shuttle. A space shuttle.

11:41So, while the rest of the US is focused on the Moon, Fajay and his team begin work on America's new space plane, including Ivy Hooks. And we spent six months locked up trying to figure out, could you really do that? And we weren't allowed to tell anybody what we're doing and what we're working on. They're hidden away on the third floor of Building 36. They call it the Skunk Works, after a top-secret research and design facility that develops military aircraft. So we just stayed in there with one telephone in the room. and then we had these huge pipes running through the ceiling and so it was loud in there all the time and we would all be working and the draftsmen would be drafting and the thermal guys would be doing something, my aero buddies would be doing something over here.

12:25And it was just fun. It was really fun. The only thing wrong was no windows. I am the windows person, so no windows. Listening to Ivy Hooks, I wish I could have been there at the time, part of the team, developing a completely new spacecraft. when everything feels open with possibility. One idea they investigate is using what looks like a big plane and a small plane. The big one would have powerful engines, essentially like a rocket, and it would have enough power to cast the smaller space plane into low Earth orbit. Both would be reusable, and eventually both would return back to Earth and land on a runway.

13:13Ivy Hooks was right in the middle of it all, looking into some of these ideas. One was to look at putting jet engines on it for takeoff and landing. And I had a pilot's license, and I think I was the only person in the room that had a pilot's license. And I spent a lot of time going to the library. Somebody's got to know something that I can go look up and at least get started. Oh, man, if we'd had the Internet, I'd probably have been bogged down forever, you know, because there'd been too many sources.

13:44Hooks is one of just three women in this secret team. It was the secretary in Dot Lee, who was Aerotherma. That was us. We're the only women in the room. And it didn't matter at all in that group. It was just get it done. But then there were other people who were very much trapped in that male-female role-playing mode. At this point in time, NASA is a very male-dominated environment, and not everyone sees women as their equals. But here, working on the secret space plane, Hawks feels right at home. In part, thanks to Max Faget's leadership. Well, he had, I think, three or four sisters. And then he had daughters.

14:29One son and three daughters. You know, he was very aware that he wanted what was best for his daughters. And he wouldn't have cared. He just wanted you to get the job done. I don't think those kind of things ever enter his mind.

14:48NASA's administrator, Dr. James Fletcher, flew out to California to explain the new space shuttle system to President Nixon. Almost three years later, in early 1972, the space shuttle design is finally revealed to the public. At this point, an experimental space station, Skylab, is already in the works. But the idea of a permanent one has been abandoned, or at least delayed. With a lower budget compared to the Apollo program, it's simply too costly to develop both the shuttle and a space station at the same time. The sole focus is now on the shuttle. And it's not just Max Fuget and his team that have contributed.

15:28NASA has reviewed many different internal and external proposals. They've weighed up the shuttle's design, development, costs and risks. In a statement announcing his decision to go ahead with the system, the president said it will revolutionise transportation into near space by routinising it. The cameras show Nixon and Fletcher sitting in armchairs. The president is holding a model in his hand. There's the white space plane with a black underside. The original idea. But there's also three bigger rocket-shaped components now. The biggest, directly attached in the space plane, is a large external tank, which will carry fuel for the shuttle's ascent into space.

16:16And on either side of the tank are two solid rocket boosters. The shuttle itself is actually launched, riding piggyback on two rockets. The two rockets drop off after launch and fall into the ocean where they're supposed to float until rescued for reuse.

16:40The original wooden model plane that Max Fuget flew across the secret room in Building 36 three years earlier is now a sophisticated plastic model in President Nixon's hand. And it has changed fundamentally in the process.

17:02Just a quick note on language here. Technically, the term space shuttle is used for the whole system, which includes the external tank and the solid rocket boosters. The space plane part is technically called the orbiter or the space shuttle orbiter. But I and many of the people you'll hear from will sometimes use these two terms, shuttle and orbiter, interchangeably. Is the orbiter ready to be rolled out? Yes, sir. Dr. Fletcher, the orbiter is ready. It takes another four years, until 1976, for the shuttle to be transformed from the model held by Nixon into something closer to that real thing, here at the manufacturing plant in Palmdale, California.

17:54It's a significant moment. Up until now, it's only been an idea, a vision of the spacecraft of the future, a model in a president's hand. And this is also where reality and science fiction collide. The first prototype was originally going to be called Constitution, but fans of the TV show Star Trek organised a petition. They wanted to rename the prototype shuttle to honour their show's own starship. Would you now roll out Orbiter 101, now christen the Enterprise. And they got their way. The nose of Enterprise appears around the corner of a hangar, flanked by white-suited technicians. The rest of the spacecraft gradually comes into view, brilliant white with a black underside, Stubby wings set far back and a high tail fin.

18:55It makes a 90-degree turn and then rolls forward to a crowd of waiting media, public and NASA employees. Rollouts are always a big show biz day, and they had obviously a lot of press. They had some members of the Star Trek cast there as well that day. we looked at it as a great opportunity to get in the vehicle. Fred Hayes can't wait for the razzmatazz of rollout to finish so he can have Enterprise to himself. That's THE Fred Hayes. You'll remember him if you listen to season two of 13 Minutes. He was one of the crew on the fateful Apollo 13 mission, which nearly ended in disaster. So after the showbiz had kind of died off, They arranged a ladder that we could get up in the vehicle.

19:48We were worried about glare on the windows, and this was the first time it was going to be outdoors in sunlight, and so we all got a chance to crawl in the cockpit and look all around the vehicle out the windows and see that, yeah, the window view didn't appear to be a problem, but also just the feeling of being in it in real light, the real light of the real world. Fred has a very specific reason for wanting to know what it's like. This prototype has been built to test one of the crucial big ideas behind the space shuttle dream. The vision of a space plane. Can it really fly and land on a runway?

20:31There's only one way to know for sure. Fred Hayes has been selected to be the first to test out the idea. the first to pilot the orbiter in free flight and the first to bring it in to land. If he fails, the dream could be over before it's begun.

20:58Hi, I'm Dan Snow, historian and host of Dan Snow's History at Podcast. I want to tell you about a brand new series I don't want you to miss about the real history behind the Odyssey. With a major new Hollywood adaptation arriving this month, we'll trace Odysseus' epic journey across the Mediterranean, uncover the world of Mycenaean Greece, and investigate the mysteries of Homer and what draws us back to this timeless masterpiece again and again. For everything you need to know about the Odyssey, check out Dan Snow's history hit wherever you get your podcasts. The Earth is in control, which is showing altitude of 27 ,000 feet.

21:41Two minutes, 41 seconds from pushover. It's the 12th of August, 1977, and a crucial moment in the history of the space shuttle. One year after its showbiz rollout, Enterprise is flying high above the Mojave Desert in California. Mark, push over, minus two.

22:06But the orbiter isn't flying by itself. It's sitting atop a Boeing 747, also known as a jumbo jet. It's the shuttle carrier aircraft. Enterprise has no engines, so this is the only way to get it into the sky. A large space plane is mounted on top of an even bigger aeroplane.

22:33Separation is the option of Fred Hayes after the launch ready call. At Enterprise's controls are pilot Gordon Fullerton and commander Fred Hayes. Mark, pushover minus one. In a moment, for the first time, Enterprise will have to fly all by itself. There was a lot of pressure, I felt, on myself, and more so than on Apollo 13, say, because of the potential program impact. This is an astonishing statement. Hayes feels more pressure in this moment than during the Apollo 13 mission, when the lives of the three-person crew were at stake. He knows there's a lot riding on this moment politically. The planned date for the first shuttle launch has already slipped by two years.

23:28And there's a new president in office, Jimmy Carter, a Democrat. And the programme was Nixon's programme, President Nixon's programme. So you always worry about when you have that change, not just the president, but Congress as well. A lot of members changed. Would they recognize and continue to support what a previous administration had started? I knew we did not have a backup vehicle, so I had a lot of worry that if I had a problem and I damaged it or crashed it even, it could end the program right there.

24:089-0-5, we're coming up on four seconds to pushover. Two, one, pushover. Fitz Fulton, the pilot of the 747, pitches it downwards. Remember that Enterprise, the shuttle orbiter, is sitting on top of it. From an altitude higher than Mount Everest, the two aircraft begin to die. Well, Fitz, for the way we had worked it out, would go into a slight, shallow descent. It wasn't very steep. And we would watch the speed build-up. Accelerating now. Airspeed 205. In a few seconds, the two will separate. And when they do, there's a danger that Enterprise could slide back into the jumbo jet's tail. Fred Hayes and Gordon Fullerton have ejection seats and a chance of surviving a collision.

25:04But in the 747, pilots Fulton and McMurtry would have no escape. So we had a viable plan B. 747 crew did not. Houston is go for Sepp. Have a great flight. We had to devise the speed that would be good and he'd just call launch ready. Launch ready. It's now up to Hayes to choose his moment to separate from the carrier aircraft. and see if this thing can fly. And within a second or two after that, I punched a button. And we were off. Take one, stop. The two aircraft peel away from each other. The Boeing 747 continues its trajectory downwards, while Enterprise raises its nose and glides. No collision.

25:58The first manoeuvre has been a success. As the two planes turn in opposite directions, Fred Hayes is focused on keeping Enterprise in the air. With its bulky body and short, stubby wings, the Space Shuttle Orbiter looks very different from a traditional glider, which has a small body and very wide wings. So it's no surprise that Enterprise flies like a brick. It's more of a controlled fall. Now, I, of course, just continued doing what I had to do flying the vehicle. And without engines, Hayes has only one shot to get this right.