Abort, Abort, Abort!

About this episode

The command ‘Abort RTLS’ was the last thing that astronauts on board the space shuttle wanted to hear from mission control. It meant that one or two of the shuttle’s main engines had failed in the first couple of minutes after lift-off and that the crew’s only hope of a safe landing was a blood-curdling manoeuvre at super-sonic speeds. The Return to Launch Site abort mode was an astronautic U-turn, aimed at getting the hobbled spacecraft back to the launch site at Kennedy Space Center. RTLS was one of several abort scenarios for which shuttle crews had to train, and it was not even the scariest. Ever wondered how the Space Shuttle came to be? Welcome to a new podcast series, 16 Sunsets. In this episode, Host Dr Kevin Fong delves into the range of options which shuttle crews had if they were forced to abort a mission during their ascent to space. He talks to former NASA staff and astronauts about the gruelling training and simulation exercises for flying aborts and dealing with malfunctions, and he explores why shuttle needed such exotic and hair-raising abort modes. Featuring: Gordon Fullerton, Stokes MacMillan, Tim Terry, Robert Crippen, Robert Kelso, John Young, Jeffre