13 Minutes To The Moon
June 4, 2020 9:56 PM   Subscribe

BBC World Service brings us the audio series 13 Minutes To The Moon. Season 1 is the story of the Apollo program from its beginning to the Apollo 11 lunar landing, across 12 episodes and bonus moments, totaling something like 10 hours of audio documentary. Season 2 is about the Apollo 13 mission, so far with 6 episodes and some bonuses, but Episode 7 is on COVID delay. The entire series is available as a podcast, and can be found wherever you do that kind of thing.
posted by hippybear (8 comments total) 21 users marked this as a favorite
 
I find the Apollo missions and the space race in general fascinating and will gladly watch or listen anything related. This is right up my alley. Thank you for posting this.
posted by Soi-hah at 12:18 AM on June 5, 2020


I'd note that this is not quite like other overall histories of Apollo but rather, as the name suggests, focusses on the thirteen minutes of powered descent - the time from the Lunar Module igniting its descent engine until arrival on Moon's surface. In doing so it covers the development of the LM guidance system and the preparation and training for the landing, and if you like astonishingly deep dives into why 1201 program alarms were happening and how the Mission Control team had prepared to be able to deal with such problems, this is the podcast for you. Some of the episodes cover literally two or three minutes of Apollo 11's powered descent with an almost forensic dissection of what lay behind everything the astronauts or mission control said.

Season 2 on Apollo 13 is a more conventional narrative covering the whole mission, but like Season 1 has the benefit of interview with many of the surviving participants. It's worth noting that the writer/presenter and main interviewer, Dr Kevin Fong, is a UK former aviation medicine specialist who spent time working with NASA and the reason why the final episode has been delayed is that he was drafted into the NHS COVID-19 response (link to producer's audio explanation).
posted by Major Clanger at 2:17 AM on June 5, 2020 [3 favorites]


I just found this the other week, finished season 1, and am about to finish season 2. It's really fantastically well done.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 4:47 AM on June 5, 2020


Season 1 was excellent. A very interesting narrative structure and some terrific audio.
posted by doctornemo at 5:14 AM on June 5, 2020


I listened to season one last summer around the moon landing anniversary, and it was excellent.

While it does focus on just 13 minutes, the look at each system actually ends up giving you a fairly comprehensive view of the entire space program by the time you are finished. Cooperation with NASA and surviving astronauts and ground engineers, along with BBC quality pacing and editing, made this one of my favorite podcasts of recent years. And a rarity for me-- one I relisten to at intervals. It's so good.

I did not know there was a season 2, and will be eagerly devouring it now. I have thought to myself several times that it really took an outside group like the BBC to do justice to incredible accomplishment of Apollo 11. This just isn't the kind of program NASA could have produced. And yes, I do know that podcast creator Kevin Fong did work briefly for NASA as a medical doctor, but he is now a BBC journalist, so my point still stands.

I was sure this would have been covered last year on Metafiler, but apparently I was wrong! Thank you for making this FPP so more people can listen to this excellent podcast.
posted by seasparrow at 7:02 AM on June 5, 2020


If you want to go more in depth, I highly recommend the Space Rocket History podcast!
posted by hankscorpio83 at 8:55 AM on June 5, 2020 [3 favorites]


And the Hans Zimmer composition for this is lovely!
posted by marvin at 12:40 PM on June 6, 2020




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