13 Minutes to the Moon

[Private Frazer]

I always think of the date of Apollo 11 on the moon as the 21st July, the wee hours of the morning when the EVA started UK time and I woke up in front of the TV to amazing images) but it was the 20th in the US. I'm really looking forward to the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. Named after the climax to that first manned descent to the moon, this weekly podcast from the BBC World Service is on episode 3 and runs on until the big day. Hope there's lots coming up on UK TV too.

[Mark]

That Podcast sound interesting, a good idea too.

Bound to be plenty of TV and Radio coverage for this momentous anniversary.

[Brock]

A new series has started this week, telling the story of the doomed Apollo 13 mission:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xttx2

I didn't get round to listening to the first series until last Christmas, when I binge-listened the whole thing in a couple of days. A truly excellent programme.

[Private Frazer]

Thanks for that; how the crew of Apollo 13 survived (and astronaut Jim Lovell's whole career) is amazing.

[Richard Charles Skryngestone]

Yes, it's incredible. Literally, it's not credible.

[Brock]

Covid-19 has intervened in this series in quite a dramatic way. The presenter of the series, Kevin Fong, is also a consultant anaesthetist in the NHS, and anaesthetic lead for Major Incident Planning. Consequently the final episode has had to be postponed to later in the year - with the crew about to enter the Earth's atmosphere with a badly damaged heat shield. Talk about a cliffhanger...

[Brock]

Only just got round to listening to the final episode of this, which was broadcast in June:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct0v1r

[Private Frazer]

It's a strange coincidence that, fifty years on, a re-telling of the Apollo 13 mission should be interrupted by current events.
(going slightly off-topic, its good for future space programs that all three recent Mars launches were successful)