16 Sunsets
4.7/5
Critic Rating
"16 Sunsets" is a captivating 10-part podcast series that explores the dramatic history of NASA's Space Shuttle program, crafted by the award-winning team behind "13 Minutes to the Moon." Hosted by renowned space storyteller Kevin Fong and featuring music by Christian Lundberg from Hans Zimmer's Bleeding Fingers Composers' Collective, the series recounts the birth of the Shuttle era through the eyes of those who built and flew it. From the Shuttle's audacious first flight in 1981 with Commander John Young and rookie Bob Crippen to the intricate technical challenges it faced, the podcast delves into the political, engineering, and cultural forces that shaped...
Critic Reviews
Score: 4.5
Miranda Sawyer • The Guardian • Nov 16, 2024
"It’s a well-produced and researched story of Nasa’s space shuttle programme...I have a few quibbles about his presenting style; he has a tendency to go for the same cadence in every sentence, meaning you find your attention wandering, even in the opening minutes when we hear the countdown to launch. Still, once we get into the meat of the show, and interviews with those who worked at Nasa, you’re captured...the interviews are fresh, and the use of sound excellent, plus Christian Lundberg, from the Hans Zimmer composer collective, provides the score…"
Score: 4.9
Fiona Sturges • Financial Times • Nov 10, 2024
"...scored once again by Zimmer, doesn’t shy away from complexity. A bit like the shuttle, it is more streamlined. There is much pleasure to be had from the crackly archive audio in which preternaturally calm Nasa operators intone “T minus seven minutes and counting and we have retraction of the orbiter access arm” as music pulsates in the background. One irritation: the series is introduced as the “extraordinary, untold story” of the shuttle programme, a claim that doesn’t exactly square with the mountains of books, articles, films and indeed podcasts on the subject. …"
