WE CHOOSE TO GO TO THE MOON AND DO THE OTHER THINGS NOT BECAUSE THEY ARE EASY, BUT BECAUSE THEY ARE HARD: Plenty of ink has been spilled in the last few days about the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11. I cannot add much to it. Instead, I thought I'd point you to a few of my favorite historic, alternate historic, and 1970s near-future movies about the space race.
From the Earth to the Moon: If you have not taken the time to watch Tom Hanks' 1998 HBO series, do so. Each episode looks at an Apollo mission through a very different perspective and the gems of the series are the ones that look at the support folks that made the whole thing possible. Episode Four (I believe), "Spider" focuses on the Apollo 9 mission - where the lunar module was tested in Earth orbit - but through the engineering team at Grumman who designed and built it. Episode Nine, "Galileo Was Right" focuses on Apollo 15 through the work of the geology team that taught the astronauts what to look for. There are a couple of weak episodes - the Apollo 13 episode (of which I think there was already a feature movie of some kind) doesn't cover much new ground, even while looking at it through the cloud of the media. One regret to the series is that Tom Hanks (who got HBO to put in $68M into the series) didn't have enough of a budget to do an episode focusing on the Russian efforts, something he wanted to do. But the sets and costuming are so good, I can only imagine it would have added another $10M to the budget to get that done.
Apollo 13: I've read most every book on the Apollo 13 mission. As good as this movie was, it doesn't begin to reflect just what a near run thing this mission was. But this movie does about a good a job as can be done. It's nice to have someone like Tom Hanks in Hollywood who cares this much about history (not least two of my favorite subjects, the space race and World War II) and has this much clout. Is there another fellow in the industry who does this sort of thing better?
Marooned: Marooned is a completely predictable movie. The retro rockets fail to get the crew of Ironman 1 out of orbit and the crew are facing certain peril. The Russians and the Americans do their best to save them. Still, with Gene Hackman and Gregory Peck, not a bad little movie. It's almost certainly the best movie ever to be mocked by MST3K.
Countdown: In order to beat the Russians, James Caan is sent to the Moon on a modified Gemini spacecraft to hang out for a year until the Apollo program is ready. There were indeed some proposals to use the Gemini spacecraft (mostly coming from folks at McDonnell in St. Louis) to go to the moon on the hurry and on the cheap. Not a bad movie and kind of a cool alt-history space flick. Also, this was Robert Altman's first theatrical release, something I didn't realize until just now.
Capricorn One: I watched this movie - about a faked Mars landing - the other day and it's just dreadful, but about the only time you are going to see two of the stars of 1990s crime television, Sam Watterson and OJ Simpson, on the same screen.
Comments directing folks to favorite documentaries or other semi-realistic space drama most welcomed.
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