"From the Earth to the Moon" / "Apollo: The Greatest Leap"
The HBO miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon" has been available on demand/streaming this week, and is being aired on HBO2 tomorrow starting at 8:45AM ET, as it's the 50th anniversary of the moonwalk. "First Man" is on HBO at 8PM ET.
Ars Technica has been reposting its series of video/articles, "Apollo: The Greatest Leap" [pt 1, links to other parts on the page].
Of course there's a Michigan connection ["Wolverines in space: The all-Michigan astronaut crews"]: Gemini 4 with Ed White, who had the first American spacewalk (ep 1) and was admiring the view and not hearing James McDivitt's orders to get back in the capsule. White was killed in the Apollo 1 fire (ep 2).
James Irwin, Al Worden & David Scott of Apollo 15 are in ep 10. I haven't gotten that far (again? I presume I saw the original airing).
Pretty amazing that we did this in less than 9 years.
According to this documentary, you and they are both right.
I haven't checked the link yet but I will.
I always figured the most likely scenario is they weren't quite ready for Kennedy's "..within the decade...." so they produced something to fit the time frame with reality catching up months later.
I wasn't a fan of First Man. The writing, direction, effects, and cinematography are all top notch. But I feel like they made Neal Armstrong out to be a solemn, humorless, too-serious all the time, kind of person that would be difficult to relate with. Anyway, my take is not yours, so please watch it and make your own opinions... Would be interested in hearing other opinions to see if my wife and I are just out of touch about this movie.
I had the same reaction to the movie. But is it an accurate depiction? That remains my biggest question.
Not accurate. Hollywood took plenty of liberties with it. Including multiple interviews I saw where actors, directors, producers, etc., all said something akin to "it's not entirely accurate but since we believe Neil Armstrong would have been okay with the spirit of our interpretations so we ran with it".
But is that in respect to how he was portrayed, or just the scenes. You can accurately portray how he carried himself but have inaccurate scenes. The scenes are almost certainly not true, as you have no way of knowing the dialogue, but the spirit of the interpretation may in fact mean that is how he carried himself.
True... I'm okay with not having shown the flag on the moon, which was the big controversy (and spawned the quote above). What I don't like is how Armstrong was portrayed as a person. I want to believe he was the opposite of that, but I don't have any reference either way. So, FWIW, I'll continue to believe he was more 'happy go lucky' than dour and utterly humorless.
You can accurately portray how he carried himself but have inaccurate scenes.
That is called historical fiction.
I went to a talk with the author of the book from which the film is adapted. He served as a consultant for the film, too. He had dozens of hours of interviews with Neil and his family, got to know most of the major players pretty well. He expressed some frustrations with some of the liberties taken in the film, particularly in the differences in which Neil would have expressed one idea or another in real life. There were also some serious scramblings with the timeline.
But he explained that films are their own thing--there's only so much time and space to tell a story, and liberties have to be taken to make a narrative move onscreen. In sum, he was pleased with the result, even if the process wasn't always the greatest.
All in all, it's a fine enough film, but it's only that--a film.
And don’t forget James Earl Jones was the voice of Darth Vader.
Jack Lousma. He was Skylab but another Michigan graduate and lives in Ann Arbor and is an amazing guy. Blessed to have flown with him. Would have been on the moon but unfortunately they canceled the last three missions.
Watch Apollo 11 on cnn instead
Sorry, Don't believe it.
Every other advanced country has matched us and most exceeded us for every engineering feat.
Yet, none in 50 years have walked on the moon.
I call bull.
Curious. Who has exceeded us in engineering?
China? Make no mistake, their program was built on the spoils of industrial espionage in the 1990s. China hasn't invented jack fucking shit. They are masters at forgery.
India? Gleaned their technology from from us.
Japan? Good engineering but paralyzed by always re-designing rather than executing. They have the potential to match and exceed us but are stuck in continuous improvement hell.
Russia -- the only true adversary and for moon shots was limited by a shitty launch site whose geography required a ridiculously larger (and impractical) booster to lift the same payload as what NASA was putting up at the time.
The only folks who have exceeded us in engineering are Scaled Composites (already American) and SpaceX (South African who came to America).
"Yet, none in 50 years have walked on the moon."
2 reasons: 1) advancements in astronomical instruments have made it unnecessary, 2) there isn't much there
I'm sorry that science and technology are such strange subjects to you that you don't believe in vast troves of physical evidence. You probably don't think the planet is in a general warming phase, either!
Here are some pictures of the Apollo landing sites from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission - a satellite that orbits the moon taking pictures of it. You probably don't believe them, though. Science is hard to understand, so the conspiracy to make people think we went there is a lot easier to believe.
That's a great link! Thanks for posting. Using the slider to compare and contrast between images is stunning -- especially the granularity of the descent stage! +1
My biggest question is why haven't we gone to Mars yet?
I understand it would be an exceedingly difficult journey, but man, the speed with which technology improves, one would think we'd have at least attempted a man-made journey by now. We landed crafts on Mars in the 70s, you'd think we'd be there by now.
Radiation.
That's an interesting question. I do think with the science and technology we have now, we have the ability to find out a lot of information about these planets, systems, heavenly bodies, etc. without a manned space flight. That's probably part of the reason.
The other thing I would posit is a question: how much of America's quest for the moon in the 60s was a result of Kennedy's challenge, subsequent assassination and a battle royale with the Soviets? The dynamics around space exploration have changed dramatically over the past 50 years, dynamics that don't bring the same urgency as before.
without a manned space flight.
It's just not for science. Manned space flight is necessary to prolong the human species. Assuming mankind doesn't destroy itself through societal collapses or destroying the Earth, the sun will eventually consume the Earth one day.
We could invent the perfect society and live in perfect harmony with the planet and when the Sun runs out of fuel, it will take the first three planets with it. Humans must leave the Earth if they want to survive.
how much of America's quest for the moon in the 60s was a result of Kennedy's challenge,
100% of it
When JFK made that challenge, rockets were blowing up with alarming frequency. Plus we were only 2 generations removed from learning to freaking fly. Are people freaking kidding -- going to the moon by the end of that decade!?!?! That's the equivalent of Usain Bolt running sub ten 100 meters after just learning to walk.
The dynamics around space exploration have changed dramatically over the past 50 years, dynamics that don't bring the same urgency as before.
All one has to do is look at the difference between commercial companies and NASA. My interpretation of your dynamics is present-day NASA is a horrible venture capitalist and we should have heeded Eisenhower's warning:
- When SapceX by way of comparison did a FIRST EVER static test of Falcon Heavy, they launched two weeks later. THAT'S UNHEARD of in Boeing, Lockheed, NASA, circles. For gov't contractors, it would have been a minimum of 18 months of PowerPoints, tracking documentation via Excel, and meeting after meeting after meeting, of design review boards, engineering review boards, and operations review boards before launch. SpaceX sent a car to Mars 2 weeks later in the most epic middle finger anyone have ever given the Federal government.
- SLS still isn't out of the PowerPoint review stages. Big Falcon Rocket is in the hangar RIGHT NOW being built.
- If SLS could launch today, it would cost $1.5 B per launch. That's 300% more expensive than the Space Shuttle. The gov't gets 13 F9 launches at that current rate. That's not an apples to apples comparison of boosters but what the point does make is when you say urgency, it's not that... it's about present day NASA incompetence and bloated government versus smart commercial companies with talented people and can do attitudes.
Barring how much the Dragon explosion sets the timeline back (as we should have had a manned space program again by August after all the crew demo flights launched) and barring further problems, I would guess Musk will have a human on Mars by 2030.
Among the many many reasons that we've been sending unmanned probes, landers, and rovers but no manned missions is this one big constraint: the prime window of opportunity to send humans only occurs once approximately every two years, when our moving launch pad (Earth and/or moon) "catches up" with the moving target, Mars. We orbit the sun every 365 1/4 days; Mars takes 687 earth days for one full orbit.
To further complicate things, our orbital plane around the Sun differs somewhat from that of Mars, and neither planet has a perfectly round orbital path. This means that when the two planets align in opposition approximately every two years, the distance between planets varies from ~35 million miles to over 62 million miles.
https://earthsky.org/sky-archive/close-and-far-martian-oppositions
Because of the dangers of such a long trip and back, any manned trip to Mars has to occur within a relatively short launch window so as to shorten the trip as much as possible. Unmanned missions, OTOH, often take a much longer but more fuel efficient route using the Sun's gravity as an assist to sling the satellite in the direction of Mars.
It's obviously way more complicated than my description, but timing is everything when it comes to interplanetary manned space travel.
Wish I knew about this earlier. Have always wanted to watch “From the Earth to the Moon.” I wonder how long it will be available on HBO Now?
The Smithsonian channel is reairing episodes 1-5 of "Apollo's Moon Shot" starting at 5 PM ET, with a break at 9 for "The Day We Walked on the Moon," and episode 6 is Sunday night.
The Discovery Channel has "Apollo: The Forgotten Films" at 8 PM ET.
If you like space documentaries, I find For All Mankind to be the most affecting. It's a composite of footage from all of the Apollo missions, including a lot of footage NASA basically forgot about, to synthesize a single moon shot. A mesmerizing work.
The current plan is to build a space station near the Moon (called "Gateway") and use it as as staging base to assemble a spacecraft that would leave from this space station and ferry astronauts to Mars and back (called the "Deep Space Transport"). The Space Launch System (SLS) program is about 1.5 years away from its first launch and will send an unmanned Orion crew capsule around the Moon and back. Then the second launch of SLS will do the same thing, albiet with a manned Orion crew capsule. Subsequent launches of SLS, along with commercial partners, will then begin to assemble this Gateway near the Moon.
In parallel, at least one of these SLS launches will put humans back on the Moon to begin the process of practicing for eventual Mars missions. In fact, the name of program using these SLS launches is the "Artemis" program. With Artemis being the sister of Apollo in Greek mythology. So, the first launch of SLS coming up is called Artemis-1.
Lunar orbit is a strange place for a space station. We've got the ISS. I think a lunar base would be a better thing. But more for establishing more of a human presence in space than just getting to Mars.
SLS is nowhere near launch.
BFR won't need a moon base.