Documentary: US - 86 minutesAlan Bean of the Apollo 12 crew has always thought of himself as one of the more fearful astronauts. Lift-off sent his heart rate shooting up to 144 beats a minute. In contrast, the heart of John Young, the sleepy-eyed slow talker who captained the Apollo 16 flight, kept ticking away at a steady 70.
So astronauts are human - something that didn't dawn on the rest of us until Tom Wolfe dramatised the backstage story of America's first manned space missions in The Right Stuff. Since then, we've known the astronauts best through their on-screen alter egos. The real-life models have merged into that emblematic figure - Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon while intoning those sonorous words: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
So this documentary, which combines film taken during the space voyages with footage of the era and interviews with the astronauts, arrives late in the day. Yet just a few minutes in, you begin to realise that the long gap between recollection and reality makes it all the more revealing.
The director, David Sington, has gathered crew members from every Apollo mission that flew to the moon and these men, with their space careers long behind them, prove a wry and reflective bunch who rejoice in bringing the wisdom of hindsight to their experiences. They belong to a select company. The Apollo program ended in 1972, which means they are still the only humans to have walked on the lunar surface.
All were former test pilots and they remind us that if they hadn't gone to the moon, they would have gone to Vietnam. Gene Cernan, who captained the last Apollo flight, still sounds rueful about this. "They were fighting my war for me," he says of the test pilots with whom he trained. He remembers, too, that they were being shot down on combat missions while he was front-page news as the latest spaceman.
The footage filmed by the astronauts has been transferred to high-definition tape and looks spectacular. None of them has a gift for poetry, but one finds the right words when he comments on the jewel-like nature of Earth hanging in the blackness of space. Others talk about how fragile it looks. There's nothing like leaving the Earth's atmosphere, I imagine, to sharpen your sense of attachment to the one place in the cosmos you can call home.
The moon elicits less poetry. Michael Collins, who flew with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on Apollo 11, remembers it as a hostile, scary place. That was from above. He had no chance to get closer for he was the one who stayed aboard the spacecraft. Was he disappointed? It seems not. Rather, he relished his unique perspective. He was able to look down on Earth with its billions of people and on the moon with just two.
He also knew he could return to Earth - unlike Jim Lovell and the rest of the crew of Apollo 13, whose mission was cut short by a systems failure. The moon ceased to matter as they became consumed by the question of how to get home. Home. For all the astronauts, it seems, their trips into space intensified their love of Earth. As for their spiritual nourishment, some credit their lunar adventures with awakening or renewing their interest in religion. Others, such the humorous and very likeable Collins, say merely that after you've flown to the moon some of our terrestrial squabbles don't seem nearly as important.
So astronauts are human - something that didn't dawn on the rest of us until Tom Wolfe dramatised the backstage story of America's first manned space missions in The Right Stuff. Since then, we've known the astronauts best through their on-screen alter egos. The real-life models have merged into that emblematic figure - Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon while intoning those sonorous words: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
So this documentary, which combines film taken during the space voyages with footage of the era and interviews with the astronauts, arrives late in the day. Yet just a few minutes in, you begin to realise that the long gap between recollection and reality makes it all the more revealing.
The director, David Sington, has gathered crew members from every Apollo mission that flew to the moon and these men, with their space careers long behind them, prove a wry and reflective bunch who rejoice in bringing the wisdom of hindsight to their experiences. They belong to a select company. The Apollo program ended in 1972, which means they are still the only humans to have walked on the lunar surface.
All were former test pilots and they remind us that if they hadn't gone to the moon, they would have gone to Vietnam. Gene Cernan, who captained the last Apollo flight, still sounds rueful about this. "They were fighting my war for me," he says of the test pilots with whom he trained. He remembers, too, that they were being shot down on combat missions while he was front-page news as the latest spaceman.
The footage filmed by the astronauts has been transferred to high-definition tape and looks spectacular. None of them has a gift for poetry, but one finds the right words when he comments on the jewel-like nature of Earth hanging in the blackness of space. Others talk about how fragile it looks. There's nothing like leaving the Earth's atmosphere, I imagine, to sharpen your sense of attachment to the one place in the cosmos you can call home.
The moon elicits less poetry. Michael Collins, who flew with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on Apollo 11, remembers it as a hostile, scary place. That was from above. He had no chance to get closer for he was the one who stayed aboard the spacecraft. Was he disappointed? It seems not. Rather, he relished his unique perspective. He was able to look down on Earth with its billions of people and on the moon with just two.
He also knew he could return to Earth - unlike Jim Lovell and the rest of the crew of Apollo 13, whose mission was cut short by a systems failure. The moon ceased to matter as they became consumed by the question of how to get home. Home. For all the astronauts, it seems, their trips into space intensified their love of Earth. As for their spiritual nourishment, some credit their lunar adventures with awakening or renewing their interest in religion. Others, such the humorous and very likeable Collins, say merely that after you've flown to the moon some of our terrestrial squabbles don't seem nearly as important.
See the Trailer HERE.
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