Over the last several days I have been re-watching HBO's landmark 12-part miniseries, "From the Earth to the Moon" (the rousing opening theme is still ringing in my head as I write this)
The last time I watched FTETTM, I hadn't discovered this forum or Jay's "Clavius" site. I have to say that watching this series after posting on and discussing Apollo here, and after reading the pages at Clavius, has allowed me to see that series in a new light. There have been numerous "I knew that" moments and realizations that what they are portraying ties up with what I have learned here. There were also a few "so that's why" moments.
Smartcooky, you have just reminded me that just before this last southern winter I resolved to watch that programme again on the worst days when I was stuck inside, but there weren't many so I forgot. I last watched it in 2007 and early 2008, and like you, have learned so much more since then.
It is such a good programme! Whoever wrote it did a wonderful job, and considering that personalities and events must be amalgamated and compressed in a movie or TV docudrama, they did a superb job. Perhaps partly due to space nut Tom Hanks and the technical consultant, Dave Scott.
I was pleasantly surprised by how absorbing and interesting some episodes were that I thought, from their description, might be boring. Such as:
Part 5, "Spider", building the LM -- one of my favourite episodes.
Part 8, "We Interrupt This Program", where they concentrated less on the Apollo 13 accident and more on the composite TV frontman, Emmett Seaborn, and how he was ousted by a young, cocky announcer.
Part 11, "The Original Wives Club", where they concentrated on the stresses on family life, the wives, and the many divorces.
Part 12, "Le Voyages Dans La Lune", where they incorporated Georges Melies' films with Apollo 17.
But the programme is not without its faults -- I found plenty. The worst was the one that they repeated from "Apollo 13" -- the wrong ignition-sequence-start and liftoff times for the Saturn 5. Plus there was some atrocious astronomy as usual, but most laypeople wouldn't notice.
Another baddie was the hammer and feather experiment. It would have been best done entirely by computer graphics, because the feather rotated just as it would have done in an atmosphere. Furthermore, on the moon, Dave Scott held the feather horizontally before dropping it, but the actor who played him, Brett Cullen, held it vertically, probably because it would have rotated even more in the atmosphere in which it was filmed.
And throughout the programme, in the lunar scenes, dust billowed. Which brings me back to the "hoax." If Hollywood couldn't get it right in 1998 with it's massive budgets, with technical advisors who went into space and to the moon, a space-nut narrator (Hanks), and with the wonders of 1998 computer graphics, how could NASA have faked the video and movie films so realistically back in 1961 to 1972?
Even with it's many faults, I was impressed by the sheer number of accuracies, as I understood the history of Mercury-Gemini-Apollo. Some parts were probably just fictional dramatisations, and one I loved occurred just 20 minutes into part 1, where Chris Kraft, played very well by Stephen Root, says:
0:20:01 Chris Kraft: Rendezvous: Two spacecraft meeting up in orbit. Want to have fun? Come over to my house. You stand in the back yard, I'll stand in the front yard. You throw a tennis ball over my roof, I'll try to hit it with a rock as it comes sailing over. That's what we're going to have to do.
Okay, the rock and tennis ball would be travelling in opposite directions, unlike two orbiting spacecraft, but the description paints a wonderfully simple picture of how difficult rendezvous was thought to be at the time.
Excellent series. I can't recommend it highly enough to anyone who hasn't seen it. My copy cost only NZ$40 in 2006, and was worth every cent.
And as a free bonus for any ApolloHoax members, send me a personal message with your email address and I'll return a 31-page typescript of how you can find all the interesting bits, including the errors I noticed. Sample below in the next post. Note that bits of this episode are way out of sequence, but they still work for me. Lots of laughs from colourful Pete Conrad, who generously took Al Bean under his wing.
