Moon Shot

Cafe Society
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As you can probably figure out from this thread, I really like rockets. I was born in the ‘Space Age’. I ate it up, from I Dream of Jeannie to It’s About Time to Star Trek to Space: 1999 and more, I loved space! I remember watching Walter Cronkite as he covered the Apollo missions. I had a plastic rocket on one of my birthday cakes. The body had a couple of levers on it that, when sqeezed, launched the Mercury capsule on a spring. I think I mentioned in the other thread that I have all of the Apollo mission patches mounted and framed hanging over my bed.

Several years ago I bought Moon Shot, a chronicle of the Apollo programme. I haven’t watched it in a few years now, but I’ve just noticed it on my video shelf. I think I’ll pull it out and watch it. Barry Corbin (astronaut ‘Maurice Minnifield’ on Northern Exposure) narrates as the late Donald ‘Deke’ Slayton. The archive footage is wonderful to watch. It reminds me of when I was a kid, watching the launches live. (As Freud said, ‘Oh, to be Jung again!’ But that’s a subject for another thread.) The coverage of the Apollo programme is excellent.

Project Mercury first flew 44 years ago. America’s first astronauts, Alan Shepard, Jr., Walter ‘Wally’ Schirra, Jr., John Glenn, Jr., Virgil ‘Gus’ Grissom, M. Scott Carpenter, Donald ‘Deke’ Slayton, L. Gordon Cooper, Jr., are no longer young test pilots. Some of them are dead. Grissom died in Apollo I. Shepard and Slayton died of illnesses. Gemini astronaut Pete Conrad died after a motorcycle crash in 1999, at the age of 69.

If you’re interested in the Space Programme, this video is a must-see. The space pioneers are fading away. Watch and remember.

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I’ve got it – it’s very good.

Also don’t miss the mini-series From Earth to the Moon, narrated by Tom Hanks, available on DVD. Good stuff.

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Got it. I didn’t like Ted Levine as Shepard, though. He has a ‘snuffly face’. (Weird description, but that’s how I think of it.) Overall, though, it’s a great series. The one bit that always comes to mind is the scene where they’re flying the Cessna. (Wrong year, BTW. You can tell by the skeg on the vertical stabilizer, and the landing gear.) I learned to fly in the Mojave Desert in a C-172, and seeing the Skyhawk over the barren landscape makes me ache.

I really wish that Moon Shot would be released on DVD. I, for one, would definitely buy it!

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Cooper, too, last October.

“Who’s the best pilot you ever saw?”

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I thought I was forgetting someone.

I watched the show again yesterday. Still excellent. Now I have to find my X-15 tape. (I think it’s with my Pancho Barnes documentary.)

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For All Mankind is another great flick about the space program, the director got access to the original film masters NASA has from the Apollo program, and I’ve not seen anything with the image quality of the film.

And don’t forget the obvious flick: Apollo 13.

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Already have it, and I’ve ordered the Anniversary Edition. :wink:

I also have The Right Stuff. I worked as an extra on that, since I was working at Eddie’s Air Patch at the time. Didn’t make it into the final cut, though. :frowning: I thought Grissom was portrayed rather unfairly (after all, if he really did ‘screw the pooch’, then why would he have flown in Gemini and have been given command of the first flight of Apollo?), and so many years after its release, it’s a little too comical; but it’s still a fine film.

Incidentally, I’ve just started a thread in MPSIMS that shows where you can get a replica of an ISS module. :wink:

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Other Space documentaries on DVD. Sad to say, I haven’t seen any of them. :frowning: