ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

The executive producer this amazing miniseries — Tom Hanks — won my heart in Apollo 13 as astronaut Jim Lovell.

This 12-part 1998 HBO television miniseries — co-produced by Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Tom Hanks, and Michael Bostick — has the look of a big-budget movie, complete with jaw-dropping special effects, and a stellar cast (so to speak . . . ).

The true genius of this miniseries is that it was specifically created to work in conjunction with The Right Stuff (1983) and Apollo 13 (1995) to tell the heroic story of America's space program.

For that reason, it picks up the narrative of NASA early in the Mercury Program after The Right Stuff leaves off. Then it focuses on every aspect of NASA right through Gemini and Apollo, with stories that even focus of the personal lives of the astronauts and their long-suffering wives.

The Apollo 13 mission is not ignored, but the miniseries allows Ron Howard's incredible movie to tell that amazing story.

Gentlemen, if you've never seen From the Earth to the Moon, your doing yourself a great disservice. It tells the heroic tale of America's valiant efforts to inspire our country to greatness by issuing a challenge which thrilled the nation.

Fans of 1950s science fiction movies should note that in an amazing parallel to Destination Moon, the Apollo program charged American industry with the task of building a spacecraft that could take men to the Moon!





And that movie even stated that if America didn't reach the Moon first, our enemies would gain a clear military advantage.

The effect of this challenge on the American people was miraculous! Astronauts soon became rock stars, and spaceflight became the dream of every child.

America became a nation of people who looked up at the stars and dreamed of mankind's conquest of space!

Unfortunately, today we're a nation of introverts — both our adults and their children stare at their cell phones and play video games or text each other about trivial matters.

Guys, I hate to say it, but . . . the days of dreaming about a shining future for mankind seems to be gone.

However, there's still one place where that dream is still revered.





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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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Enjoy this fun-filled, jazzy trailer for the HBO miniseries. Please note the title of song. (George Pal would be pleased.)

__ From The Earth To The Moon (Mini) Trailer 1998


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[mach7]

I love this series!

I watched when it was on HBO, bought the DVD's when they came out, and have it on my computer as a download.

Coincidentally I'm half way through a re watch of it now.

It's a very nice hollywood docu-drama. Kind of like US space history lite. Mostly factual, mostly accurate, very entertaining.

[Krel]

My favorite scene in the show was where Ted Levine as Alan Shepard undergoes an operation so he can be an Astronaut again. In real life this was a very painful and dangerous operation. If it hadn't of succeeded Alan Shepard could have been rendered deaf.

You are looking up at the 2 Nurses in a point-of-view shot.
Nurse 1 looks down: "Do you know who that is?"
Nurse 2: "The chart says Mr. Johnson."
Nurse 1: "No. He's America's first man in space!"
Nurse 2 looks down at Alan Shepard: "No. I'd recognize John Glenn anywhere."

I don't know if that actually happened to Alan Shepard, but I like to believe it did.

To get the low Gee Lunar scenes, the Actors were suspended from helium balloons. It was filmed in a warehouse and cement was used for Lunar soil.

David.

[Bud Brewster]

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Mark, have you ever seen Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America's Race to the Moon (1994), which was produced by The History Channel?

I made a VHS tape of it and LOVED it!

Back in 2012 I discoverer that it was only available on VHS tape, so I bought the set (hoping it was better then my recording), and made a DVR-R copy. But, of course, the quality is not as good as a DVD would be.

I just checked, and this great documentary is STILL not available on DVD.

Dammit!

And yet, Amazon continues to sell the VHS copy. So, if you happen to have a working VHS player (I still have several. . . ), I highly recommend this documentary.

I plan to watch it again after finishing my re-watching of From the Earth to the Moon. They actually compare well. That's how good it is!


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[mach7]

I don't think I've seen Moon Shot, I'll put it on my list.

I think we still have a VCR in the basement. It worked when we put it there over 15 years ago.

I recently reread and rewatched "The Right Stuff".

Both are excellent, for different reasons. The book is a good
study of test pilots and Mercury astronauts.

The film is a stylized view of that time. I really like both
for different reasons, however the film really does Gus Grissom a disservice.

Both were formative in my early aviation career.

I liked the short lived Disney+ series "The Right Stuff" also.

Getting back to "From The Earth To The Moon", my only real complaint is that it kind of shorted the Gemini program. It deserved another episode all of it's own.

Gemini was a paradigm shift in how to "do" space. Without Gemini we would not have made it to the moon in the '60s, but it is always ignored. Mercury was first, Apollo was grand and exciting, but Gemini is how we learned to live and work in space.

[Bud Brewster]

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Damn, I wish my Phillips DVR-R recorder had not developed problems, because I could have made you a copy of my Moon Shot DVD-R.

I hope you'll pull that old VCR player out of storage, open it up, clean it thoroughly, and test it to see if if works.

If it does, I urge you to get the video cassettes of Moon Shot, because you'll be astounded by this remarkable documentary.

But if it doesn't work . . . well, your old friend Bud just discovered that Moon Shot is available from Archive.org, and I've downloaded it so I can put it on WeTransfer.

That means you can get it free and easy! And it seems to look every bit as good as my VHS box set!

Here's the links to Part 1 and Part 2 — the complete documentary.

Hey . . . who's your daddy?

PART 1 ~ https://we.tl/t-w8Yrtw4Bfc

PART 2 ~ https://we.tl/t-PGUgOyKx3K

I'd love to share these with you in All Sci-Fi's Chatzy Room (< — LINK)

The password is . . . allscifi

I should mention, Mark, that the this documentary is mostly composed of actual footage from the 1960s — not reenactments like we seein From the Earth to the Moon.

Only the very enjoyable scenes of Benson Cobin as the on-screen narrator are new footage. Mr. Corbin's distinctive presence adds a uniquely human touch to this presentation of America's efforts to achieve the Conquest of Space.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Krel]

[Bud Brewster]

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Thanks, David. That's a great summation of the proof that Gus was not responsible for any misjudgement.

I guess the space program was going so well at that point, the story needed a bit of drama.

So, the producers just couldn't resist the temptation to have Fred Ward and Veronica Cartwright play tragic figures. shunned by the same people who'd heaped lavish praise on the astronauts who preceded them — the ones who had captured the hearts of America with their heroic voyages into space.

It's all about the old adage which writers adhere to; Every story needs conflict.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[mach7]

The latest I read was that the capsule picks up a large static charge during re-entry. The pilot of the recovery helicopter reported seeing an electric arc when the helicopters recovery hook touched the capsules antenna just before the hatch blew.

https://www.astronomy.com/space-exploration/did-static-electricity-not-gus-grissom-blow-the-hatch-of-the-liberty-bell-7-spacecraft/

NASA trusted Gus enough to assign him to Gemini 1 and Apollo 1. In fact Gus had so much to do with the final Gemini capsule configuration that the other Gemini astronauts called it the Gus-mobile.

And thanks Bud! I downloaded both!

[Gord Green]

You are indeed "Da Man!" Bud!

Thanks for the download!

We are a couple of dinosaurs that lived through the birth of the Space Age.

We went from Weird Science and Tom Corbett comics and Space Patrol and Rocky Jones on TV as a dream leading to Mercury, Gemini and Apollo in our reality! I still remember my eighth grade teacher bringing a little 18 inch screen TV into class so we could watch Alan Shepard take his little Redstone rocket to the edge of space!

Unfortunatly, because of distractions like Viet Nam , Watergate, and assasinations used as regime changes at home and the threat of Soviet induced nuclear annihilation, our dream of the stars got side tracked.

The amazing future we were promised in Star Trek may still be in our reach. All it takes is the WILL to make it so!

But I rant on!
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There comes a time, thief, when gold loses its lustre, and the gems cease to sparkle, and the throne room becomes a prison; and all that is left is a father's love for his child.

[Krel]

[mach7]

That was implied in the movie "The Hunt for Red October" when Jack Ryan was being lowered to the USS Dallas.

Thanks for the explanation!

[Bud Brewster]

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This is what I LOVE about All Sci-Fi!

You couldn't swing a dead cat around here without hitting a "steely-eyed missile man" — as the guy in Apollo 13 said to the man who jury ridged that life-saving CO2 filter.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[mach7]

From early Project Mercury and NACA to present day NASA, the highest complement you can give someone in manned space flight is to call them a "Steely Eyed Missile Man"

It may sound odd, but Apollo 13 was a high point for NASA.

Never give up, never surrender.
There is no try, only do.
The needs of the 3 outweigh the needs of the thousands.

Ok, the last one is a stretch, but all of NASA, and much of the country, answered the call to save our 3 astronauts.
They even figured out how to fit a square peg in a round hole.

One of the selling points of Lunar Orbital Rendezvous was the ability to use the LM as a life boat. Grumman designed that into it from the start.

I remember living though Apollo 13, the 3 days of worry, The relief when we saw the 3 orange and white parachutes on the TV.