From the Earth to the Moon

We choose to go to the moon! says JFK, as if it’s simply a matter of making up our minds. I think if I’d been alive during the Moon decade, as an adult, I wouldn’t have felt that going to the moon was a big priority. I mean, it seems there are a lot of social issues pretty “close to home.” The Vietnam war was going on concurrently!

But, I was totally captivated by this drama-documentary (produced by Tom Hanks.) I didn’t expect to enjoy it nearly as much as I did. Twelve episodes, each exploring the Moon project from different angles and perspectives. We got to see through the eyes of the computer geeks at MIT, the wives of test-pilots-turned astronauts, the TV anchorman battling an upstart reporter, the engineering firm president whose brain child was the Lunar Module. Alan Shepard was 47 when he landed on the moon – after a decade hiatus from being an astronaut. Al Bean was a goofy young rookie along for the ride with his goofy pals – in their matching yellow corvettes, and on their journey to the moon. Jack Schmidt was a geologist who helped turn his fellow astronauts on to studying rocks, and finally got to land on the ultimate rock himself, in the last trip to date.

The miniseries is definitely dramatized, with characters and facts adapted to make a good story. Each episode was quite different – even the cinematography varied to fit the theme. I had a little bit of trouble keeping track of all the people, because they were sometimes introduced in a rapid-fire succession and each episode had mostly a different set of characters altogether. But on the whole, the acting was excellent. And, the scenes in the spacecraft and out on the moon were very convincing. I literally forgot that it wasn’t actual footage of the mission.

The “moral of the story,” which was emphasized more toward the end, is that the moon landing was proof that the human race is capable of anything – we can do anything we put our minds to. (If we all work together and have a little faith… no, just kidding, this wasn’t a Disney movie.) I guess that’s pretty inspiring, even to me, and I’m not exactly a modernist, certainly not a humanist, and not even that much of an optimist. I wouldn’t have agreed with Kennedy that making it to the moon was very essential. But, I have to wonder – if we hadn’t done it, would the world (or at least America) be a different place? Maybe the accomplishment had wider reaching effects than I realize.

If you have Netflix and are up for a fascinating educational/entertaining show, get From the Earth to the Moon!