Apollo 13/Journey to the Moon/Mars and Back, 1994-2006
Apollo 13/Journey to the Moon/Mars and Back, 1994-2006 (1994-2006) This wonderful boxed Nova set of three documentaries covers a range of space flight subjects. Produced over more than a decade for the Nova program on PBS, they emphasize the dramatic and the unusual. Two of them deal with the Apollo program, the American adventure that culminated in the Moon landings between 1969 and 1972. The third depicts the recent adventure to explore Mars with robotic space probes and determine the possibilities of whether or not life had ever existed on the red planet.
The first of these, originally produced in 1994, is the ninety-minute Apollo 13: to the Edge and Back. Dealing with the dramatic story of the in-flight accident and rescue of astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Rusty Swigart, this documentary is an excellent recapitulation of one of the most thrilling episodes in the Apollo program. Launched on April 11, 1970, Apollo 13 experienced a rupture of an oxygen tank in the spacecraft’s service module that damaged several of the power, electrical, and life support systems. People throughout the world watched and waited and hoped and prayed as NASA personnel on the ground and the crew, well in their way to the Moon and with no way of returning until they went around it, worked together to find a way safely home.
While NASA engineers quickly determined that air, water, and electricity did not exist in the Apollo capsule sufficient to sustain the three astronauts until they could return to Earth, they found that the Lunar Module—a self-contained spacecraft unaffected by the accident—could be used as a “lifeboat” to provide austere life support for the return trip. It was a close-run thing, but the crew returned safely on April 17, 1970. The near disaster served several important purposes for the civil space program—especially prompting reconsideration of the propriety of the whole effort, while also solidifying in the popular mind NASA’s technological genius. Many viewers would be familiar with this story from the feature film, Apollo 13, made by Ron Howard in 1995. This documentary is a quality work in its own right that uses video from the time and first-hand accounts of many of the participants, as well as the astronauts and their families, to offer new perspectives on this event.
To the Moon is a 1999 documentary ranging broadly over a two-hour period to tell the larger story of Apollo. As this documentary demonstrates, Apollo represented an epic event in the history of the United States. Begun in the heady era of JFK’s “Camelot” presidency in 1961, by the end of the decade, the first Americans had landed on the Moon. A total of six crews reached the lunar surface, and, in the end, the program demonstrated both the resolve and the ingenuity of the United States to respond to difficult challenges. This documentary uses outstanding imagery and interviews with a far-ranging group of participants to tell this story.
Those steeped in the history of space flight would be hard pressed to learn much that is new here, although for the general audience there is a wealth of insights. Moreover, To the Moon is essentially what the Duke University history professor Alex Roland called a restatement of “tribal rituals, meant to comfort the old and indoctrinate the young.” Nonetheless it is a very capable restatement and provides an important perspective on a dramatic subject.
Finally, Mars: Dead or Alive is an hour-long documentary that is a quite capable, but decidedly less dramatic, depiction of the Mars Exploration Rovers and the scientific efforts to understand the red planet. This 2004 Nova program focuses on the work of Cornell University scientist Steve Squyres and the team that built the rovers, later named “Spirit” and “Opportunity.” Dealing mostly with the trials of readying these spacecraft for flight, it highlights the seemingly mundane—whoever would have thought that a vibration test on an instrument would hold so much drama—and succeeds well in helping to explain how a spacecraft is conceptualized, built, and launched. The last few scenes deal with the landing of the first rover on Mars, but the documentary predates the exciting new knowledge derived from the operations of “Spirit” and “Opportunity” on the Martian surface. For that, the current IMAX film, Roving Mars, fills the bill.
Collectively, these are capable, entertaining, and useful documentaries exploring important episodes in the history of spaceflight.
Roger Launius, National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian., launiusr@si.edu.
