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I highly recommend the Discovery Channel mini-series "When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions". This mini-series covers the entire breadth of the NASA missions, f
by jf 12y ago
I highly recommend the Discovery Channel mini-series "When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions". This mini-series covers the entire breadth of the NASA missions, from Mercury to the International Space Station. This series is available on Netflix: www.netflix.com/WiMovie/70218722
If "When We Left Earth" sparks your interest. I suggest watching "Apollo 13" and "The Right Stuff" next.
Lastly, I'm currently reading the excellent book "Moon Lander: How We Developed the Apollo Lunar Module". This book gives an insiders view of what it took to build the Lunar Module (LM). I particularly appreciate that the book covers a lot of the hard work, arguments, and drama that are often forgotten when we romanticize the past.
- houseofshards 12y ago"When we left Earth" - just started watching this. Great !! Thank you for recommending this, good sir.
- kyleslattery 12y agoSome more recommendations: the book "Apollo" by Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox is really excellent as an overview of everything that it took to get to the moon, as is the HBO mini-series "From The Earth to the Moon"
- jedberg 12y agoYou forgot "From the Earth to the Moon", which was an excellent miniseries produced by the same team that did Apollo 13.
- teh_klev 12y ago"The Right Stuff" is so repeat-watchable. I watch it two or three times a year, never gets boring. Sadly "When we left Earth" isn't available on UK Netflix :( One of my first vivid memories was watching Apollo 14 or Apollo 15 on my folks old black and white telly. I was four at the time and went to school completely obsessed with the Saturn V rocket and the idea of space travel. As I've grown older and come to appreciate the limitations of the technology of the day, I am even more in awe of the challenges the Apollo programme had to overcome to get two humans to land on the moon, and the mortal danger these individuals lived in from takeoff to landing. I wonder if we've plateaued in our ability and willpower to put humans into space and to break new barriers in space travel. I wonder if governments could ever stomach the 1960's attitude of "throwing caution to the wind" to send humans to Mars or beyond.
- krisgee 12y ago> I wonder if governments could ever stomach the 1960's attitude of "throwing caution to the wind" to send humans to Mars or beyond. I would honestly hope not because there's no point in doing it wrong, especially not now when any failure is a huge setback and successes are treated as expected. We will put people on Mars, we will have space stations and people living on the moons of Jupiter. This won't happen quickly and I do understand that at some point we have to put people in danger but there's no reason to do it as recklessly as we did in the 60's. Hell we're doing just fine as it is. Right now there are six people living in space. There are companies starting right now to supply them, to get minerals from asteroids, to take people to Mars. It's happening now and it's just not as heroic as it was in the 60's, which to my mind just shows that we're doing it right.
- rquantz 12y agoThe Right Stuff is an entertaining movie, but beware that it plays fast and loose with a lot of facts, and also does a great disservice in its depiction of the beloved and respected Gus Grissom, who was killed in the Apollo 1 fire and was most definitely not the cave man/coward in the movie.
- krisgee 12y agoI've really got to speak to the incredible soundtrack that "When we left Earth" has. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzCsDVfPQqk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzCsDVfPQqk Probably my favourite scene and if I'm honest though I am not even an American, watching the stars and stripes through the condensation ice and the big red U S A crawling by makes me feel a bit patriotic.
- ArkyBeagle 12y agoSee also "Moon Machines".
- foz 12y agoThis is an excellent series. There's an entire episode about the LEM computer which goes into detail about things like the famous alarm codes, hand-wiring core memory, and interviews with the developers.
- jc123 12y agoThanks, here's another suggestion: "In the Shadow of the Moon"
- tdicola 12y agoSurprised I'm the first to mention For All Mankind as another great Apollo documentary. It was nominated for an academy award and is really well polished. Brian Eno did an amazing score of ambient music for it too. Don't go in expecting a factual run down of the Apollo era, in fact there's no narration at all and just great clips and bits of actual film from the training, launches, missions, etc. Criterion Collection has a great release of it that's worth a purchase if you're at all interested in space or the Apollo missions.
- blantonl 12y agoYou might also consider reading the book "Failure is not an option." It gives an account, from the flight director's perspective, of the space program from Mercury to Apollo 13.
- foz 12y agoThis is one of my favorites. Not only is it riveting, but for anyone building software with others it's a great course in leadership, team building, and testing.
- CmonDev 12y agoThe ISS programme is a joint project among five participating space agencies: NASA, Roskosmos, JAXA, ESA, and CSA. It's not a NASA mission.