But Mark Gray, the producer and writer of the documentary, misses a chance to tell one of the staggering bits of history that remind people just how turbulent the rest of the world in the 1960s, outside of NASA's button-down universe of astronauts, engineers, and slide-rules:
A few hours after Apollo 6's command module was recovered, Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated.
The 365 foot tall Chevy Impala
The second disc contains footage of every Saturn V launch, from those first two unmanned flights, through each of the Apollo missions, to the launch of the Skylab space station--the last Saturn V flight. Since they're relatively easy to do on a DVD, I would have preferred see the format's captioning capability taken advantage of, to provide detailed descriptions that could be switched on or off of what we're seeing, or maybe some interesting trivia about each launch. The same approach could also be accomplished with a secondary audio track, perhaps with the original NASA audio on track one, a narrator on track two, and both on track three.
Speaking of NASA's audio, the voices of the men who staffed Houston's Mission Control are fascinating to listen during the launches. They're controlling a 365-foot tall machine, each of which cost something like $150 million to produce, weighed more than a Navy destroyer, and generating twice as much power than all of the hydroelectric power plants in the U.S. And yet they're each speaking in perfectly calm, mostly southern accents, like they're driving their '65 Chevy Impala to the hardware store.
Kent Brockman Visits NASA
Included on the third disc are 11 quarterly management reports from the Marshall Space Flight Archive. Running from 1963 to 1967, the reports trace the progress of the assembly of the Saturn V fleet, from the initial concepts, to the physical construction of the rockets. They were apparently designed to show the boys in Washington Marshall's progress in meeting the deadline imposed by President Kennedy.
They're shot and narrated much like the documentaries of '50s and '60s that we've all sat through in school, and that The Simpsons and James Lileks have endlessly satirized. (For the tone of the narration, picture Troy McClure or Kent Brockman at their industrial film driest.)
Article comments
1 - Tom Johnson
My wife and I just took a vacation to Florida last month and made the trek from Orlando to KSC. Seeing the Saturn V, even laid on its side, is an incredible experience. While the rest of the rockets, including the space shuttle, viewable at KSC are impressive, they seem to lack a bit of the awe I was hoping I'd feel. As a space junkie since I was a kid, I had always imagined these things being just massive. Up close, they're almost fragile-y small. Except for the Saturn V/Apollo vehicle. That was so much bigger than I anticipated. I could have stared at it for hours, absorbing every detail. Of course, that was out of the question - my wife was getting anxious after about 15 minutes of that! I did, however, snap off nearly two rolls of film of everything I could get a good shot of.
This sounds like a great set, and a great way to torture loved ones who don't quite share the same enthusiasm I do . . . ;-)
2 - John Nelson
An incredible achievment...I wish they'd show more actual footage of how it would have really been from 4 miles away-having the sound take 12 seconds to reach you and then suddenly BAM!