By now, if you recognize that title, you’re probably going, “Gee, that’s timely.” Considering that the miniseries aired in 1998 and has been available on DVD for the better part of a decade, you’d be right. I beg forgiveness, however, because it only recently became available at a price I could afford. Also, its subject matter seems timely given changes at NASA and the US space program, i.e., bye-bye shuttle, hello...er, what replacement?
From the Earth to the Moon is a 12-part miniseries that aired on HBO. It received widespread critical acclaim at the time and holds up remarkably well. It does so because it tells a direct and accurate history, while at the same time restraining its use of visual effects. The result is a compelling, historically-accurate, and very human drama.
The miniseries essentially bridges the gap between the films The Right Stuff and Apollo 13, while also adding an addendum to bring the Moon program to its conclusion with the flight of Apollo 17. Each episode is, to a large extent, a self-contained story. While certain characters will run through other episodes, each story being told is its own entity. So, the series starts with “Can We Do This?”, a simple question posed by President John Kennedy’s call to put an American on the Moon by the end of the 1960’s. This episode simply recaps a few of the obstacles the Moon program would face, how they could be tackled one by one, and introduces the men who would eventually fly the Apollo spacecraft.
The show is an emotional treat for me because it recounts the history of my childhood. When I would walk to school in the morning, I could see the headlines of the morning newspaper (the San Francisco Chronicle) give one status check on Mercury or Gemini or Apollo. When I walked home in the afternoon, the headlines of the afternoon paper (the San Francisco Examiner) would give another. Time and again, From the Earth to the Moon had me relieving those brief news snippets, as well as what Walter Cronkite would report that evening. (Interestingly, Cronkite does not appear in the series. Lane Smith portrays Emmett Seaborn, Cronkite’s stand-in.)
More than nostalgia, the series presents the stories of the scientists, researchers, mechanics, engineers, etc., that made the entire endeavor possible. For example, the episode covering the Apollo 1 disaster brought to life the horror felt by those involved, especially the men who designed the capsule that would eventually kill Grissom, White, and Chaffee. It is as uncynical a view as you are likely to find, a straight and direct presentation of people whose lives are destroyed by the failure of a tool they designed and built. It culminates in a fictionalized presentation by Frank Borman to the US Senate committee investigating the disaster, which presents in the clearest possible way that sometimes accidents happen for no other reason than “a failure of imagination.” Everyone knew the risks, everyone new the dangers, but no one could imagine just this type of failure...until it happened.
My favorite episode is a toss-up between “Spider” and “Is That All There Is?”. Spider tells the story of how Grumman designed and built the Lunar Excursion Module, or LEM. I would have never believed that a one-hour story about nothing more than rocket scientists doing what rocket scientists do could be so emotional and absorbing. It’s brilliant.
Also brilliant is “Is That All There Is?”, about the flight of Apollo 12. The crew of Apollo 12 was the most close-knit of any of the Apollo crews, and the episode captures that to perfection. The sheer glee that they all evince during the entire mission is a wonder to behold.
Again and again, the series reaches for brilliance and succeeds. The episode chronicling the geology training the astronauts received is, in and of itself, the perfect argument for manned space flight.
And this is where I begin to get a little depressed, because all of the energy and enthusiasm and exuberance that went into making Apollo possible seems...gone. I watch the new NASA administrator say that one of NASA’s prime missions is to reach out to the Muslim world and I wonder what in the hell does that have to do with the exploration of space. In terms of space exploration, the current administration seems to have all the vision of a blind man, with his head in a sack, locked in a dark closet, down in an unlit basement, at night.
The naysayers, as illustrated by the portrayal of Walter Mondale in the series, have won. Their priorities have taken the lead and achieved...nothing. We have willfully closed our eyes to space and gained, on earth, not a thing. We have fallen backwards, into a deep belief that such things as traveling in space are impossible.
The claim that no single nation, including America, can send men to the Moon, Mars, and beyond is proven wrong by a simple fact: We’ve already done it. Alone. All it takes is the will, driven by a dream and determination. From the Earth to the Moon presents the drive and will that got us there on July 20, 1969.
Do we really want to inspire a new generation of mathematicians and scientists? We could do a lot worse than make elementary school viewing of From the Earth to the Moon mandatory. And then, perhaps inspired by little more than “we did it before, and we can do it again, and we will do it again,” we will return to the stars.
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