Since its first episode aired on October 4, 1988, PBS's "American Experience" has done a great deal to advance the cause of looking at our nation's history with a fresh perspective free from ideology and distortions. And in 2019, the series took a look at what is arguably the greatest technological achievement not only in American history, but really in the whole history of the human race: the race to the Moon, which the United States won on July 20, 1969.
First shown on PBS in the week before America celebrated the 50th anniversary of the lunar landing, CHASING THE MOON is a three-part look at how America in general, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in particular, marshaled the full measure of our technological and industrial might to achieve what, before World War II, was considered pure science fiction, the stuff of Jules Verne and Fritz Lang. Avoiding the use of "talking heads", but relying on the narratives of those involved in the building of the spacecrafts and launch vehicles, and those involved in taking them towards the Moon, writer-director Robert Stone does an extremely good job of taking us through the circumstances of the "Space Race". Part One takes us from the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik on October 4, 1957, which scared the world in general, and America in particular, senseless, through President Kennedy's initially reluctant but later enthusiastic advocacy of manned space flight, to his assassination on November 22, 1963. Part Two carries us through the Gemini program and the beginnings of Apollo, to that horrible day of January 27, 1967, when Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee were asphyxiated in a flash fire on the launch pad in a pre-test of Apollo 1. And finally, Part Three takes from how Apollo was resurrected from that tragedy, to the trans-lunar flight of Apollo 8 in December 1968, and finally to the triumph on the Sea of Tranquility on the night of July 20, 1969.
But while it celebrates the triumphs and mourns the two tragedies (JFK's assassination; the Apollo 1 fire) that marked this whole section of our history, CHASING THE MOON doesn't ignore the fact that this was happening at a time of immense political, social, and structural upheaval, with the Civil Rights movement, and, unsurprisingly, the Vietnam War. There was considerable dissension among people of the worthiness of spending tens of billions of dollars on space during that time. But tens of billions more dollars were being spend on a foreign fiasco that resulted in 58,000 American soldiers and four million Vietnamese civilians paying the ultimate price, and America being severely divided from that point forward, while the achievement of Apollo 11, and the history of the American space pogrom as a whole, resulted in us learning just how small we are in the context of an immense universe. If anything, Apollo 11 humbled not only Americans and Russians alike, but also the entire world, into understanding what it means to be living on this planet.
At a time when the Damien Chazelle-directed 2018 Neil Armstrong biopic FIRST MAN and the brilliant Todd Douglas Miller documentary APOLLO 11 fueled renewed interest in what was seemingly one of the most overanalyzed events in the history of the world, CHASING THE MOON added to that, and did so in a way that PBS does best. That moment at 10:56 PM Eastern Time on the night of July 20, 1969, when Armstrong took that one small step for Man and one giant leap for Mankind, is an event to be cherished; and CHASING THE MOON furthers the notion that it is also an event that can never be forgotten.
First shown on PBS in the week before America celebrated the 50th anniversary of the lunar landing, CHASING THE MOON is a three-part look at how America in general, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in particular, marshaled the full measure of our technological and industrial might to achieve what, before World War II, was considered pure science fiction, the stuff of Jules Verne and Fritz Lang. Avoiding the use of "talking heads", but relying on the narratives of those involved in the building of the spacecrafts and launch vehicles, and those involved in taking them towards the Moon, writer-director Robert Stone does an extremely good job of taking us through the circumstances of the "Space Race". Part One takes us from the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik on October 4, 1957, which scared the world in general, and America in particular, senseless, through President Kennedy's initially reluctant but later enthusiastic advocacy of manned space flight, to his assassination on November 22, 1963. Part Two carries us through the Gemini program and the beginnings of Apollo, to that horrible day of January 27, 1967, when Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee were asphyxiated in a flash fire on the launch pad in a pre-test of Apollo 1. And finally, Part Three takes from how Apollo was resurrected from that tragedy, to the trans-lunar flight of Apollo 8 in December 1968, and finally to the triumph on the Sea of Tranquility on the night of July 20, 1969.
But while it celebrates the triumphs and mourns the two tragedies (JFK's assassination; the Apollo 1 fire) that marked this whole section of our history, CHASING THE MOON doesn't ignore the fact that this was happening at a time of immense political, social, and structural upheaval, with the Civil Rights movement, and, unsurprisingly, the Vietnam War. There was considerable dissension among people of the worthiness of spending tens of billions of dollars on space during that time. But tens of billions more dollars were being spend on a foreign fiasco that resulted in 58,000 American soldiers and four million Vietnamese civilians paying the ultimate price, and America being severely divided from that point forward, while the achievement of Apollo 11, and the history of the American space pogrom as a whole, resulted in us learning just how small we are in the context of an immense universe. If anything, Apollo 11 humbled not only Americans and Russians alike, but also the entire world, into understanding what it means to be living on this planet.
At a time when the Damien Chazelle-directed 2018 Neil Armstrong biopic FIRST MAN and the brilliant Todd Douglas Miller documentary APOLLO 11 fueled renewed interest in what was seemingly one of the most overanalyzed events in the history of the world, CHASING THE MOON added to that, and did so in a way that PBS does best. That moment at 10:56 PM Eastern Time on the night of July 20, 1969, when Armstrong took that one small step for Man and one giant leap for Mankind, is an event to be cherished; and CHASING THE MOON furthers the notion that it is also an event that can never be forgotten.