Must-See Documentary on Apollo 11

Re: Thomas Reardon’s post 101085 of 3/23/19

Thank you, Mr. Reardon!!  Just saw it and agree totally with what you said.  As I left the theater I was thinking what a grand “meeting of the minds” happened in July 1969.  I highly recommend seeing this documentary.

/sb

I second Thomas Reardon’s recommendation of Apollo 11. I saw it a few weeks ago on IMAX and was completely enthralled by it. Like he writes, it definitely brings to mind AR’s “Apollo and Dionysus” especially when you see the crowd completely mesmerized and at attention during the launch.

Today, most Americans can’t name a current astronaut but can rattle off a dozen reality TV “star” names. The movie vividly concretized for me what the proper attitude to human achievement should be as well as its proper conceptualization.

*sb

Re: Amesh Adalja’s post 125828 of 3/25/19 

I concur with all of the above.  What is more, I was thrilled that—at least to my awareness—there were none of the usual bromides about the smallness of man or even any eco-religious messages about “caring for the earth” (purportedly inspired by the remote viewing of our ‘small blue-green sphere,’ or some such twaddle). To my viewing, the entire film was focussed on the facts of the mission, and the theme running through it was:  this is an incredible human endeavor. The filmmakers even included a recording of Michael Collins’ explicit acknowledgement of the scientists and engineers that made the nearly flawless mission possible.

Full of inspiration from this film, I went home and immediately read this on AR’s experience at the launch (she is discussing watching Armstrong’s famous step):

At this last, I felt one instance of unhappy fear, wondering what he would say, because he had it in his power to destroy the meaning and the glory of that moment, as the astronauts of Apollo 8 had done in their time.  He did not.  He made no reference to God; he did not undercut the rationality of his achievement by paying tribute to the forces of its opposite; he spoke of man.

(BTW, what an amazing literary achievement is that excerpt.  I’ve never seen a more appropriate use of two semicolons in one sentence.)

I think she would have had a similar reaction to this film.

/sb

Re: Roger Zimmerman’s post 125827 of 3/26/19

To my viewing, the entire film was focussed on the facts of the mission, and the theme running through it was: this is an incredible human endeavor. The filmmakers even included a recording of Michael Collins’ explicit acknowledgement of the scientists and engineers that made the nearly flawless mission possible.

Yes, and you recall that she was at the launch in that crowd, in the V.I.P. section! I just saw the film and I looked for her in the crowd, but didn’t see her. You can read her account of the launch in the September ’69 issue of The Objectivist.

And you probably didn’t know that Michael Collins was a fan and had correspondence with AR. See Letters of Ayn Rand for her thank you to him for a compliment he gave that article by her on Apollo XI. She writes: “Dear Mike” so he had clearly told her that she should use his first name.

*sb

Re: Harry Binswanger’s post 125842 of 3/29/19

I looked for her too with no luck but after all there were so many people there.  Harry, do you have a page reference for the letter to Michael Collins?

*sb

Re: Dave Kurdelski’s post 125844 of 3/29/19

Dave, the brief note to Michael Collins is on page 648 of Letters of Ayn Rand.

/sb

Re: Stephanie Bond’s post 125847 of 3/29/19

Hi Stephanie. Just a note to point out the book’s title is Letters of Ayn Rand.

*sb (also: omg! Thank you!)

Re: Stephanie Bond’s post 125847 of 3/29/19

Thank you Stephanie!

*sb

Re: Thomas Reardon’s post 101085 of 3/23/19

This a reply to all of you who recommended the movie: thank you so much. 

From the first moments I felt as if I were there, experiencing the launch as if for the first time.  The familiar words, “The Eagle has Landed” and “One small step….” made me cry.  

I loved the wonderfully matter-of-fact, so purely American tone of all the conversations …the little jokes, obvious pride, intense focus of the scientists, the feeling of true comradeship…what a wonderful movie.  

By the way, I got a closed-caption appliance at the service desk and it was excellent.  I got a lot of the conversation and dialogue that I would not have understood otherwise.  And John, whose hearing is much better than mine, looked at it occasionally and found it helpful as well.

I too looked for Ayn Rand in the audience, but did not see her.

/sb

Re: Dave Kurdelski’s post 125844 of 3/29/19

*sb

There was a 1970 film documentary on Apollo 11, which, like the 2019 70mm-picture-quality documentary discussed here, draws upon film shot by NASA at the time of the 1969 mission rather than showing the key events from the grainy video recordings (including ones transmitted near-instantaneously through space), which have become the common source for retrospectives. The 1970 film documentary was titled “Moonwalk One,” and can be downloaded for free in DVD-caliber MPEG2 from the Internet Archive at https://archive.org/details/gov.archives.arc.1257628.

Harry Binswanger in post 125842 of 3/29/19 pointed out that Ayn Rand (and husband Frank, unnamed in previous posts here) “was at the launch in that crowd, in the V.I.P. section! I just saw the film and I looked for her in the crowd, but didn’t see her.” I haven’t spotted the O’Connors, either, but I am happy to report that shots of the grandstands appear to overlap greatly between the 1970 and 2019 films. I noticed that a scene of Lyndon Johnson standing in the grandstand seems the same or substantially similar in the two films. (The editors of the 1970 film included a close-up of Jack Benny among the spectators, whereas no counterpart is in the 2019 film. I take this to mean that the editors of the 2019 film decided that this comedy icon of the 1930s-1960s had lost so much popular recognition over 49 years that current viewers would be mystified as to why this one person was singled out among the invited guests.)

The Internet Archive identifies the film as in the public domain, naming as the content sources the National Archives and Records Administration, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The end of the film carries a 1970 copyright notice that names Francis Thompson Inc. It’s possible that this entity continues to hold a copyright on editing and the firm’s contributions of content within the documentary, even as the most significant material within the documentary originated with NASA and is therefore subject to the law that “Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government” (17 USC 105).

*sb