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From the Earth to the Moon-What's-your favourite episode?

Drunkrobot

By Drunkrobot
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Drunkrobot

Drunkrobot

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From the Earth to the Moon is an American TV series made in the 90s. Despite that, it is one of the greatest things to have happened to the culture of humanity during my brief time alive on this Earth. It was a series on the Apollo program, from the Murcury and Gemini programs that lead up to it, to the fire of Apollo 1, and NASAs recovery from the disaster, Apollo 8's 10 orbits around the Moon, 11's first landing, the war between factual news and sensationism during one of the greatest news stories of living memory, Apollo 13, turning the "throttle-jockeys" that would go on the J class missions into scientists, and finally the bittersweet end of the program on 17.

I've had a look around the forums, and it seems the people on it are rather interested in spaceflight, so I imagine a great deal of you have seen at least one episode. If you've seen more than one, which one is your favourite. I know, choosing is like picking a favourite flavour of ice cream. Even blueberry is gosh darn delicious. You could say which ones tie first place, if that is the case.

I have a four-way tie: "Spider", the story of the boys at Northrop-Grumman who were tasked with building the first true spaceship (these guys had to build a whole new class of flying machine. They had little knowledge at the beginning on what the moon was even like, imagine having to people for a trip to somewhere on the planet, you get ready for the arctic circle, you're landed in the amazon. Making the LM took truly inspirational genius.), "That's all there is", the crew of Apollo 12 (You've seen everything that makes sense, then you've seen an astronaut, on the moon, banging a TV camera with a hammer.), "Galileo Was Right", how a pair of geology egg-heads were tasked with turning the Apollo 15 crew, all three US air force pilots and adrenaline junkies into scientists, and their discovery of the "Genesis rock". (Seeing grown men go from being bored out of their minds in a classroom, to falling in love with how geology, and science in general, can tell a story, and how listening can only enrich the human race, was beautiful) and "Le Voyage dans la Lune", how Apollo 17 smashed record after record, ending Project Apollo with a brilliant, if premature, bang.

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Nikolai

Nikolai

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"That's All There Is" is the one I tend to show other people (who probably have little familiarity with the Moon race), since I think it's the most approachable and humorous.

"Spider" is my personal favorite, though.

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Drunkrobot

Drunkrobot

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The only other series I could think is Space Odyssey: Voyage To The Planets. It's a two part BBC docu-drama about a fictional, yet realistic, manned "grand tour" of the solar system. Among the bodies explored are Venus, Mars, the Jovian system, the Saturnine system , Pluto and a comet. Check it out!

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Albert VDS

Albert VDS

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"That's All There Is" is the one I tend to show other people (who probably have little familiarity with the Moon race), since I think it's the most approachable and humorous.

"Spider" is my personal favorite, though.

I have to agree with you, "Spider" is my favorite too. It really shows the pressure and time constraint of the Apollo program and the great advancements they achieved in that short period of time.

Every episode was great in it's own way, except for "The original wives club" episode. It just wasn't that interesting to me and I only saw like 15 minutes of it.

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Britpoint

Britpoint

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OP, I think you said it all! Your four favourites are mine as well, but I think at the very top of the pack has to be Spider. Not only a really interesting look at the building of the LM, but also full of emotion and really well told. Most of the time when we think of Apollo we think of the landings - 11 and beyond, but each mission was very important for various people. For the Grumman guys it was Apollo 9, an orbital test run that most of us barely think about today. But that episode of From the Earth to the Moon gave it a whole new perspective for me!

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Albert VDS

Albert VDS

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When We Left Earth. It's available in the Netflix instant queue if you have access to that, if I remember right.

When We Left Earth might be the best of all the space race documentaries, well at least in my opinion.

The whole feeling of it just puts you on the edge of your seat. :D

I'm watching Moon Machines now, it's a great series too. Lots of info which normally don't consider.

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KevinTMC

KevinTMC

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"Spider" was probably my favorite too, followed by "Galileo Was Right".

Having worked (just a little) in the news business before, I was also fond of "We Interrupt This Program". I think it's an underrated episode...and handled masterfully the problem of "how do we do an Apollo 13 episode when the movie about it was just made a couple years ago?"

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