Chasing the Moon

A wonderful and at times deeply moving documentary that captures so much of the detail and feeling of what it was like to live through those exciting "moon" years.

The amount of footage from the period is also quite remarkable, and this is used very skillfully to tell a complex and engrossing story.

For those of us old enough to remember (I was just a boy at the time) it also brings back a lot of amazing memories. For those who did not experience those times, it should perhaps be even more enlightening and entertaining.

Well worth sitting through all 6 hours!

'Chasing the Moon' offers immaculate clarity of archival footage and illustrated press / cultural coverage of the times (like for those who weren't around for it), amongst interesting first-hand accounts of those involved in the Space Race on and off Earth.

It touches on the aspects beyond those of NASA's program, but ones that are still heavily attached to it. Specifically, I'm speaking about the LIFE Magazine 'behind the scenes' footage illustrating the palpable worry of the wives and families who looked on at those small, blurry TV screens, hoping to never hear there was a problem via the audio feed. It was such an intimate element to highlight, a stinging hard-pressed moment of risk and slight relief.

My small critiques are that 1.) as another reviewer commented, it was difficult to distinguish who was speaking on the voice-overs, due to the minimal notations of their names/titles after the first mention. Later on, when it changed from person to person, unless you recognized the voice, you weren't sure who was talking anymore.

And 2.) I think there could have been more light shed on other individuals of the 400,000 engineers, scientists, and technicians involved in the Apollo Space Program. I know everyone is not feasible. But, at the minimum, at least emphasize that immense fact somewhere during the program, to showcase the incredible and expansive effort it was to achieve this feat in under a decade. A few more persons could have been interviewed or given recognition, specifically on the female front. It was nice to see Poppy Northcutt. I, however, think a few others such as Joanne Morgan, Katherine Johnson, Margaret Hamilton, etc. could have been included, just for awareness purposes. (And, to say, there was more than 1 woman because... there were. Even if, they were statistically far less.)

I was not alive to witness the original moon landing, and due to linear time constraints, I cannot see it firsthand in 1969. However, 'Chasing the Moon' allowed me to feel like I did live through that part of the decade, be aware of its environment, see inside the beginnings of NASA, and most importantly-- it gave me the chance to join in on that monumental event on July 20, 1969. The sudden awareness that man was somewhere beyond that horizon, looking back at us on our glowing moon in the sky. (And then to see the actual footage they captured in HQ, wow.) It was a world-wide phenomenon of diligence, discovery, and the shared joy for mankind's accomplishment and those who helped the cause along the way.

It is an excellent series that offers insight to this amazingly complex journey. I hope it gives a new generation of viewers a sense of this piece of history, and more so a new appreciation for what was achieved 50 years ago despite their difficulties and imperfections.

Happy 50th, Apollo 11.

I have been watching this on PBS, presented in three 2-hour episodes on consecutive nights. I am a product of the 1960s, I was in college during most of the project to send men to the Moon. I clearly remember those days but what this program does is pull back the curtain, it shows us so many interesting things that were totally unknown to the general public in the 1960s.

I was particularly touched by the original footage inside the astronaut's home during a launch, the wife and kids knowing full well that the mission was not 100% safe, that there was a distinct possibility the rocket would blow up or the men would get stranded between the Earth and the Moon. The emotions the wives were experiencing, shown in extreme close-ups. This really humanizes the whole experience.

I know, six hours seems like a very long running time but it is packed with interesting programming, never getting boring. A nice point of interest is the lone woman, a 20-something Mathematician, who became the prime person for providing information and directing spaceship guidance for successful insertion into Moon orbit, then later successful return to Earth. Each maneuver and rocket firing a critical step with zero room for error. Having a female in that role turned out to be groundbreaking.

Extremely well made series, I'm sure it will be available for replay for a long time on PBS. My public library already has the program available on DVD, so anyone who missed this can check with their public library.

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.

I've watched just about all of the NASA specials on Science channel and other networks, but I was very quickly intrigued by this PBS series which covers all the bases and more. In all the hours I've watched before, "Chasing..." added so much more of interest. Examples include the first nominated black astronaut Ed Dwight Jr. and what he went through (especially Chuck Yeager's racist comments to his fellow white flyers about Dwight which I had never heard or read about though the information is out there), and JFK's visit with Von Braun for the showcase booster demonstration at NASA and JFK's reaction. Not a big fan of PBS, but I have to admit this series is definitely worth a watch for the comprehensive and detailed history of the NASA program, from beginning to end.