NEW YORK -- Hundreds of
astronauts have launched into space, but only a select few have looked back
upon their home planet Earth from the Moon.
"In the Shadow of the
Moon," a new documentary that opens this week in New York and Los Angeles,
tells the human stories of NASA's
former Apollo astronauts – now in their 70s – who circled or landed on
Earth's nearest neighbor between 1968 and 1972.
"It's an extremely
simple film," British director David Sington told reporters this week. "It's
kind of like an astronaut's home movie."
NASA first sent astronauts
around the moon during the December 1968 flight of Apollo 8, then landed Neil
Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin on its Sea of Tranquility on July 20, 1969, winning the
Space Race with the former Soviet Union. Five more moon landings, and the aborted
Apollo 13 attempt, followed.
With the support of "Apollo
13" director Ron Howard, Sington interviewed astronauts from each of NASA's
lunar missions spanning Apollo 8 to Apollo 17, and combed through the space
agency's video archives for unseen film that was later remastered in high
definition. The resulting 100-minute film, pared down from 60 hours of
material, is a compelling glimpse into the humanity of NASA's moon-bound Apollo
crews.
"To me, this film
captures the emotional side of the space program, which we never discussed. It
was all technical stuff," Apollo 16 lunar module pilot Charlie Duke told
reporters. "I don't remember once, at any of the briefings, anybody
asking, 'Well, what did it feel like?'"
Duke likens his lunar trek
to being a five-year-old and able to celebrate your birthday, Christmas and every
holiday in between at the same time.
"It's such a unique
experience, that there's nothing you can compare it too down here," Duke
said. "The excitement and the enthusiasm that one has there, at least in
my case, is really difficult to describe. It's an awesome experience."
"Your neck was out so
far, you're literally betting your life on all that hardware," said Alan
Bean, who served as lunar module pilot on the Apollo 12 mission in 1969.
Bean dubbed himself one of NASA's
more fearful astronauts and in the film describes his worries that a capsule
window could blow out during the three-day trip to the moon and cripple--or
end--the mission.
"I wanted those three
days to collapse down to 10 minutes or something because I was always afraid
something would break. And it did on the next flight, Apollo 13," Bean
told reporters. "You want to be there, you're glad you're there, but you
want to come back home."
It's perhaps fitting that
Sington's documentary debuts this year, which will see the 50th
anniversary of spaceflight on Oct. 4, the day the former Soviet Union
inaugurated the Space Age by launching the first-ever
artificial satellite - Sputnik - into orbit in 1957.
Aldrin, the second human
ever to set foot on the lunar surface, credited Sputnik's launch with spurring
the U.S. to send astronauts to the moon. But it was only years after that
historic flight with Armstrong and command module pilot Michael Collins that he
was able to reflect on the experience, Aldrin added.
"I think it was a universal
story," said Sington, adding that every time he looks up at the moon he
remembers that 12 humans once walked across its surface. "It was an American
achievement, but it was a global event and it's something that people remember all
around the world."
"In the Shadow of the Moon"
focuses most of its attention on Apollo 11's success, with relatively little
detail on the particulars of subsequent flights or their science goals. But the
experiences of NASA's Apollo astronauts ring clear as a bell.
"The
excitement for me was to explore to find out, to discover something new and to
come back and tell folks about it," said Edgar Mitchell Apollo 14 lunar module
pilot. "That's what explorers always do, and we were privileged to be part of
that vanguard of explorers to take a look at our nearest
neighbor."
Sington and the Apollo
astronauts do have final message for any remaining skeptics who still maintain,
nearly four decades after the first Moon landing, that NASA hoodwinked us all
with snazzy special effects on a movie soundstage.
"We went to the moon
nine times," Duke says in the documentary. "Why would we fake it nine
times?"
"In the Shadow of the
Moon" opens in
this week in New York and Los Angeles. Click
here for more cities.
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