NASA APOLLO PROGRAM DOCUMENTARY "THE TIME OF APOLLO" 72942

Video from the channel PeriscopeFilm about Apollo program, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 27:47. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

NASA retrospective film on the Apollo program that combines mission footage, mission control communications and testimonies with a narration that presents the arrival on the Moon as a milestone in human history. It tours facilities now out of use, such as the Florida launch pad, Houston mission control or the equipment on display in museums, as reminders of what happened.

The story starts with the launch of Apollo 11 in July 1969 from Complex 39 at the Kennedy Space Center, with Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin, and includes the announcement of the Moon landing from Tranquility Base. George Low, one of the architects of the program, places the mission against a decade marked by Vietnam, riots and three assassinations. The film reviews the previous missions: Apollo 8 on Christmas Eve 1968, Apollo 9 with the first crewed flight of the lunar module Spider, and Apollo 10 as a full dress rehearsal, three missions in five months. It also recalls the fire in early 1967 in which Grissom, White and Chaffee died during a test in the command module.

Apollo 13 appears as the lesson that confidence is fleeting: an explosion three days into the journey to the Moon, after which flight director Eugene Kranz explains that they never doubted they would bring the crew back. Geologist Harrison Schmitt, from Apollo 17, the last mission, launched at night, describes the Taurus-Littrow valley where he landed. The film mentions the Saturn rocket, whose name was taken from Roman mythology, the lunar samples, with 840 pounds studied in laboratories around the world, and the instruments that kept sending data to Houston. Historian Arthur Schlesinger predicts that the 20th century will be remembered for the start of space exploration, and the film closes with words from poet Archibald MacLeish about the Earth seen from space. The missions to the Moon took place between 1969 and late 1972.