For those who love movies and TV, there are several great movies and shows about the true, non-sci-fi history of the American Space Program. If you want to know more, the following is a list of must-sees:
The Right Stuff – Made in 1983 starring Ed Harris (as John Glenn), Scott Glenn (as Alan Shepard), Dennis Quaid (as Gordon Cooper), Sam Shepard (as Chuck Yeager), Fred Ward (Gus Grissom), and Barbara Hershey (Glennis Yeager). It covers the major aerospace achievements from Chuck Yeager’s supersonic flight of the Bell X-1 in 1947 to the Mercury flights involving astronauts Shepard, Glenn, Grissom, and Cooper.
Hidden Figures – Just recently released, starring Taraji P. Henson (as Katherine Goble Johnson), Octavia Spencer (as Dorothy Vaughan), and Janelle Monae (as Mary Jackson), Kevin Costner (as Al Harrison), and Big Bang Theory’s Jim Parsons (as Paul Stafford). This well-received movie tells the story of three African-American women that worked at NASA’s Langley Center and rose out of a segregated work environment (and the world around them at that time) and assisted the beginning of NASA’s efforts to fly a man into space and beyond.
Apollo 13 – Released in 1995, starring Tom Hanks (as Jim Lovell), the late Bill Pullman (as Fred Haise), and Kevin Bacon (as Jack Swiggert). The story of the Apollo mission that suffered an internal spacecraft failure and through the daring and knowledge of both the astronauts and ground-ops at NASA Mission Control was successfully able to get back safely. The real Jim Lovell plays a brief cameo as the captain of the USS Iwo Jima that recovered the crew after splashdown.
From the Earth To The Moon – Premiered in 1997 on HBO, this mini-series covers everything from the Mercury program up through the series’ namesake Apollo program. All Apollo missions are covered, including the final moonshot Apollo 17 in 1972. A very insightful piece of the space journeys and technical and personal behind-the-scenes events that shaped this major NASA campaign in American History.
There are more of course, but these are pivotal ones to start with. As a NASA-contractor engineer myself, I can confirm the authenticity of the technical knowledge shown throughout. There were some light historical fiction elements to some plot lines, added to give the move a cohesive flow. One advice to parents on these films is that some of the language and personal-life situations could a bit mature for younger folks (but I point this out as an FYI).
All in all, these are great selections, to begin with, and I recommend them to anyone that wants to begin to learn about NASA’s Space Program. At the very least, they try to do what I’m doing with The Great Galactic Space Gimmick . . . and that is to inspire and rebuild the sense of daring and excitement that we all had in the early days of the Space Age and Space Race. And it’s a fight worth fighting and will always do so.
For the Great Galactic Space Gimmick, I’m Gimmick Commander Ben Faltinowski. 🙂
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