Growing up in the 1970’s I can recall watching Apollo 17 on television live, and then going outside and looking at the moon while the astronauts were walking upon the Taurus-Littrow region of the lunar surface. Ever since that moment, I wanted to know more about space exploration, especially if it was in motion picture form.
In 1989 the US A&E Network re-telecast the Apollo 11 mission. I had never seen the full moonwalk before, and there it was, unedited, just as viewers saw it 20 years prior. It was the most profound experience and incredible to have the chance to live the moment as if it was happening in real time.
That level of excitement is what’s needed for space exploration stories. For All Mankind by Al Reinart (1989) captured this excitement in an ingenious way. It combined footage from all the Apollo missions to create a 90-minute hybrid mission that sought to encapsulate what a real journey would be like. The voices of the actual astronauts who walked on the moon were the anchor of this story telling. The by-product being that the audience would want to know more.
30 years later, the phenomenally successful Apollo 11 Imax film presented viewers with a truly visceral experience of arguably the most famous mission of discovery in human history. Watching this film on the super large Imax screen, you really had the feeling of being there. It wasn’t a grainy nth generation print, it was pristine 70mm quality which looked brand spanking new. No wonder it was so successful.
We are living in an era, where the pioneering space age missions are experiencing a renaissance. Newly scanned, and in some cases newly discovered footage allow these elusive recollections to find a modern setting from which to be told. And a good thing, too, as time in not on our side. The astronauts who flew them are not getting any younger, and when they go, their experiences go with them. However, committing to these recollections while we still have the time, preserves them for future generations. Who better to tell us about spending a record-breaking 84 days in space, than an astronaut who really did spend 84 days in space?
But it isn’t only human stories that garner our imagination. The Farthest tells the story of the famous Voyager 1 & 2 robotic missions that launched in 1977 to explore the solar system and beyond. Accompanying archival footage is the testimony of the engineers and technicians who designed and built these spectacular flying machines. It provides a level of detail committed to film, while the chance is still there for us the benefit from it.
And yes, musician Chuck Berry also makes an appearance, as his music accompanied the probes in the very remote chance that extra-terrestrial life should happen to discover the Voyager Spacecraft.
You can read it in many fine textbooks, but seeing it come alive on a screen is a totally different experience. It connects us more deeply with the stories and people involved. It can inspire people and also help us with our understanding of rocket science and exploration of outer space.
Despite there being such a rich source of material and inspiration, there are still many stories about our exploits in space that need to be told. As the Space Shuttle gets relegated into faded memories, there is a complete era of space travel which hasn’t been truly told in film form. Skylab has only recently been given the same amount of attention as Apollo. There are some missions such as the Mars Viking landings, which have yet to have anything told about them in cinematic form. These stories must be told. They allow us to look up to the skies and aspire to greatness.
Dwight is the director of a feature length documentary Searching For Skylab – a largely forgotten story that tells the story of the space station that preceded the ISS. The documentary features never-before-seen footage revealing incredible feats of science and technology achieved by the space station and NASA astronauts. While Skylab is perhaps best remembered for its spectacular crash into the Australian desert in the summer of 1979, the missions themselves provided the scientific community with invaluable information about our planet, the sun, space, and the universe itself.
His is the award-winning author of Live TV from the Moon, Live TV from Orbit, and editor of Skylab 1 & 2: The NASA Mission Reports, Skylab 3: The NASA Mission Reports, and Skylab 4: The NASA Mission Reports.
Born in Sydney, Australia Dwight became an international broadcasting professional. After studying television theory at North Sydney Technical College he moved to San Diego, USA. He returned to Australia and worked in TV. Hearing about the expansion of satellite TV in Eastern Europe, he moved to work in Europe: first in Great Britain, and then in Germany – where he still works today.
