From the Earth to the Moon (1999, VHS)

From the earth to the Moon tells the whole story of America s space program. If a person combined the first couple episodes of Earth to the Moon with Tom Wolfe s The Right Stuff, you would have a brilliant beginning. Next replace the Apollo 13 episode of ETTM with the Hank s movie Apollo 13 and then let the rest speak for itself. That would be the perfect mix.

Several of the episodes of ETTM I have watched over and over again. A particular favorite is Spider, which tells the story of the creation of the LEM vehicle by the Grumman Corporation. Matt Craven who was brilliant played the head of that project. This was a magnificent piece of film, showing every aspect of the engineering process, but having made it accessible and even loveable. The team effort and building as a team comes out clearly.

Also the episode called Is that all there is , about the moon flight of little known astronaut Al Bean was also fantastic. The interplay between Dave Foley (Al Bean), and Paul McCrane (Pete Conrad) is just great on screen magic. There is chemistry between these two teammates that goes beyond normal.

Finally the geology and rock-collecting episode is brilliant. This episode truly captured the final flights of the Apollo program and the direction that the space program might have taken had the funding continued. There is a real magic here with Brett Cullen (Dave Scott) and Tom Amandes (Jack Schmitt) and their taking the lead in truly training the astronauts to also be scientists.

Tom Hanks made the world a masterpiece it should be required watching in every US History class in America. This is brilliant work from the first episode to the last.