Astronauts Take Us to the Moon

By Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press

Sep. 28–Last week, NASA placed ads seeking new astronauts. The hitch: none of them is likely to fly on a space shuttle, because that fleet is scheduled to be retired in 2010.

If they do get to space, it will probably be on the International Space Station — working with Russia, which as the Soviet Union was America’s main competitor in the space race.

The irony is surely felt by Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins, Jim Lovell and the other early U.S. astronauts who tell the story of the space program from its origins to the first lunar missions in "In the Shadow of the Moon."

It’s a well-timed tribute to American initiative and courage, told primarily via the personal recollections of the surviving Apollo pioneers. (Neil Armstrong declined to be interviewed.)

The filmmakers have also made judicious use of newsreel footage and NASA film of the flights and the control room, some of which had never been developed.

The space race was born of Cold War competition and paranoia. The former U.S.S.R. was the first to send a dog, then a man, beyond Earth’s atmosphere.

President John F. Kennedy pledged that the United States would send a manned mission to the moon by the end of the 1960s.

The astronauts recall their pride and purpose in being selected for the original NASA program. And the risk is made all too plain by footage of the fire in a 1967 simulated takeoff that claimed three lives.

In 1968, the CIA claimed (incorrectly) that the U.S.S.R. was close to putting a rocket in orbit around the moon. That led to the Apollo acceleration that produced Apollo 11 in 1969, when on July 21 Armstrong and Aldrin set foot on the moon while Collins orbited. It is rightfully re-created in a heart- and spirit-lifting montage.

British director David Sington maintains the drama by focusing on 10 astronauts. All are compelling storytellers, but I still got a chill from Edgar D. Mitchell’s in-flight epiphany when he realized that he and his fellow astronauts, their craft and those he loved were the product of an ancient star. They were all in it together.

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