Inside the chaotic origins of the space program.
CHASING THE MOON, a film by Robert Stone, reimagines the race to the moon for a new generation, upending much of the conventional mythology surrounding the effort. The series recasts the Space Age as a fascinating stew of scientific innovation, political calculation, media spectacle, visionary impulses and personal drama. Utilizing a visual feast of previously overlooked and lost archival material — much of which has never before been seen by the public — the film features a diverse cast of characters who played key roles in these historic events. Among those included are astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Frank Borman and Bill Anders; Sergei Khrushchev, son of the former Soviet premier and a leading Soviet rocket engineer; Poppy Northcutt, a 25-year old “mathematics whiz” who gained worldwide attention as the first woman to serve in the all-male bastion of NASA’s Mission Control; and Ed Dwight, the Air Force pilot selected by the Kennedy administration to train as America’s first black astronaut.
PART ONE: A PLACE BEYOND THE SKY begins in 1957 and tracks the early years of the space race as the United States struggles to catch up with the Soviet Union. The episode reveals breathtaking failures and successes of the nascent American space program and demonstrates the stakes and costs of reaching the moon.
Stay tuned for PARTS TWO AND THREE! Subscribe to be notified when the next episode is available:
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© 2019 WGBH Educational Foundation
00:00 Introduction: The Space Race and the Apollo 11 Moon Landing
9:12 Sputnik and the Fear of Soviet Nuclear Weapons
15:26 Wernher von Braun: The Ex-Nazi Who Built NASA’s Moon Rocket
24:08 Operation Paperclip: The Recruitment of Wernher von Braun
27:17 Disney, Collier’s Magazine, and Dreaming of Space Travel
29:57 Project Orion: Nuclear Pulse Propulsion
32:06 Sergei Korolev and the Soviet Missile Program
37:19 Project Mercury and the Mercury 7 Astronauts
41:19 The Election of 1960: Kennedy vs. Nixon
43:05 Yuri Gagarin: The First Man in Space
48:15 Racing to the Moon: The Saturn Rocket Program
50:44 Alan Shepard: America’s First Man in Space
54:25 JFK’s Historic Moonshot Speech to Congress
59:06 Cocoa Beach: Building Florida’s Space Coast
1:02:47 John Glenn: The First American to Orbit the Earth
1:05:07 Broadcasting the Space Race
1:09:06 The Newfound Celebrity of the Mercury Astronauts
1:13:49 Ed Dwight: NASA’s First Black Astronaut Candidate
1:27:01 JFK’s Rice University Speech: “We choose to go to the Moon”
1:37:27 What it’s Like Being the Wife of an Astronaut
1:40:56 Growing Delays in the Apollo Program
1:45:24 How JFK’s Assassination Cut Short His Proposal for a Joint U.S.-Soviet Moon Mission
1:51:23 Why Cape Canaveral was Renamed “Cape Kennedy”
#Space #NASA #JFK #MoonLanding #Apollo #History #Documentary
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