There's also a movie on something like this, about the moon landing: "The Dish" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0205873/). Was a good movie I believe, but it's been a while.
Not OP, but apparently in the movie Interstellar a school teacher is convinced that the moon landings were faked to bankrupt the Soviet Union. I've spoken to an amateur Apollo historian/buff and I am convinced we landed on the moon in the 1960s.
At my daughter's school, they had an assembly for parents to attend that celebrated, amongst other things, the first landing on the moon.
The children boldy proclaimed that the reason the hammer and the feather hit the ground at the same time in the famous experiment was because there was less gravity on the moon.
This has turned into a discussion about First Man rather than the article, so I may as well contribute:
I think Damien Chazelle intended to frame the movie as a war movie, even toeing towards a parallel between the Apollo missions and the Vietnam War. The idea that we actively gambled with these men's lives, somehow collectively desensitized ourselves to human loss, that we are all boys pretending to have protocol- obvious parallels to war, in that a bureaucratic borg overlooks human lives in a competition the borg itself created.
But the thing is- its pretty hard to not lean into the inherent heroism of landing on the moon, especially since the studio clearly gave Chazelle a blank check to recreate the moon landing as immaculately as possible.
So its a little hard to parse the final message. The movie is the inverse of Apollo 13, pessimistic where 13 is optimistic, even though First Man is about the successful one. To some extent, Mission Control are the villains in this movie.
It isn't not going be a loved movie, like his last two (Whiplash and La La Land.) The characters are constantly aware of their mortal peril, which in turn makes them coarse and hard to like. But its such an interesting take on the Moon missions.
I was 14 years old that day and I remember sitting on our couch absolutely transfixed. The entire Apollo 11 mission remains one of the most significant event in my entire life. For those too young to have witnessed the moon landings, for a recreation of what it was like, I suggest finding a copy of HBO’s “From the Earth to the Moon”.
Watch the documentary "The Last Man on the Moon" about Gene Cernan. It spends some time on the human impact of the Apollo 1 disaster. Imagine having to tell your next door neighbor that her husband had just burned to death.
Part of me is sad that I’m too young to have seen the moon landings. But stuff like this gives me a taste of the thrill of those days. Congratulations to everybody at NASA. Thank you for this inspiring endeavor!
My favorite part of "To the Moon and Back" is when the NASA administrator is explaining to Congress that the three astronauts on board Apollo 1 died because "We weren't creative enough to imagine this could happen."
Just two days ago I watched "The Last Man on the Moon" with my son (on Netflix). Good documentary, but sad to see him pass. Those Apollo astronauts were truly remarkable people.
The moon landing was a tool to create a different emotion, though. It was to stir up some national pride and put a happy face on the rocket tech that nearly led to a total nuclear annihilation during the cold war.
I disagree with that cynicism, though. I saw Apollo 11 three times when it came out, and I still get excited when I see the sense of purpose and detail in everybody involved. It was a singular event that occurred at this conflux of technology and hubris, like Christopher Columbus' landing. It took so long for everybody to sort out their feelings on what this meant, that an entire subculture sprung up based on the idea that it was all faked by a contemporaneous sci-fi director. It's okay to appreciate those kinds of wins from time to time. And anyway the astronauts brought back a moon rock to give to the Soviets.
Same here, I was 7. Nobody was saying "did you see that fake moon landing?". It was only years later that I became aware that there were people on the fringe who thought it was faked, but I never personally met anyone with that opinion.
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