Apollo 13
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Apollo 13
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Michael
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Jan 01, 2013 01:41AM

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It also seems to confirm that humans (or Americans since we made the movie), for whatever reason, cling to tragedies in a much different way than we cling to triumphs. I mention this only because there is still no Apollo 11 movie and that triumph was the very best of the 20th century.

On the other hand, Tom Hanks followed the Apollo 13 movie up by producing a dramatic series about the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. I think it was on HBO. I haven't seen it, but I hear it's quite good.
There was also Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff, about Mercury...a great book.


"From the Earth to the Moon." Yeah, I think that's it. That's also the title of the old Jules Verne novel. By the way the original book title of "Apollo 13" was "Lost Moon", which I think is a better title.

Personnally, I loved Lost Moon. The movie was very good, but the details in the book are amazing.

Ken, have you read "Man on the Moon," the book Karla mentions? I have not but I mentioned earlier I've seen (and own) the entire mini-series.
Karla, I agree with you, I loved "Lost Moon, Apollo 13" as well. As is usually the case the details in books generally blow the movie details out of the water.
A good mission by mission books is also "Failure is not an Option." Written by Gene Kranz the former flight director. It chronicles all his missions, you don't get to really "meet" the astronauts but you do get a feeling for how mission control operates during missions.

In the Jules Verne novel, the astronauts are fired from a gigantic cannon that's sunk deep into the earth. That would of course kill everyone aboard instantly, but oh well. He did, interestingly enough, have the cannon located in Florida, same as the ultimate NASA moon mission launches.



In "Pale Blue Dot", Carl Sagan described for perspective what landing a space probe on Mars is the equivalent of. He said it's essentially the same as firing a bullet from Houston and hitting a bulls-eye in Washington D.C. Think about that for a moment and you realize the scales and incredible ingenuity we have to overcome that scale.
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