Essential Space Travel Documentaries

Much of what I know about space exploration has at least had its inspiration in the various documentaries and TV programs I've watched over the years. Of course, one has to go further and actually read the books upon which a lot of these are based, but if you are (like me) a bit lazy, these are the essential, accurate and enjoyable films about human space travel.

Core Curriculum

For All Mankind (Reinert, 1989)

The original “wow” Apollo documentary from 1989 sets the tone for the modern incarnation of a space flight film. What made it special was that it was the first movie to really present the footage shot on the Apollo (and Gemini) missions in beautiful, speed-corrected, motion-stabilized large-format film. Director Al Reinert (a magazine writer originally) encourages us to simply regard much of this material and contemplate its beauty and magnificence. There’s no narration, and instead the soundtrack is compiled from hours of interviews with the astronauts, some of who are ruminating for the first time on the spiritual significance of their experience. But above all, the selling point of this film is the music, by Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. If it seems familiar, it’s because hundreds of shows over the years have re-used bits of it to milk some of its haunting, lyrical quality. The associated album, Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks, is a must-hear for anyone interested in ambient music.

In The Shadow of the Moon (Sington, 2008)

This covers much the same grounds as For All Mankind, but seen through British eyes (this is a UK documentary), it comes out as less “lump in the throat/hand on the heart” grandstanding and more of cool, human professionals having the adventure of their lives. Interviews with the astronauts as old men are tremendously affecting, and the film takes time to explore what they’ve done with their lives after the moon. (Some may surprise you.) It even finds time at the end to address this ridiculous and insulting “moon landing hoax” nonsense.

When We Left Earth (Discovery Channel 2008)

The NASA-approved history, complete with pounding, soaring patriotic music and sonorous voice-over. What lifts this series above the pack is the beautifully re-mastered high definition images of the space missions (these images have never looked better) and some current interviews with the astronauts left out of In the Shadow of the Moon. It’s also expansive in a way the others aren’t. This film tells the whole story, from Mercury through to the ISS, although it gets the future wrong by parroting the Project Constellation line, a forgivable offense for the time.

“Space Shuttle Disaster” (PBS NOVA 2009)

Honest, frank and not at all NASA-approved, this one-hour NOVA episode is really all you need to hear about the Space Shuttle. Pay close attention to Story Musgrave, one of my favourite astronauts, and one of the most outspoken.

Advanced Study

Moonwalk One

If you’re into retro-documentaries, this is a good one. Epitomizing everything about a certain kind of film in 1969, this is slightly pretentious, arty, self-aware, thunder-voiced documentary at its best. (It starts with a shot of Stonehenge and proceeds to ruminate on the significance of the moon. Yes, it’s that kind of film.) But, it does have “first day” priority, in the sense that it was made at the time of Apollo 11 and to be fair, the filmmaker was told to make it a “time capsule” of everything about the Apollo experience as it was happening.  Much of what was shot for this film was re-used in For All Mankind to different effect.

“Moon Machines” Series (Science Channel 2008)

If you’d like to go deeper into the engineering and manufacturing side of Apollo, here’s your chance. Some of these men (and women) have funny, dramatic and moving stories tell about building the engines, the capsules, the clothing, the computers and all the other equipment that got Apollo to the moon. Think of it as the “inside out” version of NASA history, from the perspective of people who have probably never been asked about it before.

The Red Stuff (De Boer 2000)

A Dutch documentary about the Soviet space program does some of what In the Shadow of the Moon does for that part of space history. You get interviews with many of the important surviving cosmonauts (including a gregarious Pavel Popovich and a tough, unrepentant Gherman Titov), but little real sense of the history of the program. For otherwise informed viewers, this isn’t a problem, but for the uninitiated there will probably be some confusion.

“The Russian Right Stuff” (PBS NOVA 1991)

Made just as the Soviet Union was collapsing in the 1989-1990, this is a key bit of space history that’s fallen out of print. (I have an old video tape from 1991 which has my own off-air copy of it.) Narrated by Sgt Stedenko himself, Stacey Keach, this three-part series is largely based on James Oberg’s Red Star in Orbit, revised with new information that came to light after the fall of the Soviet Union. It features Alexi Leonov prominently and follows him through his major post-space activity: designing and running the definitive cosmonaut school in Star City, Russia. (Though Leonov has since moved on, the school is running strong and even training the recent crop of space tourists.) It also features the late Vasili Mishin, whose recollections of the disastrous Russian moon program of the 1960s and 1970s form the key narrative of the middle episode, “The Dark Side of the Moon”.  This film is part of my basic understanding of manned space history, although we know much more now and in retrospect. (For example, Mishin and Leonov are both biased, unreliable historical witnesses, and we now have detailed records of the then-mysterious N1 moon rocket.)

“Astrospies” (PBS NOVA 2008)

This recent NOVA episode was a bit of a revelation for me, as I always knew about the MOL (Manned Orbiting Laboratory) program and the Almaz program, but I never put the two together. Much of what’s presented here about these military space stations is newly declassified and quite fascinating, especially to hear from the astronauts and cosmonauts who trained for, and, in the case of the cosmonauts, flew these missions of space espionage. In fact, plans called for much more than espionage, and the Soviet station even featured a machine gun, which was indeed fired in space, a rather “mixed” space legacy to say the least!

Your Vacation: Space Travel Destinations

If you're planning a summer vacation, these destinations won't steer you too wrong. (Although, the international space station is a bit of a stretch on your budget.)

I visited the Kennedy Space Centre when I was 9 years old (even then I wondered where the shuttle went). One of my main memories of that trip is seeing a guy in a space suit, walking around the centre, posing for photos. Now, looking back, I'm sure that fellow was secretly saying, "I've been wearing a diaper all day - this job sucks!"

Click here for the 11 coolest space travel destinations this year.

Obama Calls the Astronauts

As part of the activities around STS-135 (the last shuttle mission), President Obama called the space station today to re-affirm America's role in space. You can read the whole story on Space.com right here.

American Presidents are always caught between a rock and hard place with regards to the space program. Most of what any President promises in his (or someday her) term won't be realized until long after they're out of office, when it comes to space. That makes any space-related initiatives or long-term missions not particularly valuable politically.

Every now and then you get a leader like Kennedy (or, in my home country of Canada, someone like Trudeau or MacDonald) will dream beyond the immediate future and spend some of their political capital on big, visionary challenges for their nation. In other words, space requires political courage.

Both Democrats and Republicans have alternatively supported and withdrawn support for space exploration. It doesn't seem to me to be a left-right political issue, but more an issue of political expediency. Presidents love coming out with big visions for space (Bush the first did it, Bush the second did it), but then the next president comes along and pulls the plug. They always claim to have their reasons, but it's like trying to drive from Montreal to Vancouver, changing drivers, routes and cars every two hours, and having a debate about whether you should make the trip at all.

Democracy can be frustrating sometimes for large programs with little political return. Maybe that's one of the reasons why the Soviets (and now the Chinese) did so well.

Dragon in Space

Here's another invaluable space link, Dragon in Space, a look at the Chinese space efforts. It's not linked to the Chinese government (actually an offshoot of a UK website), and it has news on China's ambitious 2011 space schedule.

Space Cartoon of the Day/Week/Month/Whenever I Find One

This is a brilliant bit of penetrating satire that speaks exactly to my earlier post on the space shuttle.

(One objection I'd make is to point out that the Chinese wouldn't be silly enough to invest in a shuttle system with nothing to shuttle to. And no one in their right mind would use the shuttle design again. Notice how no one is?)




Enjoy!

James Webb and Telescopes

This morning I noticed this story over at Space.com:

Scientists Condemn Plans to Scrap Hubble Telescope Successor | James Webb Space Telescope | NASA Budget & Congress | Space.com

The James Webb Space Telescope is expensive, absolutely, and it's over budget and behind schedule, just like Hubble was. In fact, does anyone remember how much trouble Hubble was? Three shuttle missions, millions of dollars and countless hours of hair-pulling on the part of the scientists who designed it and all we got was a look into the deepest regions of space and the origin of the universe.

It all makes me sigh wearily, because this is a problem that the space program has faced since it's earliest days: funding. It really reminds me of my "other life" as a film historian, because so much of that history consists of people begging for money, slapping backs and making compromises to get the job done.

The analogy is even more apt when you consider that the public's attitude to both activities is more or less the same: pretty, but unnecessary. The fact is that visionaries have a hard time getting businesspeople and politicians to invest in their dreams, particularly when there's no obvious commercial aspect to them. I will always argue strongly that every penny spent on the space program is worth it for what it contributes to the development of our species. But that's not a fashionable opinion, nor does it win the day in Congress.

The irony of this whole situation is that the telescope in question is named after James Webb, the administrator of NASA from 1961 to 1968. Webb is described in Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff as an "off the ballot politician". Documentary footage of him show is a jowly bulldog of a man with slicked back hair looking like Jimmy Hoffa. His reputation is that of an old-fashioned, pre-Kennedy political operator. He was a dealmaker, a lobbyist. He knew what hands to shake and what backs to slap to remind a typically amnesiac Congress that they agreed to send men to the moon by the end of the decade. He also, in Andrew Chaykin's words from his A Man on the Moon, "knew where the political bodies were buried".

In other words, James Webb would be just the man to save the telescope that carries his name.

It's a stark reminder that in space exploration (like in film), you need creative, daring people who doggedly pursue their dreams, but you also need fast-talking powerful friends (in a film this would be a sympathetic producer) like James Webb to make sure things happen. Otherwise, in the words of filmmaker James Cameron, the "nattering nabobs of negativity" will win the day.

Essential Space Links

If you're crawling through the internet looking for some reliable information about space, it's easy to get lost. Without resorting to wikipedia (which isn't bad for a quick reference), here are some sites I use.

Encyclopedia Astronautica - Extremely comprehensive site with everything you'd want to know about space history. (NOTE: This site has just been taken down by its publisher. That's a real shame, and a great loss.)

NASA History Publications - You can find complete books here (in pdf or html format), including Asif Siddiqi's essential "Challenge to Apollo", a history of the Soviet space program in the 1960s.

James Oberg's Pioneering Space - Thoughtful, informed information from an acknowledged expert.

Space.com - For all the latest news and some useful links to boot.

Obituary for a Space Shuttle

The Space Shuttle, which retires next week from active duty, was a remarkable vehicle in the history of space exploration. There wasn’t anything before quite like it (except Air Force projects like the X-15) and there may not be anything like it again for some time. It’s pretty to look at, seems slick, and NASA tried its best to sell the hell out of it for the past 30 years.

But it wasn’t enough. I remain unconvinced that the shuttle was a good thing for the space program, and celebrate its retirement. Now free of the boondoggle that the shuttle became, NASA can move ahead with the program it planned in the early 1970s and explore the solar system like we always wanted. That’s worth celebrating.

As for the shuttle, it seems to me that it will go down in history as a monument to the lack of vision and leadership on space encountered by NASA in the wake of the Apollo program. Pretty much right after the first moon landing in 1969, the US government started dropping the ball on space in a big way. It has continued to do so to the present day.

How We Got Here

The shuttle was designed as part of a large array of space systems proposed to the US government in the early 1970s. These included a plan for building a moon base, a trip to Mars, and most importantly a series of increasingly large and complex space stations in earth orbit that were the foundation of everything that would come after. The shuttle was proposed as a cheaper, faster, more effective way to transport humans and materials to and from the space station complexes.

President Richard Nixon didn’t exactly understand the space program. Not a dreamer like his arch-rival, John F Kennedy, Nixon viewed the most important part of the program as providing America with “heroes”. Preferably on the cheap. He certainly lapped up the political capital that came along with Apollo 11 in 1969 and he must have reveled in “beating” the Soviet Union to that arbitrary technological goal. But almost immediately afterwards, in early 1970, the rest of the American space program started to fall apart, due to truly pernicious accounting on the government’s part.

First to go was the MOL, or Manned Orbiting Laboratory program. The first of many space stations, this Air Force space program was actually a cover for an extensive series of military space objectives, first of which was surveillance but later plans called for satellite retrieval and even space warfare. The astronauts who had been training for ten years, and were only months away from making their first flight, were mostly reassigned to the shuttle and Skylab programs.

Then the Apollo cuts came. First Apollo 20, conceived as the grand finale of the first generation of moon exploration, with a landing on the far, or “dark”, side of the moon and a small one-man exploration pod was cancelled, supposedly to free up its rocket for the Skylab program. (*) Soon after, Apollo 18 and 19 were cancelled. The insane thing about these cuts is that the hardware was already bought and paid for. The astronauts were already employed and continued to be. The training facilities were in place. The flights were ready to fly. The only money saved by cancelling them was the operational budget for the flights, a small fraction of what the program had cost up to this point. The best analogy I’ve heard is buying a Porsche and leaving it in the garage because you’re too cheap to pay for gas.

Then the rest of the systems came under fire. In this context, the final Apollo missions, 13-17, were somewhat of an unceremonious limp to the finish line, gliding on the momentum of the “space race” to a sad finish in 1972. (*)

The Orphan Shuttle

The only part of NASA long-term manned space program that was approved by Nixon was the shuttle. It made no sense: the shuttle was a piece of a larger program, the key component of which was the space station. The Soviets understood this and made space stations the central component of their space program from the 1970s until now. But NASA was left with a car and nowhere to drive it to.

Then came the design compromises.

First to go was the concept of 100% reusability. This was supposedly one of the main positive aspects of the shuttle: its economics. The idea was that by reusing the whole thing every time, the per-launch cost would be greatly decreased and the vehicle could attract commercial customers looking to launch their satellites. Budget cuts forced the designers to make the large external fuel tank a single-use object, and this led to other design compromises regarding the heat shield that, in February 2003, killed seven astronauts on the Columbia.

Even with design compromises, the shuttle was an orphan. A “Space Transportation System” (STS) with no destination, the shuttle had to accommodate a number of mission objectives that it was never originally meant to serve. It now had to be able to do enough work in space on its own to justify its existence. But at least it was partially reusable, which meant it was cheaper than throwing away 80% of your spacecraft every time you launched, right?

Wrong. The shuttle was actually more expensive than some space systems, and certainly not less than an Apollo or Soyuz-style capsule system for transporting people and equipment to space. One of the reasons for this lay in those old design flaws. Re-entry and orbit did so much damage to the vehicle that it took teams of repair crews and millions of dollars to process a returning shuttle for another mission. There were certain things only the shuttle could do, like launch and later repair the Hubble space telescope, but really it was a high-tech piece of showmanship. It was NASA’s way of saying “we’re going into the cosmos”, when in fact they were going up into low earth orbit for two weeks and coming back. That mission objective was accomplished in 1965.

So, it wasn’t cheaper, it wasn’t entirely reusable, and it really didn’t open up anything new in low earth orbit operations. If that wasn’t enough, the safety record of this vehicle is atrocious: the worst of any space vehicle in history, in fact.

The Competition

For some perspective, let’s consider a hypothetical situation. Suppose the Russians developed a new kind of space transportation system in the 1980s and within a decade the ship had exploded on launch with no escape system killing seven cosmonauts. The US media would have been all over that Russian space “disaster” and criticizing them for putting mission objectives over human lives. Which is, of course, exactly what NASA and the US government were doing. Consider that just a few years later the same ship, still in operation, broke up in orbit again killing all seven cosmonauts. Aside from any politics, at some point you have to ask yourself the question: would you want to ride in that spacecraft? I wouldn’t.

Now consider the Soyuz. The Russian Soyuz system, originally designed under the genius Sergei Korolev, first launched in 1967. That first mission was a disaster, killing the single cosmonaut on board. In 1971, the Soyuz again malfunctioned on de-orbit and killed the three cosmonauts on board. But from that day to this, no one has been killed flying on a Soyuz. The Soyuz has blown up on the pad, just like Challenger, and the crew was saved by an escape system the shuttle lacks. The Soyuz has landed on its side, has malfunctioned in orbit and only recently became a digital spacecraft. All of those things might cause an ignorant westerner to snicker until they consider the hard facts: for over forty years, and especially since some major redesigns in the late 1970s, the Soyuz has gotten the job done, and done well and done safely. It’s had a destination (a series of Almaz and Salyut stations, and later Mir and the ISS) and a narrow range of mission objectives that have allowed it to rack up an impressive list of successes.

For the next few years, the Soyuz will be the only spacecraft available to carry crews to and from the ISS.

(The Chinese Shenzhou spacecraft is based on the Soyuz design and actually makes some significant improvements to it. In several ways, they have the best space program going at the moment.)

 From Here

We’re entering a new era now, when the whole organization of space technological systems is being revised dramatically. Essentially, NASA is getting out of the orbital business and into space exploration again. That’s a good thing, in my opinion, because it brings out the best and most noble of our instincts as a species to explore and try to understand the universe. In earth orbit, on the other hand, it’s going to be all about commerce and innovation.

NASA itself has been tasked to design a spacecraft for exploring objects in the solar system outside of near-earth orbit. So, we can expect an international mission to an asteroid, to Mars and perhaps back to the moon, in the next 20 years or so. (That is, assuming the politicians don’t change their minds again.) They’ll use a spacecraft unimaginatively named the “Multi Purpose Crew Vehicle”, which is essentially the same design as the Orion spacecraft, cancelled by President Obama along with the rest of the Bush’s Constellation program. It was described back in the Bush years as “Apollo on steroids”, but really it’s Apollo for the 21^st Century, and a natural progression upon generations of older spacecraft. We really should have had an Orion-type spacecraft somewhere in the late 1970s and we would have, had NASA not gotten caught up with the shuttle to nowhere. Better late than never, I suppose.

(Don’t count out the Chinese, who are boasting about their own space station and moon project. It’s entirely possible that the next person on the moon will be Chinese. You can say, “Been there, done that,” at your own peril when you consider that your own nation hasn’t been able to “do it” for a while and is just now learning how to “go there” again.)

Meanwhile, here in earth orbit, big changes are afoot, such as the spacecraft that will do what the space shuttle was always intended to do: move people to and from the space station. At the moment, the Russians hold the only tickets in town (and at $50 million per seat, it’s not cheap), but there are several American companies like SpaceX that will have some sort of ferry ready before too many years pass. Other companies like Bigelow Aerospace have plans for innovative, private space stations that can be serviced by private ferries. Bigelow’s stations are based on a creative inflatable design that gives lots of living space for very little mass, and could easily be affordable to private scientists or even artists. One should also never count out Virgin’s Sir Richard Branson in his efforts to make space travel just another form of extreme sport.

Much of the money for this innovation is still coming from government grants but the boasts made by NASA in the early 1980s about what the shuttle would bring (cheap, reliable, routine access to space) are about to come true. There’s the last irony: just as the shuttle heads off to become a museum curiosity, the technological and political conditions for its existence have finally come to pass. Instead of too little, too late it was more like too much, too soon. 

(Sidebar: If things had gone as planned, Apollo 20 may have landed on the dark side of the moon in the same year Pink Floyd recorded the classic album. Damn, Nixon. You harshed my buzz again.)

(Small sidebar: Nixon actually liked what happened on the near-disaster of Apollo 13 because it produced what he thought was the most important product of the space program: conservative American heroes.)