Mission Control: The Unsung Heroes of Apollo

2017 "No giant leap is made alone."
7.5| 1h41m| en
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At the heart of the Apollo program was the special team in Mission Control who put a man on the moon and helped create the future.

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Haviland Digital

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Reviews

ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.
Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie
Maleeha Vincent It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.
Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.
sspez While it was great to see and hear anecdotes from the actual team members inside the control rooms - real history - I just felt the whole movie was too light, too casual and missed the chance to go deeper into the Mission Control genesis, development, installation, maintenance, etc... How did the initial systems work? We are told that Chris Craft had a big hand in the software development, but it was glossed over. At one point, they mention that the first few Mercury missions were managed from ground control in Cape Caneveral from inside metal trailers and that simple "gauges" were the instrumentation in front of the controllers. The immediate film clip that follows this comment is a shot of more modern consoles with video screens. Were there no archives available of those earlier control rooms? Odd that a story about precision is delivered with simple misses like that. What about the politics that moved Mission Control from MIT and Kendall Sq in Boston to Houston? (LBJ forced that post Kennedy). What about the companies that provided these key systems and the interplay with how they were used, debugged and improved (or not) over time? Not a waste of time to watch, but left me feeling the filmmakers could have really brought some deeper research to bear.
Michael Murry I live in Houston. Hearing a story about the unsung heroes who worked behind the scene who worked in mission control was breathtaking. They tell the story of the day to day life. How most of them started and didn't have any idea what they were doing. It was a group of individuals who needed to come together and work together on separate projects to ensure the success of not only the race to space but the success of future space missions to come. The combination of real footage and interview questions to people who worked in mission control is absolutely amazing. You feel for these men, and you really feel the weight of all their decisions they had to make. As the story progress, you hear about the incredible mission success story of Apollo 13. Absolutely one of the best documentary I've seen on this topic.
Larry Silverstein This documentary, directed by David Fairhead, offers the viewer a most candid behind the scenes look at Houston's Mission Control Center during the early U.S. space program. If focuses primarily on the Apollo Program, of the 1960's and 70's, with plenty of archival footage of the times and interviews with those that manned the control room, as well as the astronauts that flew the early missions.The film includes the tragedy of Apollo 1 when 3 astronauts died in a capsule fire as they awaited liftoff at Cape Kennedy, the first manned orbit around the moon on Apollo 8, and, of course, the remarkable team effort to return Apollo 13 safely back to earth after a life threatening malfunction (you may have seen the movie).Naturally, I'm not forgetting Apollo 11, where Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the moon, setting off shock waves and awe around the world. It was fascinating for me, even though I have seen other movies on this subject over the years, to hear the intricate details of what went into each flight from the engineers, flight controllers, and astronauts that lived through every minute of it.
Sharon Brookhart I am so glad I was able to view a special presentation of this incredible film!! Growing up in the Apollo era, I was always intrigued by the men on the ground wearing headsets and staring into small TV screens, who broke into applause and hugged each other at the moment they knew the mission was successful. This film tells the story of these "Unsung Heros", mostly in their own words, and with lots of photos of them at work in that special room we know as Mission Control. It shows how they reacted to failure as well as success, and how failure served to strengthen the inherent integrity each brought to this crucial part of manned space flight. It shows how they figured out how to do their jobs in this new era of space exploration, and how important teamwork was to their endeavor. It illustrates how individual dedication works to to make the sum greater than its parts. Mission Control was, and is, a crucial part of all space flight! I am grateful to have this documentary of the special individuals that gave so much of themselves to assure the success of the Apollo Special Program!!