Mission Control: The Unsung Heroes of Apollo

source: Mission Control: The Unsung Heroes of Apollo

This is an outstanding documentary that is the perfect companion to "Apollo 11." The interviews bring a very human quality to the flight controllers as well as to the astronauts themselves. The organization, engineering and commitment made the Apollo program such a wonderous achievement. Sit back, relax and enjoy.

When a documentary is able not only to inform accurately but also to engage emotionally its audience, well that's a hell of an accomplishments... Mission Control does that as only a few other documentaries do; without slipping into nostalgia for the sake of it or cheesy celebration of the good old times, Mission Control brings us back in the heart of the action of the critical Apollo missions, from the desks of the Houston centre. Its ability to highlight the human side of such actions alongside the technological one is stunning. What particularly amazed me is how much these guys could accomplish with a technology that, compared to what we have now, it stone age...

The movie makes great use of historical footage and insightful interviews to paint a picture of the human side of the Apollo missions. A side that is easy to go overlooked and as far as I know have not been revealed before. Tough and compitent. Respect.

Amazing, just amazing. If you like documentaries, you will love this one. As a movie it was good, but as documentary fan it was as bliss

This is an actual good documentary which in my opinion is underated. Interviews with numerous engineers that worked on the apollo program as wel as archival footage mixed with VFX really give a good representation of what the missions were like and how special of an achievement the apollo missions were.

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.

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!!

I had the pleasure of seeing "Mission Control: The Unsung Heroes of Apollo" during SXSW Film 2017. I thought the documentary was well constructed, juxtaposing stills and videos from the late 1960s and early 1970s with present-day video interviews of many of the engineers who ran Mission Control at NASA. This is the kind of documentary that could easily be 10 hours, so I can understand the challenges the director faced to determine what to put in and what to leave out from the primary feature. Several of the engineers interviewed in the movie were present on stage after the screening, including John Aaron and Jerry Bostick. The documentary included interviews with Mission Control managers and engineers Dr. Christopher Kraft, Gene Kranz, Glynn Lunney, Jerry Bostick, John Aaron, Gerry Griffin, Ed Fendell, Sy Liebergot, and several others. It also had interviews with astronauts Gene Cernan and Jim Lovell. The movie begins at the dawn of the Space Race with discussions of test pilots and moves quickly to the sense of urgency created when the USSR launched Sputnik and put Yuri Gagarin into space. It covers the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs well through Apollo 13, but then summarizes Apollo 14 through present-day ISS in only a few minutes. While the stories of Apollo 1, Apollo 8, Apollo 11, Apollo 12, and certainly Apollo 13 are incredibly engaging, I would have loved to see a bit more time devoted to events after Apollo 13, and a deeper discussion from the interviewees on how they felt as the program wound down and the last few Apollo flights were canceled. Nevertheless, the documentary is really great, and strongly recommended. In a few more years, all the great leaders who made six moon landings and much more at NASA possible will no longer be with us. Think about that as you watch this, and consider supporting continued space exploration.