Spaceman
It was Sci-Fi-London last week and through a train of events that is becoming all too common I ended up watching a film that I didn’t think I wanted to and loving it. At last year’s festival it was Caro and Jeunet’s City of Lost Children (which is even more fantastic when seen projected from a 35mm print onto a nice big screen), this year it was Al Reinert’s For All Mankind – footage from the successful moon landing missions (with a few other space mission bits thrown in for continuity) edited together to look like one mission, from waiting to board the module to splashing down in the ocean, with a bit of weightlessness and playing on the moon in between. I sat with my mouth open and a tear in the corner of my eye for all of its 90 minutes and have now got a copy preordered on (rather pointless) BluRay for when the new release comes out on November 16th. It was nominated for a best documentary Oscar in 1989, beaten by Common Threads, and I see why. Incredible footage and a wonderful voiceover from the astronauts held together by a score that mixes Brian Eno with some of the music the astronauts took into space with them. It’s on YouTube if you want to have a watch:
Along with that the new Ares 1-x rocket was finally launched yesterday after some weather related pushbacks and it was a beautiful thing. A new reusable craft built to try and replace the space shuttle (although without the shuttle’s landing ability) for a chunk less cash, it’s been put together and launched in only a couple of years. The launch is now, of course, up on YouTube. The footage from flight control, unfortunately not on YouTube as far as I can see, is even better when you’ve just watched For All Mankind, where you can see how little has changed – there’s not a cigar or pipe in everybody’s mouth these days, but there’s still loads of hugging when things go right and the traditional chopping in half of the new launch director’s tie happened right on cue.
I think I want to be an astronaut again.
Random Posts
Posted: October 29th, 2009 under blog.
Tags: ares 1-x, astronaut, for all mankind
Comment from Liz
Time 29th October 2009 at 9:09 am
i am going to have to totally watch that.