When We Left Earth

The Discovery Channel has been offering the documentary series about NASA's manned spaceflight program, When We Left Earth, over the past week. Last night's two-hour program covered Apollo and Skylab.

Some stories need a writer to shape and present them in a dramatic fashion; others just need a writer who won't mess them up. The story of the early days of space exploration definitely fits in the latter category. Last night's episode was a good example. The story of Apollo was told largely by the astronauts who flew the missions and the flight directors who led the effort at Mission Control. It featured remarkable footage shot during the missions. One interesting tidbit told by Gene Cernan concerned Apollo 10, which was a dress rehearsal for Apollo 11. At the time, there was some speculation that Apollo 10 might actually attempt a landing, but Cernan said that would've been impossible because the fuel in the lunal module's ascent stage was shorted. Had they landed, they would not have had the fuel to lift off. Perhaps NASA hadn't wanted to tempt Cernan and mission commander Tom Stafford.

As Jim Lovell and flight director Gene Krantz say, the push to meet President Kennedy's challenge to put a man on the Moon and return him safely to the Earth before the decade of the 1960s was out shows what humans can accomplish if we put our minds to it. That example is relevant to endeavors other than exploring space.