First Man (Neil Armstrong film)

[gotham]

Great pics, Dave. I seem to remember being woken up at an early age to come downstairs to watch something on TV - I assume it was Neil stepping onto the Moon.

[luke strawwalker]

I saw the movie and was really impressed. It's more about his life and how and why Neil became the sort of guy he was. The CGI was a bit "over the top" at times I thought. Not sure how "realistic" the X-15 stuff was... the cuts seemed rather choppy... one minute he's coming down from high altitude, the next slamming into the lakebed like a meteorite. The shaking on Gemini 8 and the spinning sequence was a bit "over done" IMHO... at one point it's like looking in a spinning washing machine, when in actuality they were up to about 1 revolution a second before he shut down the thruster system and switched to the reentry thrusters and regained control. The film looked like about 10X that speed. Dramatic license I guess.

I liked the Moon sequences. VERY nice I thought. I liked the actress that played Jan Armstrong--she gave a wonderful performance. I thought the film was pretty well cast. The Apollo 1 fire scene was pretty accurate from what I've read, save for one thing-- the closeout crew came charging back into the white room and were attempting to get the outer BPC cover off the capsule hatch before the pressure hull ruptured from the tremendous heat and pressure build up from the fire inside the cabin. They were driven back by the heat and smoke at that point, but only after some of the guys had gotten burned hands and were choking on the smoke and the intense heat was getting to them, and the closeout leader decided that perhaps they better pull back, because of the risk that the escape rocket might accidentally be triggered or accidentally lit off by the heat or flames escaping from the ruptured CM, and if it did, they would all be killed in the blast. Other than that, it was pretty realistic. Ed White was found to have been working to release the hatch bolts, Grissom was found in the position they'd trained for assisting him, and Chaffee was in his seat performing his egress duties maintaining communications; they were all doing their job to the last...

A film about Buzz WOULD be interesting. I've read most all the astronaut biographies I can get my hands on, and "First Man" was good, but long and "intensive" (rather than "dry, boring" as some might be inclined to say). Course, I've read all four volumes of "Rockets and People" by Boris Chertok, which was basically his autobiography and history of the Soviet space program, from his childhood early after the Soviet revolution in 1917 up until about 1974 or so, shortly after N-1's cancellation. THAT is a long read, as each volume is between about 400 and 600 pages, and basically it recounts every major Soviet meeting and policy discussion, investigation, and the process they went through from designing, building, and flying basically every Soviet mission from their first captured V-2's until the last N-1 flight. The pre-war information on Soviet aviation was also quite interesting, as was their relocation during WWII from soon-to-be German held territory to the Urals where Soviet industry basically moved to avoid capture. His recounting of the Soviet mission to discover and reconstruct what they could of the German rocket program after WWII and their "Institute RABE" was also very interesting, and the recounting of their efforts to woo Von Braun over... They finally settled for some of his lieutenants and moved them back to the Soviet Union for a couple years, but the Soviet government cloistered them all in a secret facility on an island in a lake north of Moscow, and only allowed limited contact with them. Basically, by the time the Russian-build version of the V-2 was flying (their "R-1"), they had learned all they could from the Germans and were surpassing them, so awhile later the Soviet government had them repatriated to East Germany. "Their Germans" played NO role in their space program after the Russian version of the V-2 was flying.

It's an amazing read, but it took me several months to get through all the books...

Later! OL J R

[aadil]

I too saw it a few days ago and it was quite impressive technically but not too engrossing as a movie. It was a bit boring in some parts but mostly well enacted by all the actors. Flashbacks from time to time were a bit distracting and not making much sense every time.

[airdave]

If you didn't care for First Man, then you need to see Armstrong.
If you liked First Man, then you definitely need to see Armstrong.

If you like Space stuff, Apollo stuff, NASA stuff, Science stuff, history stuff,
or just great stories about great men...
then you need to see Armstrong.

I liked First Man...for the most part...but Armstrong is better in many ways.

It contains stuff I never knew....stuff thats never been seen before.
And the stuff we do already know, is presented in a new and powerful way.
I was actually sitting on the edge of my seat waiting to see what was going to happen at one point!

I can't say enough about this film.
Its a Documentary...a very long documentary...but its done in a very dramatic way.
The constant narration of Armstrong's own words, and the words of his entire family,
make it extremely real and powerful.
I was moved numerous times, and thrilled the rest.

I highly recommend this one!
Buzz Aldrin will not. lol

[Paper Kosmonaut]

Hey, that seems like an interesting documentary indeed. Thanks for the recommendation, Hopefully it will be released in Europe too.

[airdave]

its streaming online through a number of sites, so maybe you can find it that way.
I think its also going into some theaters, but probably just in the US.

[Butelczynski]

I'll look it up-Thx Dave.

I'm not into documentaries but who knows,might be interesting.