As someone born in 1959, I grew up with the space program. I was a bit too young for Mercury but I a handful of truly vivid memories from my lifetime. One of those was Apollo 1 and another, of course, was sitting in my living room with my parents on a hot July evening in New York watching, as man first landed and then walked on the moon.
As the parent of a teenager, who has had the good fortune to be fairly well traveled, I have had the opportunity to visit a number of NASA facilities over the years with my son. We've even been to the Cape for a number of shuttle launches and landings. So I have naturally discussed what the this time period was like and the impact the Moon landings had on the US and the world. However I don't think he really had a grasp of what I was talking about until he watched this series when it originally aired on HBO.
Of course, we added the DVD Set to our collection the day it was released and it has had a workout ever since. I consider this a must for anyone with children. Not only does it do an outstanding job of giving a fairly factual account of the of the events surrounding mans voyage from the Earth to the Moon, but it also gives those who were not alive to witness it first hand a sense of the excitement, wonder, awe and worry a great portion of the world experienced in the 4 years between December 1968 and December 1972.
Unfortunately, events such as those depicted in this series are not ones we are not likely to see again in our lifetimes. Hopefully our children will. They will experience it when man finally sets foot on Mars. Perhaps this series will inspire tomorrow's engineers and astronauts to see to it that we do!
As the parent of a teenager, who has had the good fortune to be fairly well traveled, I have had the opportunity to visit a number of NASA facilities over the years with my son. We've even been to the Cape for a number of shuttle launches and landings. So I have naturally discussed what the this time period was like and the impact the Moon landings had on the US and the world. However I don't think he really had a grasp of what I was talking about until he watched this series when it originally aired on HBO.
Of course, we added the DVD Set to our collection the day it was released and it has had a workout ever since. I consider this a must for anyone with children. Not only does it do an outstanding job of giving a fairly factual account of the of the events surrounding mans voyage from the Earth to the Moon, but it also gives those who were not alive to witness it first hand a sense of the excitement, wonder, awe and worry a great portion of the world experienced in the 4 years between December 1968 and December 1972.
Unfortunately, events such as those depicted in this series are not ones we are not likely to see again in our lifetimes. Hopefully our children will. They will experience it when man finally sets foot on Mars. Perhaps this series will inspire tomorrow's engineers and astronauts to see to it that we do!