![]() I start at chapter 15 on my daily viewing, to see the entire Apollo 11 mission. (There was no head-up display available at the time.) Aldrin reads out height, rate of descent, ground speed, and fuel state while Armstrong flies the craft manually. The backing music The Landing by Justin Horwitz starts at the moment when the command and lunar modules separate. That section includes the most amazing zero-G effects I have seen. I based the following instructions on the 2018 Universal Pictures DVD.Ĭhapter 16 starts with a view of the moon seen through a window in the command module… Twenty-four minutes to the end of the film (excluding the end titles). It is then 10 minutes to touch-down on the surface of the moon. If you see nothing else of this movie, I recommend at least watching it from chapter 16, which covers the moon landing. ![]() Similarly, the frantic looking up of the navigation computer program documentation at Mission Control when the 1202 alarm sounds is compressed. The dialog between the space crewmen and Mission Control has the several second delay between message and reply-caused by the distance between the moon and the earth-edited out. (Is the floating astronaut a stunt man suspended by wires and hauled upwards by an electric winch?) That scene is similar to the equivalent in Apollo 13 (1995) but, astonishingly, it is even more real looking in First Man. The camera follows one of the astronauts as he floats from the command module through the tunnel to the lunar module and it swings around to his upside-down comrade, who closes the connecting hatch. According to the optional voice-over by three of the people who made the film, that technique was augmented by tilting the set to disorient the viewer. I placed a link to an explanation farther down.) However, in First Man, they used trickery that included suspending objects on fine wires on which they could spin and appear to be floating in zero G. ![]() ![]() How the zero-G air lock scene in the 1968 film 2001 a Space Odyssey was achieved-before there was a vomit comet and before digital effects-is a remarkable story. (That was how it was done in the 1995 movie Apollo 13. (You might make out its cone of cavitation condensation, much smaller than that which envelops the middle of the rocket.) The silver cylinder (the service module) connecting the command module to the tapered white stage (containing the lunar lander) was full of equipment and machinery and was accessible only from outside.Īt first I assumed that the zero-G sequences inside the command and lunar modules were created by filming inside the body of a ‘vomit comet’ a converted cargo airplane flying a parabolic arc, providing a minute or so of weightlessness. The tiny white cone at upper right, beneath the long thin probe (the escape tower) is the roomy three-man command module. This still image from film shot at the time illustrates the gargantuan size of the Saturn V/Apollo moon rocket. Armstrong was a private individual and it seems likely to me that this film reveals his character in hitherto unparalleled definition. As he says in the film (in which he is played by Canadian actor Ryan Gosling) when asked about it during his selection interview for the Gemini (two-man spacecraft) program, “I think it would be unreasonable to assume that it wouldn’t have some effect.”Īrmstrong’s two sons were consulted during the making of the film, so it seems to me likely to be close to the truth, although perhaps it includes some exaggeration in places for dramatic effect. (If you are easily upset to a large extent, you might want to give this film a miss.) It cast a long shadow that affected Armstrong throughout the rest of his life, at least according to this movie. ![]() I regard myself as fairly knowledgeable about flight in general, including space flight, but this film shows, early on, an upsetting episode in the life of Neil Armstrong, commander of the first manned moon landing mission, of which I was previously unaware. From the lyrics of Rocket Man by Elton John and Bernie Taupin, 1972 Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong in ‘First Man’, 2018įirst Man, Universal Pictures, 2018, reviewed by Everard Cunion in May 2019 ![]()
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