Customer Reviews

Moon Race - The History of the Apollo, Vol. 1: The Eagle Has Landed - Apollo4-Apollo11

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The first set of the 2, dedicated to the Apollo Missions to the Moon falls very short in showing us something interesting indeed.

Compared for instance, with a VHS tape, released by Warner Bros, sometime earlier which was called "THE TRIBUTE", this DVD has nothing special to offer, except that for this price you get a hint of what Apollo represented in those early days.

The material included in said VHS is even better than on this DVD, although both originated from original NASA footage, and at times, represent the very same material...

One can only ask what the producer of these DVDs was thinking while compiling them...

For the first volume in the set you don't get anything that is new or at least a bit original, and as said, the quality of the transfer is shabby at best.

Buy it only if you want a cheap product of this sort.
If instead you are truly interested in the Apollo missions, at least the very first ones, then resort to dishing up more money with the Spacecraft Collection, which far more informative and complete.

Besides, even if expensive, the Spacecraft Collection offers digitally restored images and sound together with the complete mission layout and options to view various scenes from different angles and hear various commentaries of the real astronauts who participated in these missions.

It's a poor man's buy, and even then, not too justified in our day and age...

Don't buy this for $8.98 when you can buy it AND volume 2 for only a little more: Moon Race: The History of Apollo

On this disc:

Moon Race - The History of the Apollo, Volume 1: The Eagle Has Landed
* The Time of Apollo (Project Apollo overview)
* Apollo 4 (unmanned launch of the gigantic Saturn V rocket)
* Apollo 5 (unmanned launch into earth orbit and flight test of the lunar module)
* Apollo 8: Go for TLI (first manned lunar orbit)
* Apollo 9: Three to Make Ready (first manned test flight of the lunar module)
* Apollo 10: Green Light for Lunar Landing (lunar orbit and test of the operations required for lunar landing)
* Apollo 11: The Eagle Has Landed (first manned lunar landing and exploration)

This set provides a splendid overview of the early Project Apollo missions. One glaring omission is the first manned Apollo space flight, Apollo 7. I can't imagine why it was left out. There were also other unmanned test flights: Apollo 2 and 3 tested the Saturn IB rocket and Apollo 6 (like Apollo 4) tested the Saturn V. But most of all, any history of the Apollo era is incomplete without discussion of the tragic loss of the Apollo 1 crew in a launch pad fire, and the effect that accident had on the space program.

So there is room for improvement here, but this collection of public domain video preserves the view NASA had of its work at the time. This view of history-in-the-making can often be more revealing than a slickly-produced retrospective.