The Saturn V Story

You cannot watch this documentary without feeling the sense of pride and accomplishment that was well ahead of its time and something we can never match. My father was one of the engineers that designed and built the J1 engines that powered this program. Needless to say my entries family was brought up loving this story, I wish they could have gone into the detail that I and those directly involved with it all know. I hope that the world will be able to learn and enjoy the depth and the magnitude of the engineering marvel and accomplishment that was achieved with this magnificent series of events. The success, tragedy, and resolve of the vast teams of people that were involved in this achievement cannot be overemphasized. Co soldering what they achieved with the computing and tearing resources, along with the materials and technology available at the time is incomprehensible. It is hard to even fathom what was achieved at that time. We continually joke to say that if we tried to achieve this today with what we have available today, we would fail miserably. Not because of the ability and knowledge of the engineering community today, but because of the beauracracy and red tape that would choke the program to death. I salute the bravery and determination of the people involved in making this all happen in the timeframe that they did.

This film is an efficient telling of the space race. From Cold War tensions to massive engineering solutions, this film covers all the pertinent events and players at break neck speed. The only criticism I have of the film is that by covering so much in such a short time, the film loses focus on some of the human drama of the era. Fun film to watch.

With his thick British accent, everything the narrator says sounds wrong. Vernon von Brown? He's not even trying. It's an American story told unnecessarily poorly by a crew of non Americans.

Oh, I see! It's because in 1940 Britain was at war with the nasties, and Vernon v B was a German, so England made the American space program possible by single handedly defeating them. Hence the British narrator with marbles in his mowf. Makes sense.

Uhhm. Words words words. Need 84 more characters, and spaces don't count.

Let me tell you something: bison and buffaloes are the same thing. Both names are acceptable.

I'm a big fan of all things space but this documentary is not it. The storytelling is horrible from start to end, offering nothing new to learn or think about for anyone who's ever had a moderate interest to the subject. At least one of the speakers is insufferably pretentious and the narration adds nothing to everything that has been told elsewhere a million times already.

There are far more insightful and inspiring youtube videos out there about Saturn V and the Apollo programme that are made by total amateurs. This bland documentary cannot even come close to what all those brilliantly achieve in a few minutes.

Whomever did the sound on this did a woeful job - many points you can barely hear the commentator, the talking heads are far louder than the commentary track and some of the backgroud music is too loud or completely out of place and distracting.

A good documentary on a great topic let down by poor sound mixing!