8 Days: To the Moon and Back

This is a beautyful documentary of the Apollo 11 mission. Really gives the feeling of the desolation in space. The soundtrack is out of this world. Better than all other documentarys ive seen. Including "apollo 11"

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. 8 Days: To the Moon and Back recreated the events with the audio tapes, some lookalike actors in a recreation of the capsule which was mixed with historical footage.

The documentary had no narration. You relied on captions which gives some factual information as well as footage of the television coverage fronted by Walter Cronkite. The US network's coverage was sponsored by Kellogs on the day of the launch.

In the build up to the launch, the three astronauts had been constantly paraded on tv and the press. They must have been the most interviewed people in America, giving the same bland answers to the same questions. No wonder Armstrong eventually withdrew from the limelight.

Neil Armstrong was the most inexperienced of the three astronauts in terms of actual time spent in space. It showed when he mentioned his excitement of the prospect of seeing the sunrise from space. Buzz Aldrin was expecting to be the first man to walk on the surface of the moon but NASA had other ideas.

What came out of this documentary was just how much seat of the pants the mission was when it reached its critical stages as the lunar module approached its moon's orbit. The module overshot its planned landing site. A warning light came on and nobody knew what it meant. When a switch broke during take off from the moon, Aldrin improvised by using a pen while NASA boffins searched for an answer.

The three astronauts had a sense of calm and practicality throughout the mission.

After 50 years you would have thought there was little new to say about the first moon landing. This documentary proved me wrong as it provided new insights.

The moon landings remain a remarkable chapter in the human story, when mankind threw incredible resources, ingenuity and courage into a venture into a place from which there was no prospect of rescue should that commitment prove to be inadequate. Audio recordings exist from most of the first succesful mission, and also film from that trip; by splicing in some dramatic reconstruction of the astronauts themselves (mostly immobile in their tiny spaceship) this film gets its audience as close as is possible to having actually been there themselves. And pointless as some say the voyage was, there's no getting away from the fact that even in fascimile, it still feels awesome. We may never get to Mars; but a few men stood on the moon, and that's pretty cool.

By a long long way, this is the best dramatized version of the Apollo 11 journey yet made. Much more inclusive to the viewer than the introspective First Man. Not giving anything away but every word spoken by the actors are from actual recordings, many when out of earshot of NASA. The special effects are truly mesmerizing. I couldn't recommend this more highly

Very good presentation. However I must protest that in all their Mission Control clips I didn't see one that showed Poppy Northcutt, the 25 year old NASA engineer in charge of the return trip from the moon. Major sexism here.