Originally, Shepard's crew was scheduled for the ill-fated Apollo XIII with Lovell, Mattingly and Haise scheduled for Apollo XIV. The crews were switched so that Shepard would have more time to catch up. This was done because it was important to the NASA brass that one of the Mercury Seven make it to the moon. Ironically, because Apollo XIII never landed on the moon, Shepard's crew carried out the same mission that they would have if they had been on Apollo XIII.
At one point Shepard makes a dismissive remark regarding a statement by Gordon Cooper. Cooper, who had been one of the Mercury Seven, was the commander of the Apollo X backup crew and had a shot at commanding a moon mission, but his seat-of-the-pants test pilot attitude, his weak performance as Apollo commander, his earlier laziness regarding Gemini V training, and his longstanding conflicts with NASA brass, led to his being removed from the rotation and he resigned not long afterwards. This attitude was a notable aspect of Dennis Quaid's portrayal of Cooper in L'étoffe des héros (1983).
The television interview of Alan Shepard was conducted by Jules Bergman, who the actor playing him ( Andrew Rubin ) greatly resembles. Bergman was the science editor for ABC News, appointed to that position in 1961, concurrent with the arrival of the Mercury and Russian Vostok programs. He continued in this capacity through the Gemini and Apollo programs, as well as Skylab and the Apollo/Soyuz mission. Among other things, in order to more closely identify with the astronauts, he also participated in their training programs.
In the second episode of this miniseries, "Apollo I", senator Mondale of the Aeronautical and Space Sciences Committee is described as having a memo from Apollo program director Sam Phillips that was critical of North American Aviation for their quality control (a memo that was not pertinent to the Apollo I fire). It was Jules Bergman who turned up this memo.
Rubin's appearance in From the Earth to the Moon was his last performance.
In the second episode of this miniseries, "Apollo I", senator Mondale of the Aeronautical and Space Sciences Committee is described as having a memo from Apollo program director Sam Phillips that was critical of North American Aviation for their quality control (a memo that was not pertinent to the Apollo I fire). It was Jules Bergman who turned up this memo.
Rubin's appearance in From the Earth to the Moon was his last performance.
The derrick shown is not an oil derrick (which is used for drilling the hole, then is moved to the next drill site) but a "workover rig", which is used for cleaning out accumulations of paraffin and other gunk from an existing pumping site. The roughnecks are shown to be dirty and, while workover work is extremely dirty, it is not as much about being covered in mud as much as being covered in petroleum. It is so bad, in fact, that public laundries in oil towns post signs specifically prohibiting roughnecks from putting oil-covered work clothes in their machines. Often, the inside of clothes dryers are covered in tar.
Alan Shepard, who was 47 when he commanded Apollo XIV, was America's first man in space and is described in the story as being America's oldest astronaut. He is also compared with America's third man in space, John Glenn. Interestingly, Glenn, whose last flight was his Mercury flight, flew again many years later. At the age of 77 he was a crew member of shuttle mission STS-95, which then paralleled Shepard's comeback, albeit some thirty years older.