Motherboard

This classic 1970 NASA-sponsored film by Theo Kamecke chronicles not only the excitement surrounding the launch of Apollo 11, which took Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins to the moon, but aims to paint a picture of the world as it was way back in the ’60s. “It seemed that most people were unaware that this event might change the history of the human race,” intones the narrator.

The film details activities of both the astronauts and mission control during pre-launch and launch sequences, daily activities aboard the spacecraft and the moonwalk, and provides a view of the historical and cultural events of the time. The footage includes clips from science fiction television shows such as “Flash Gordon” and “Buck Rogers,” as well as a lengthy segment on American rocket pioneer Robert Goddard. The film also explores some of the critical preliminary stages of the Apollo program, including medical testing of the human body in space conditions, as well as the assembly and testing of space suits as worn by the astronauts.

As long ago as that monumental year seems, the film is a neat, mind-boggling reminder that the Apollo program was wildly ahead of its time, and even our own. “It was carried out in a technically brilliant way with risks taken … that would be inconceivable in the risk-averse world of today,” spacecraft expert Andre Balogh said last year. The Apollo programme is arguably the greatest technical achievement of mankind to date…nothing since Apollo has come close [to] the excitement that was generated by those astronauts – Armstrong, Aldrin and the 10 others who followed them."