Mission Control: The Unsung Heroes of Apollo (2017)

At the heart of the Apollo program was the special team in Mission Control who put a man on the moon and helped create the future.

Director:

David Fairhead

Stars:

John Aaron, Stephen Bales, Jerry Bostick

Cast

Credited cast:
John Aaron	...	(Himself)
Stephen Bales	...	(Himself) (as Steve Bales)
Jerry Bostick	...	(Himself)
James Burke	...	Himself (archive footage)
Bob Carlton	...	(Himself)
Eugene Cernan	...	(Himself) (as Gene Cernan)
Charles Duke	...	(Himself) (as Charlie Duke)
Ed Fendell	...	(Himself)
Gerry Griffin	...	Himself
Christopher Kraft	...	Himself (as Chris Kraft)
Gene Kranz	...	Himself
Sy Liebergot	...	(Himself)
Jim Lovell	...	(Himself)
Glynn Lunney	...	Himself

Storyline

At the heart of the Apollo program was the special band of brothers in Mission Control. The feature documentary film Mission Control: The Unsung Heroes of Apollo tells their stories, describing the rural homesteads and smokestack towns they came from, and the remarkable team they became. The film consists of interviews with those who worked in Mission Control and astronauts, enhanced by extraordinary archive, stunning VFX and an original orchestral score. The film covers the first journeys to the moon by Apollo 8 and Apollo 11, and the huge effort required to save the crew of Apollo 13.

---

Plot Keywords:

apollo spacecraft | national air and space administration | spaceflight | mission control | 

---

Genres:

Documentary | History

---

Certificate:

TV-PG

Details

Official Sites:

Official site

Country:

USA UK

Language:

English

Release Date:

14 March 2017 (USA)

Also Known As:

Mission Control: gli eroi sconosciuti dell'Apollo

Company Credits

Production Co:

Haviland Digital

Technical Specs

Runtime:

101 min

Color:

Color

User Reviews

Missed the mark...

While it was great to see and hear anecdotes from the actual team members inside the control rooms - real history - I just felt the whole movie was too light, too casual and missed the chance to go deeper into the Mission Control genesis, development, installation, maintenance, etc... How did the initial systems work? We are told that Chris Craft had a big hand in the software development, but it was glossed over. At one point, they mention that the first few Mercury missions were managed from ground control in Cape Caneveral from inside metal trailers and that simple "gauges" were the instrumentation in front of the controllers. The immediate film clip that follows this comment is a shot of more modern consoles with video screens. Were there no archives available of those earlier control rooms? Odd that a story about precision is delivered with simple misses like that. What about the politics that moved Mission Control from MIT and Kendall Sq in Boston to Houston? (LBJ forced that post Kennedy). What about the companies that provided these key systems and the interplay with how they were used, debugged and improved (or not) over time? Not a waste of time to watch, but left me feeling the filmmakers could have really brought some deeper research to bear.