NEW YORK -- The story of man's insatiable quest for the unknown is told with historic film and interviews with astronauts and 'Right Stuff' author Tom Wolfe in PBS's 'The Greatest Adventure: The Story of Man's Voyage to the Moon.'
Narrated by Orson Welles, the documentary traces the history of the American space program from Robert Goddard's invention of the first liquid fuel rocket to Apollo 11's landing on the moon on July 16, 1969.
The program airs Wednesday, Aug. 22, 10:20-11:10 p.m. EDT (consult local listings).
The film opens with footage of President Kennedy's famous speech informing the world that America was taking up the Russians' gauntlet and the race for space was on.
'I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal before this decade is out of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth,' Kennedy said.
America's first astronauts had already been chosen by 1958, and there is plenty of nostalgic film footage of those instant national heroes, who were compared by the media to the Wright brothers, Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan and Daniel Boone -- all to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's sheer delight.
All of the first seven Mercury astronauts were test pilots and had been known as the 'fighter jocks' during the war in Korea.
Wolfe, whose book is a biography of the first astronauts and their fellow test pilots, defines 'the right stuff,' which he believes a good test pilot must have.
'Any fool can risk his life,' Wolfe says. 'You have to have the moxie to hang it over the edge and bring it back, time and time again.'
After a couple of astro-chimps went up in the Mercury rockets, Alan Shepard was selected to ride in the first American manned space flight - Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin beat him into space by almost a month.
Shepard's flight lasted 17 minutes.
Then John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth in a space ship and, due to technical problems, he also had to land manually - the lab rabbit becomes a pilot again.
The documentary focuses on the social problems that were going on back on earth, but despite the racial unrest, poverty and an unpopular war, we see Americans gathering around their televisions and portable radios, waiting to hear from the astronauts as they get closer and closer to the moon.
Even the Rev. Ralph Abernathy is overcome with emotion when the civil rights leader takes time out of his protests to watch a launch at Cape Canaveral.
The space program of the 1960s did touch a common thread among Americans that pulled them together -- but only temporarily. Finally, the cost of the program became the target of widespread criticism.
Astronaut Edgar Mitchell firmly supports the costs.
'To solve certain mundane problems at the sacrifice of man's quest of the unknown is sheer folly.'
The NASA footage shown in the documentary is breathtaking and when you see Apollo Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin plant the stars and stripes on the moon, be prepared for a tingle.
