One only needs to look at the recent travails of the Boeing Starliner for evidence.
On April 11, 1970, a Saturn V rocket launched from Kennedy Space Center.
The situation was dire, and set off a frantic race tofigure out a wayto bring the crew home.
A new documentary doesn’t just tell the story of Apollo 13, but finds parallels between the mission and the perils we face on Earth.© NASA
It wasnt the disaster that came to define Apollo 13.
Despite its iconic status, Middleton said he was surprised at how little younger generations knew about the mission.
Many hadnt even seen the 1995 blockbuster, in which Tom Hanks starred as Lovell.
Despite the familys involvement, the film does not contain any new interviews with anyone involved with the mission.
Instead, Middleton opted to use only previously recorded clips.
We really wanted to situate the audience in that sense of kind of unfolding drama, he said.
Whats often lost is the context in which the mission took place.
The Vietnam War was raging.
The Cold War had reached a period of detente, but the threat of nuclear annihilation remained.
Despite being imperiled hundreds of thousands of miles from their home planet, the astronauts were hardly alone.
Five days after Apollo 13s astronauts splashed down, the planet celebrated the first ever Earth Day.
Theres a beautiful quote that we fixated on from Jack Swigert, the command module pilot, said Middleton.
He talks about this idea that, for a brief moment in time, the whole world was together.
They werent three American astronauts stuck out in space.
They were three human beings, the furthest ambassadors of the human race.
Offers of help came in from all over the globe to try and get them home safely.
It was one of those rare moments, those real moments that remind us about common humanity.
I think thats why the mission and the flight and that crisis endures more than 50 years later.
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Get your finest dark clothing and all your creepy things, part one ofWednesdayseason two is dropping in August.
