Apollo 8 - Leaving the Cradle

Starring:Spacecraft Films-Apollo 8
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Product Type: DVD

Description

Own a piece of history! The most complete record ever available of this historic mission. This 3-disc set - over 4 hours in all - chronicles America's first manned lunar orbit from launch to splashdown with comprehensive footage from the film and videotape records of Apollo 8. Features the TV downlink including the famous Christmas Eve broadcast, all on-board 16mm films, close-up views of the moon from lunar orbit, multi-angle views of the launch and astronaut commentaries.

Customer Reviews:

Great Archival footage -- Just not for the casual fan.......2006-02-28

This whole series from the NASA archives (and I'll review the entire series, not just the Gemini set, since they all pretty mcuh take the same approach) are fascinating only if you are serious devotee of the space program. They are in many cases virtually raw footage from the flights and include plenty of dead air, clicks and beeps and in some cases inane narration by a NASA films employee from back in the day.

Many in the series, especially the Gemini Series, include narrationless launches from different angles and distances. Over and over and over in some cases.

Still, if you want to see and hear EXACTLY what happened on these flights, without editing, interruptions by Walter Cronkite or any other distractions, they are a wonderful and important addition to your library. As a true space program fan, I found them great as pieces of history, if nothing else.

For instance, have you ever wondered what happened AFTER Neil Armstrong took his first step on the Moon? The Apollo 11 set includes film and audio for every minute of every EVA, and you can supposedly switch views from one camera to another, although I have not been able to get that function to work for me.

The Apollo 11 set is also a great companion piece to a book like "First Man," the new biography of Armstrong, which goes into minute detail of each EVA. Being able to synch that up to real footage you'd never find in a Discovery Channel, NOVA or National Geographic DVD is good stuff.

Finally, there are comprehensive post-mission interviews with the crews of these flights, usually backed by footage from the flight itself. The style of interviewing is almost quaint, with such carefully crafted answers from the astronauts, and a generally respectful press gallery. Oh the good old days...

Each set includes three well labeled DVDs that break the missions up chronologicaly. Overall, I say this is a valuable collection of history for a serious NASA afficionado, but at $35 a piece, don't expect the casual fan to enjoy it much.

Great historical document.......2005-07-21

Like all the DVD-sets from Spacecraft films, this is a first class historical document. The complete footage of the Apollo 8 flight, the first voyage of humans all the way to the moon. An event comparable only to the voyages of Columbus and Magellan and the like. Much has been said and written about the magnificent and majestic, utterly sublime earthrise that was first observed by the crew of Apollo 8 (and thanks to television, by millions of people back on earth) when they returned in their spacecraft from the far side of the moon , but you will look for it in vain on this DVD-set. Neither the TV transmissions nor the 16 mm films show this famous earthrise. I suspect that it was actually made by Apollo 10 (the famous photographs are probably from Apollo 8, but not the video). Does somebody know this for sure? Really, I have been scanning these 3 DVD's three times, but I couldn't find the famous earthrise footage (there is one on the Apollo 11 DVD set actually, but that is not the famous one).
That being said, this set is a must-have for anyone truly interested in the history of space travel! Infinitely more valuable than any documentary. Praise to spacecraft films!!!

Interesting--and amusing.......2005-03-15

I Just finished watching this set. I was 6 years old when Apollo 8 went up, and after watching much of it on TV, this mission, the first space mission I really remember, hooked me as a space junkie, at least through the rest of the Apollo series and into the early days of the space shuttle (when less captured by the mindless enthusiasm of callow youth, I began to see the shuttle as a boondoggle and dead end for NASA).

I remember as a kid waking up at all hours of the night to watch the moon walks, right up to Apollo 17, long after the rest of the nation lost interest (they always seemed to be on at 2AM or some similar hour--probably to keep from interfering with the networks's prime time schedules). But it was Apollo 8 that long lingered in my memory as the "best show"

This set has everything you'd want to see. What might add interest to it and all the others in this series is one additional disc containing highlights of the network news coverage of the missions. It might not add anything to our understanding of the missions themselves, but it would be fascinating to see how they were covered at the time and how they were received by the American public. This would give us a more pop-cultural background to the golden days of the space age.

Some of the memories such highlights might bring back are the "simulations" and "animations" that were created to show what was happening during parts of the missions that could not be covered by TV (such as the crew cabin during take-off, early orbit and re-entry, and the "blast-off" of the LEM from the moon's surface, before they came up with the idea of leaving the moon camera on, I believe during the Apollo 14 mission, so we could see the real thing.) One might also remember that early in the Apollo 12 moonwalk, one of the astronauts pointed the camera at the sun and ruined it (the camera) ending any live coverage of that EVA (dig the fancy space lingo!) and that the rest of that moonwalk was "recreated" by actors in space suits in a TV studio! For those conspiracy theorists who believe the moonwalks were "faked" by Hollywood, it would be instructive to see this again to see how a "faked" moonwalk actually looked.

What was "amusing" about this set was watching the tapes of the live video broadcasts from the command module when the Apollo 8 crew was supplied with a very early camcorder that did not even have a view finder! There was one 15 or 20 minute show that was almost completely taken up by the onerous task of getting a shot of the earth from the CM. I believe it was Frank Borman manning the camera, and since he couldn't see what he was shooting, they could never get the shot right. Houston would say "move it this way-no that way-no the other way" etc., and almost every move made things worse. Here the human race was involved in perhaps its greatest technological achievement up to that time, and the astronauts in a space ship 180,000 miles from earth had to radio back to earth to figure out whether their camera was getting a simple video shot of an item as big as the earth!

These sets are more for those space enthusiasts among us. The general public might be bored by a lot of the stuff, and if you show it to the kiddies who are too young to remember it (that means anyone under 40), they will wonder what the big deal was, not having been there at the time. That's why a bonus disk with highlights of the TV news coverage might add extra interest to an already excellent set.

A Brilliant Presentation Of A Crucial Mission.......2004-12-26

Apollo 8 was probably the most challenging of all the Apollo missions from a planning and execution point of view (short amount of planning and training time for the lunar mission, second manned Apollo flight, second Saturn V flight [and the first to be manned], no LM available for "lifeboat" contingencies, etc.), yet was utterly successful in meeting all its primary goals. By flying Apollo 8 over Christmas 1968 NASA put itself back on track to achieve Kennedy's mandate on the moon timeline.

This is another brilliant DVD from Spacecraft films. This DVD isn't a conventional documentary; rather it is a collection of all film shot on Apollo 8, as well as multiple camera angles of launch, training, and recovery events. All television broadcasts are also included, although the black and white picture quality is horrible by modern standards. (The fact that they had no monitor for the video camera onboard requiring the CAPCOM to continuously give the crew directions about where to point the camera becomes a bit distracting after a while, but that's the way it was.)

My favorite disc was disc one, and I was especially enthralled by the recovery video, particularly the audio track of the reentry as recorded by the onboard tape recorder. I had read the transcripts of the air to ground transmissions, but hearing the inter-capsule conversation in real time made the events of reentry more comprehensible for me. As an aside, I was very startled at how noisy the RCS jettison was.

This is not for the casual space buff, but serious space enthusiasts will absolutely revel in this set. I highly recommend this set, and thank Spacecraft films for producing this series.

Pure Brilliance.......2003-08-29

Many of you, like myself, probably only vaguely knew of the Apollo 8 mission from the "And God said, 'Let There Be Light'" phrase made more famous by Mike Oldfield in his music.

However, looking at this set, you quickly realise how significant the orbiting of the moon by Apollo 8 was. This was the first time humans had ever seen the far side of the moon in person, the earthrise, and realtime video (black and white) of the lunar surface.

As usual the Spacecraftfilms people got it right with all the additions from Roll-out, suit-up, multi view launch angles, onboard 16m film, all the transmissions and the spacecraft recovery. Particularly interesting was to hear the reactions of Houston as the pictures were beamed back to earth. In many ways this mission was more significant than Apollo 11, as it really gave the green light to the eventual landing. I also like that President Johnson was the one greeting them upon return. Something about a president (we'll refer to him as RN) who was not supportive of the lunar program sprouting glorious speeches in the name of the spacetravellers irks me badly.

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