@LiseL

Oh, Lise. Thank you so much for sitting with it.

I figured out a small piece of my sadness while writing it.

There is a war on.

And so much of what's written within it, or said around it, doesn't take the stakes seriously enough. Doesn't account for how much war changes us, even after all the lessons supposedly learned from wars this century alone.

We keep losing our humanity to gamified treatments of the most crucial themes.

So again--
Thank you for sitting with it.
And with me. 💙

@MLClark Re someone having to take the blame for the faux pas ...

Wernher von Braun had a practice that, if someone at Huntsville screwed up, the person wasn't fired. It was viewed as a teachable moment, an opportunity to keep someone in whom time and money had been invested.

I wish our politics worked that way.

@MLClark "Western histories of World War II are so Eurocentric that we routinely forget how many other major moral contests were more pressingly on other nations’ minds."

Yep, agree 100%. Probably because Nazis make such convenient villains in storytelling.

The same can be said of WW1. We always hear about the trench warfare, but almost never about what was going on in Africa. The colonial powers were trying to seize each others' territories at the expense of the indigenous peoples.

@MLClark Regarding memorials to causes of dubious morality ...

You may know there's been a big fuss about the "woke" movement to take down Confederate statues in the U.S. South. The pro-statue people say the monuments represent their heritage. The truth is that most of those statues were erected in the early 20th Century by the Klan and that ilk to whitewash slavery as a states' rights movement.

I still see vehicles here in Trumper Central with Confederate flags on them. 🤮

@MLClark Last thought ... After apartheid fell in South Africa, the new government created a truth and reconciliation commission. I always thought there was something of the notion of "Forgive, but never forget."

Granted, some circumstances are unforgiveable -- e.g. gassing the Jews -- but the intricacies of war are so complex that seeking vengeance after so long seems less important than enlightenment.

@WordsmithFL

Very clever choice of example, Stephen!

History contains such multitudes.

I am so terribly curious how you'll find the presentation in For All Mankind. It's quite possible the verisimilitude of the series will make any deviations from your experience all the more maddening.

How do you bear up to filmic reenactments of space flight history in general? (Not to be confused with straight documentaries.) Do you find any of them tolerable?

@MLClark "For All Mankind" is only available on Apple TV, which I don't have. Hopefully it shows up elsewhere eventually.

I think very highly of Ron Moore, his TNG roots and what he did with BSG 2.0.

That said, the premise for me is a turnoff. There's simply no way the Soviets could have landed a person on the Moon before us. They didn't have the ability, nowhere close.

They tried landing a robotic sample return mission before us, but it crashed on July 21. (1/2)

@MLClark I've seen clips here and there. I guess there are scenes where American and Soviet crew members are on the surface shooting it out?! That would be bonkers, for the obvious reason that one bullet could break a seal and kill everyone. Not to mention the physics with the recoil and whatnot.

And don't get me started on "Gravity" ... 🙄 🤨 🤬 (2/2)

@WordsmithFL

Oh, I wouldn't pay too much attention to the trailers - they pull the most dramatic facets without including the show's *very* gradual lead-up to disaster.

The reason for the "what-if" is psychological; the series is premised less on "what if the Soviets got there first?" & more on "how would the US psyche--& program--have been changed by such a public failure early on?"

It's a thought experiment into whether a little loss might have made things better (or not!) in the long run.

@MLClark I'm sure I'll see "For All Mankind" eventually.

I've been reading a lot in recent days about James Webb, the Apollo-era NASA administrator. Finishing second was not acceptable. I can't imagine the heads that would have rolled, the outrage that we'd spent about $200B in today's dollars to finish second.

We found out years later that, until 1964-5 or so, we were racing ourselves. It was only after Khrushchev was deposed that the Soviets decided they couldn't let us win without trying.

@MLClark "How do you bear up to filmic reenactments of space flight history in general?"

Hmmm ... Funny you ask that. I was thinking that today.

"The Right Stuff" and "Apollo 13" are at the top of my list. "The Right Stuff" takes many liberties with history, but gets the look and feel right. Ron Howard and Tom Hanks used NASA's "vomit comet" to film weightless scenes in 30-second bits.

"First Man" was relentlessly depressing. It had some nitpicky things wrong ... (1/2)

@MLClark The one that stood out in my mind was the scene of the Gemini 8 launch. It shows Armstrong and Scott walking across the access arm to their capsule while an Atlas launches in the background. That would never happen!

Even worse, they were using the LC-39A gantry with the VAB in the background, while in reality they were at LC-19 which was way smaller and nowhere near the VAB. Harrumph. (2/2)

@WordsmithFL

:) And I'm sure they heard all about it the moment it came out!

It takes a lot of chutzpah to make a film about such a detail-focused field, knowing the experts will be tearing into you the moment it "launches"!

(That said, almost *everything* about Gravity drove me bonkers--science & story. I only credit it for trying to humanize each station interior to highlight our shared humanity. But that's it! 😂 Gee! Female lead! Gotta give her daddy issues to explain why she's in space!)

@disk4mat

Oh, thank you for taking the time to read it, Elusive.

Nuance and complexity are things Canadians often do well, as we cultivate our mosaic in lieu of a melting pot. It's important we don't lose that strength.