Man on the Moon is an opportunity to relive one of mankind's greatest achievements. Anchored by Walter Cronkite and reported by the CBS News Team that provided the original coverage of this memorable event, this seventy-five minute program consists of highlights from the nine-day Apollo 11 mission, and features and overview of the manned space program, both before and after Neil Armstrong's historic walk on the moon. As exciting as the Apollo 11 flight was, the Apollo 13 mission was even more dramatic. The chilling phrase, "Houston We Have A Problem...," abruptly changed what had begun as a routine flight, when an explosion aboard the command module rocked the ship nearly 200,000 miles from earth. The heroic efforts of the team at Mission Control, as well as those of Astronauts Jim lovell, John Swigert and Fred Haise, stand as a brilliant demonstration of human capability under almost unbearable stress. The first luanch og the Space Shuttle occurred on April 12, 1981, when the orbitor Columbia, with Astronauts John Young and Robert Crippen aboard, lifted off from Kennedy Space Center. Columbia was the world's first reusable space vehicle, and its maiden voyage heralded a new era in space exploration. The mission was a complete success, though descriptions of the solid fuel rockets used to propel the shuttle into orbit and the heat dissipating tiles that protect the orbitor upon re-entry seem eerie in light of the subsequent system failures. An added feature, the recovery of the Apollo 14 command module is recounted by an eyewitness to the event. For anyone who witnessed these landmarks of space exploration, or for those seeing them for the first time, this collection of films from CBS and NASA is an enthralling journey back into recent history.
