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Tag: Neil Armstrong

  • The First Rom-Com to Spring From One of the Ultimate Conspiracy Theories: Fly Me to the Moon

    The First Rom-Com to Spring From One of the Ultimate Conspiracy Theories: Fly Me to the Moon

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    As more and more movies seem to be returning to the past as a means to avoid how conflict-free a script can become thanks to modern technology, Fly Me to the Moon is among the latest to join the ranks of recent “period pieces”—which, technically, even extends to a movie like Longlegs. The Rose Gilroy-written film goes slightly further back than the latter though, taking audiences to 1969, in the months leading up to the hype and anticipation of surrounding the moon landing.

    In Gilroy’s narrative (directed by Greg Berlanti), all the buildup and excitement are a result of Kelly Jones’ (Scarlett Johansson) sudden involvement, tapped by a shadowy government operative named Moe Berkus (Woody Harrelson) to work the previously nonexistent “PR angle” of the project. After all, the U.S. was in a dark time (as usual), with constantly-playing, harrowing images from the Vietnam War on the news, in addition to the rash of assassinations and protests turned violent by police subjugation.

    It’s with this in mind that Jones, a “shark” of an ad agency “man,” views the moon landing as an opportunity to refocus the public’s attention on something more positive. To see, once again, the “promise” of America and its potential (sort of like Beyoncé with her Olympics commercial). Not to mention reminding various Congress members that there was once a time when John F. Kennedy’s “greatest wish” (apart from fucking as many women as possible) was also theirs—as opposed to a bane to their other, more pressing budgetary concerns. Of course, it’s easy to support a lofty goal when it’s hot off the presses of relating to a collective American fear: “losing” to the Russians (a.k.a. letting communists dominate the Space Race). A peak concern (not that it still isn’t) during this period in U.S. history, when the Cold War incited manifold actions that were often dubious in nature.

    As for Kelly, she’s been described as a Don Draper type (call her Don Draper with a pussy instead of a pair) mixed with a dash of Frank Abagnale Jr. (as rendered by Leonardo DiCaprio in Catch Me If You Can). Gilroy (who, yes, is related to the writer Gilroys, Dan [her father], Tony [her uncle] and Frank D. [her grandfather]—in addition to being the daughter of Rene Russo) herself told The Hollywood Reporter, “Don Draper was absolutely a part of the conversation. Leo’s character in Catch Me If You Can was another character in the conversation. So Don Draper was totally an inspiration, and that scene of Kelly with the belly was actually in the first fifteen pages that I wrote on spec to win the job.”

    Kelly’s inherent conning abilities aren’t entirely her fault, of course. In addition to the expected traumatic backstory, being a woman with ambition at that time meant having to play a bit of “hardball” (or “give ’em blue balls,” in her case). In short, acting the way men do all the time, but with far more subtlety about it. Well, sort of.

    If you asked Cole Davis (Channing Tatum), the launch director for Apollo 11 at Kennedy Space Center, he wouldn’t say Kelly was subtle at all. In fact, he’d probably say she was about as subtle as a rocket launch. But before he finds out that she’s the “PR girl” from New York, Kelly very nearly launches his rocket when they first meet at Wolfie’s Restaurant—an institution on the Cocoa Beach scene. The two have a quintessential meet-cute (befitting of the era that Fly Me to the Moon is set in) involving Kelly setting her notebook on fire without being aware of it.

    Because the two already shared a flirtatious glance, when Cole approaches to tell her, “Uh, Miss, you’re on fire,” she replies, “Very original. No, I do not wanna stop, drop and roll with you.” But of course she does. And Cole himself makes no secret about being attracted to her, confessing as much before saying that despite this, he can’t pursue such feelings. He then leaves Wolfie’s, assuming he’ll never run into her again. Naturally, what makes a complete, truly effective meet-cute is a case of mistaken or unknown identity. Hence, when Kelly walks into Kennedy Space Center soon after their initial meeting, Cole is suddenly much less charmed (even though one can imagine Kelly wielding the Gracie Hart [Sandra Bullock] taunt, “You think I’m gorgeous, you want to kiss me, you want to hug me”).

    With the crux of the film’s “chutzpah” coming from the way they increasingly butt heads, by the end of the second act, that shtick gives way to a different “problem” angle for the film: Moe tasks Kelly with creating a fake version of the moon landing (and yes, Stanley Kubrick is alluded to as a potential director) in case things don’t quite work out with the real deal (a faulty transmission, etc.). Obviously, this is only going to contribute to the pile of lies she’s told to Cole, therefore making it even harder for him to accept her when the truth comes out (sort of like Josie Geller [Drew Barrymore] with Sam Coulson [Michael Vartan] in Never Been Kissed).

    Eventually, her conscience gets the better of her, and she decides to confess what’s going on to Cole after she’s already gotten a diva-rific director, Lance Vespertine (Jim Rash), from her former agency to create the footage. The reaction is as expected, with the usual third-act waiting period for Cole to finally come around. But Fly Me to the Moon, in the end, isn’t as much about a budding romance between two people as it is about America’s budding romance with conspiracy theories in the modern era. Particularly as the Nixon administration would go on to prove that mistrust in institutions ought to be the norm, not the exception. A conviction that’s only become more fortified in the decades since Watergate.

    Fly Me to the Moon offers a “light-hearted romp” with a conspiracy theory-related narrative as the backdrop, but, more often than not, it’s pretty much impossible to make light of the behaviors that stem from staunch conspiracy theorists (see: Pizzagate, the 2020 election was “stolen” and anything else related to QAnon). In this regard, Fly Me to the Moon truly does feel like a 60s-era film in that it gives the viewer enough credit to assume they’ll have a sense of humor about this sort of thing rather than taking it all too seriously.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Here Are Two Amazing Moon Videos On Eclipse Day

    Here Are Two Amazing Moon Videos On Eclipse Day

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    Missing the eclipse?  Here are two videos to show the wonder of the moon- including the restored Moonwalk.

    Only part of the country will see a full eclipse, but it doesn’t mean people haven’t immersed themselves in the rare happening. Roughly 32 million people in the US live in the totality path, with officials predicting another 5 million people will travel to catch the moments.  Krispy Kreme has even come out with an eclipse donut!  But for most people, it is either a non event or it will spoiled by work, weather or something else. For the moon uber-fan – there is almost something better. And for a true, once in mankind moment, the restored first human steps on the moon.

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    After thousands of years of people seeing the moon and making wild guesses about it, science won and man touched the moon.  In 1969 the American spaceflight Apollo 11 landed the first humans on the lunar crust. Commander Neil Armstrong and Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin landed the Eagle on July 20at 20:17 UTC with Armstrong becoming the first person to step onto the Moon’s surface six hours and 39 minutes later.  The filming of this has been restored and released.

    The next video is NASA showing how incredible the moon looks on 4K resolution. The footage was captured by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a spacecraft tasked with recording the different sides of the moon and capturing the satellite in all its glory.

    This footage was recorded in 2011, when the spacecraft was launched on a mission called the Tour of the Moon, where the camera visits a lot of interesting sites in order to show the different features of lunar terrain. The footage was recently released with a voice over and 4K resolution, so people would make popcorn, watch this with their friends and scream every five seconds about how trippy and weird space is.

    

    The tour shows the viewer the different sides of the moon, including the parts that are facing the Earth, which can be seen through a telescope, and the areas that can only be seen from space. It also includes digital elevation models, which show how the terrain is made up.

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    The guy who narrates the video explains the different parts of the moon and informs you on interesting things, such as a part of the moon that features some of the coldest weather ever reported.

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    Anthony Washington

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  • Astronaut James McDivitt, Apollo 9 commander, dies at 93

    Astronaut James McDivitt, Apollo 9 commander, dies at 93

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    WASHINGTON — James A. McDivitt, who commanded the Apollo 9 mission testing the first complete set of equipment to go to the moon, has died. He was 93.

    McDivitt was also the commander of 1965’s Gemini 4 mission, where his best friend and colleague Ed White made the first U.S. spacewalk. His photographs of White during the spacewalk became iconic images.

    He passed on a chance to land on the moon and instead became the space agency’s program manager for five Apollo missions after the Apollo 11 moon landing.

    McDivitt died Thursday in Tucson, Arizona, NASA said Monday.

    In his first flight in 1965, McDivitt reported seeing “something out there’’ about the shape of a beer can flying outside his Gemini spaceship. People called it a UFO and McDivitt would later joke that he became “a world-renowned UFO expert.” Years later he figured it was just a reflection of bolts in the window.

    Apollo 9, which orbited Earth and didn’t go further, was one of the lesser remembered space missions of NASA’s program. In a 1999 oral history, McDivitt said it didn’t bother him that it was overlooked: “I could see why they would, you know, it didn’t land on the moon. And so it’s hardly part of Apollo. But the lunar module was … key to the whole program.”

    Flying with Apollo 9 crewmates Rusty Schweickart and David Scott, McDivitt’s mission was the first in-space test of the lightweight lunar lander, nicknamed Spider. Their goal was to see if people could live in it, if it could dock in orbit and — something that became crucial in the Apollo 13 crisis — if the lunar module’s engines could control the stack of spacecraft, which included the command module Gumdrop.

    Early in training, McDivitt was not impressed with how flimsy the lunar module seemed: “I looked at Rusty and he looked at me, and we said, ‘Oh my God! We’re actually going to fly something like this?’ So it was really chintzy. … it was like cellophane and tin foil put together with Scotch tape and staples!”

    Unlike many of his fellow astronauts, McDivitt didn’t yearn to fly from childhood. He was just good at it.

    McDivitt didn’t have money for college growing up in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He worked for a year before going to junior college. When he joined the Air Force at 20, soon after the Korean War broke out, he had never been on an airplane. He was accepted for pilot training before he had ever been off the ground.

    “Fortunately, I liked it,” he later recalled.

    McDivitt flew 145 combat missions in Korea and came back to Michigan where he graduated from the University of Michigan with an aeronautical engineering degree. He later was one of the elite test pilots at Edwards Air Force Base and became the first student in the Air Force’s Aerospace Research Pilot School. The military was working on its own later-abandoned human space missions.

    In 1962, NASA chose McDivitt to be part of its second class of astronauts, often called the “New Nine,” joining Neil Armstrong, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and others.

    McDivitt was picked to command the second two-man Gemini mission, along with White. The four-day mission in 1965 circled the globe 66 times.

    Apollo 9’s shakedown flight lasted 10 days in March 1969 — four months before the moon landing — and was relatively trouble free and uneventful.

    “After I flew Apollo 9 it was apparent to me that I wasn’t going to be the first guy to land on the moon, which was important to me,” McDivitt recalled in 1999. “And being the second or third guy wasn’t that important to me.”

    So McDivitt went into management, first of the Apollo lunar lander, then for the Houston part of the entire program.

    McDivitt left NASA and the Air Force in 1972 for a series of private industry jobs, including president of the railcar division at Pullman Inc. and a senior position at aerospace firm Rockwell International. He retired from the military with the rank of brigadier general.

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