The US space program in pop culture

This month marks half a century since humans first set foot on the Moon. Here’s a roundup of some of our favorite science fiction, documentaries, and dramatizations about the American space program. The items are listed in order of the eras they cover, from before the space age to the end of the Apollo program.

Destination Moon, Irving Pichel. Eagle-Lion Classics, 1950.

This classic sci-fi film, released nearly two decades before the Apollo 11 landing, imagines a daring and dangerous lunar mission bankrolled by wealthy industrialists after the US government declares the project too risky. The crew members confront disaster after disaster along the way, and ultimately, unexpected problems threaten to leave them stranded on the Moon’s surface. The film’s special effects show its age, but the screenplay is a suspenseful and thoughtful take on the risks of space exploration.

Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon, Hergé. Tintin Magazine, 1950–53.

Belgian cartoonist Hergé sent his beloved characters Tintin and Snowy the dog to the Moon in a series of adventures for Tintin. Along the way the protagonists have to combat spies, technical malfunctions, a limited oxygen supply, and an inconvenient episode of amnesia experienced by their friend Professor Calculus. The stories are fast-moving and kid-friendly, and Hergé’s colorful art will appeal to fans of graphic novels. A new hardbound version of the two books went on sale 9 July.

The Right Stuff, Philip Kaufman. The Ladd Company, 1983.

Based on Tom Wolfe’s 1979 book , director Philip Kaufman’s movie The Right Stuff tells the story of the Mercury program, starting with test pilot Chuck Yeager’s breaking of the sound barrier. (The film does not go into Yeager’s ugly history of sabotaging nonwhite pilots and astronaut candidates; on that, see my colleague Paul Guinnessy’s review of the new documentary Chasing the Moon .) Kaufman, who is also credited as the screenwriter, highlights the dangers of life as a test pilot and the early space program alongside the boys'-club camaraderie of the astronaut candidates. Scenes with the Mercury astronauts are often funny and foul-mouthed—there are a lot of laugh-out-loud lines. The Right Stuff also delves into how the harsh spotlight affected the astronauts and their families. Be prepared for a minor marathon if you dive into this spaceflight classic; its run time is more than three hours.

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race, Margot Lee Shetterly. William Morrow, 2016.

A talented cast and a compelling story helped the Hidden Figures movie become a box-office hit, but the book that inspired it is even better. Journalist Margot Lee Shetterly reconstructs the stories of three African American women—Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, and Katherine Johnson—whose work as NASA human computers helped put US astronauts into space during Project Mercury. Johnson, a mathematician who made pivotal contributions to NASA’s calculations of spaceflight trajectories , is now the best known of the three, and she receives the most screen time in the film. The book (see the Physics Today review ) does much more to flesh out Jackson, NASA’s first black female engineer, and Vaughan, a mathematician, programmer, and supervisor who had left a low-paying job as a schoolteacher in segregated Virginia to join the space program.

First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong, James Hansen. Simon & Schuster, 2005.

Historian of science James Hansen gives readers a thorough, thoughtful, and carefully documented look into Neil Armstrong’s life in this 2005 biography. After obtaining permission from the famously private Armstrong to write his life story, Hansen interviewed Armstrong himself, plus dozens of coworkers and family members, and dove into NASA’s records. The result is an impressive reconstruction of Armstrong’s journey, from his evangelical upbringing in Ohio to those first steps on the Moon and the intense spotlight that followed. The Physics Today staff is divided on the 2018 film adaptation (I gave it a rave review ; Guinnessy bemoaned scenes that he thought veered into melodrama and fantasy), but Hansen’s biography is undoubtedly essential reading for anyone interested in Apollo history.

Apollo 11, Todd Douglas Miller. Universal Pictures, 2019.

If you want to revisit the Apollo 11 landing with film and video from the 1960s, this new documentary from director Todd Douglas Miller should be your pick. The film contains lovingly restored historical footage from the early Apollo program and skillfully combines it with historical audio to craft a compelling documentary narrative without talking-head commentary. In his review for Physics Today, Guinnessy wrote that the movie “will have viewers reevaluating how they think about and, if they’re of a certain age, remember, the Apollo landings.”

Apollo 13, Ron Howard. Universal Pictures, 1995.

After Apollo 11, NASA would launch six more crewed missions to the Moon’s surface. Five were successful; the best known is the one that wasn’t. Ron Howard’s Apollo 13 is an entertaining, harrowing dramatization of that near-fatal mission. Howard alternates between the astronauts in space and the NASA team back on Earth. Tom Hanks, playing astronaut James Lovell, headlines the film’s cast; his costar Ed Harris won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his portrayal of NASA legend Gene Kranz, the mission control director who oversaw the astronauts’ safe return.

From the Earth to the Moon, Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Tom Hanks, and Michael Bostick. HBO, 1998.

HBO’s ambitious 12-part miniseries follows the US space program from the formation of NASA through Apollo 17, the last crewed lunar mission. The series focuses mostly on the lives and work of the astronauts, with occasional spotlights on other NASA personnel, politicians arguing over funding, and the astronauts’ families. Hanks, who also worked with Howard on Apollo 13, directed the first episode and wrote the final one.

The Last Man on the Moon, Mark Craig. Mark Stewart Productions, 2014.

On 14 December 1972, Apollo 17 astronaut Eugene Cernan climbed aboard the lunar lander and, with Harrison Schmitt, departed the Moon’s surface. No one has returned since. In this documentary, Cernan looks back on the history of the Apollo program and reflects on his own role in it. A former US Navy pilot, Cernan joined NASA in 1963 during Project Gemini. He piloted the Apollo 10 lunar module and was a backup crew member for several Apollo landing missions before being selected as the commander of Apollo 17. Given Cernan’s long experience with NASA, The Last Man on the Moon covers much of the space program’s history. The film is also an intimate look at the hard-driving Cernan himself, whose ambition and focus caused severe strain within his family.