Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site mordor.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo!ut-sally!mordor!@S1-A.ARPA,@MIT-MC:rsf@Pescadero From: @S1-A.ARPA,@MIT-MC:rsf@Pescadero Newsgroups: net.space Subject: PBS series "Spaceflight" starts this week Message-ID: <1669@mordor.UUCP> Date: Sat, 4-May-85 14:42:36 EDT Article-I.D.: mordor.1669 Posted: Sat May 4 14:42:36 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 7-May-85 20:32:35 EDT Sender: daemon@mordor.UUCP Lines: 102 From: Ross Finlayson I'm really looking forward to this series. It's a shame that there are only 4 1-hour episodes. BC-SPACEFLIGHT ADV05 (FOR RELEASE: Sunday, May 5) By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD c.1985 N.Y. Times News Service NEW YORK - Enough time has passed, more than a quarter of a century, for the space age now to attract chroniclers who address the historical dimensions of this new power to break the bonds of Earth's gravity and travel out to a frontier unlike any other. There is, it seems, a growing recognition of space flight as an enduring phenomenon that may well transcend all previous human experience. Reflections on the origin, experiences and meaning of spacefaring have been offered recently in books, movies and television programs. Tom Wolfe's ''Right Stuff,'' the book and the movie, evoked the early days of the American space experience. James A. Michener's ''Space,'' the novel and the television mini-series last month, enlarged on the experience to shape a fictional epic of the past 40 years. And last month, Walter A. McDougal, a Berkeley historian, published ''The Heavens and the Earth,'' the first definitive political history of the space age. Now, the Public Broadcasting Service has moved to the launching pad a documentary, ''Spaceflight,'' covering the history of space exploration from the early theorists, visionaries and rocket pioneers through the dramatic moon landings to the flights of the space shuttle and the prospects of star wars. The first of the four hour-long segments will be shown Wednesday evening. ''Spaceflight'' is billed as the first prime-time television documentary series to offer a comprehensive history of both the Soviet and the American space programs. Some film, previously withheld from the public, includes scenes of an X-3 rocketplane crash. The Soviet Union also provided some rare footage of Sergei Korolev, the ''chief designer'' of the Soviet program, whose identity remained a secret until after his death in the late 1960's. The documentary takes note of the emerging competition of the European, Japanese and Chinese space efforts. But perhaps inevitably, owing to the availability of so much more NASA film, the visual emphasis is centered on American endeavors. Little attention is given to the unmanned explorations, the landings of automated craft on Mars and Venus and the odysseys of Pioneers and Voyagers to the outer planets and the fringes of the solar system. >From the beginning, the manned program, Soyuz and Salyut, Mercury, Apollo and the shuttle, have enjoyed political priority, and so they do in this documentary conceived, written and produced by Blaine Baggett. Baggett fastened his initial hopes on space. It was, at first, an act of faith. For two years of research and interviewing, he had no outside financial support. Finally, he persuaded the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and then the Du Pont Co. to back him. ''I read 'The Right Stuff' and found it fascinating. Wolfe had dealt only with the Mercury astronauts, and I thought there must be so much other fascinating material out there about space before Mercury and after. ''I found that no one had ever done a really comprehensive look at space flight, except on a sort of mission-by-mission basis.'' Moreover, space seemed to fit his own ambitions. ''I wanted to do documentaries looking at American institutions - why we do the things we do.'' Baggett interviewed and filmed more than 40 people for the series. These included such early astronauts as Alan Shepard, Wally Schirra and John Glenn. Chuck Yeager, the incomparable test pilot, recalled his attitude toward the new Mercury space program. ''It wasn't flying to me,'' said Yeager, the first pilot to break the sound barrier. ''So, I wasn't interested in it.'' Wernher von Braun, the German scientist who built the American Saturn V moon rocket, is shown in one of his last filmed interviews before he died in 1977. A relaxed, reminiscent tone runs through the stories these people tell, which probably reflects Baggett's off-camera interviewing technique. Baggett said he regreted not being able to interview some of the Soviet astronauts, but his entreaties to the Soviet Embassy in Washington were met with a cool response. Mixing the recollections of the interviewees with the pictorial record, the still photographs of early days and the striking movies of exploding failures and soaring successes, Baggett produced the kind of documentary that has all but vanished. Events are not recreated. The only actor employed is Martin Sheen, who narrates the series. In the first episode, ''Thunder in the Skies,'' the story begins with the launching of Sputnik I on Oct. 4, 1957, the opening shot in the space age and the so-called space race between the superpowers, but then properly turns back to the more distant beginnings. There are scenes from rural Russia in the 19th century, when an obscure school teacher laid the theoretical groundwork for space flight. There is Robert H. Goddard, the American pioneer, firing his first liquid rockets in the 1920's. The second episode, ''The Wings of Mercury,'' concentrates on the early days of manned space flight, both in the Soviet Union and the United States. The third, ''One Giant Leap,'' recounts the struggle to fulfill the Kennedy commitment to a moon landing, to the Apollo XI landing at Tranquillity Base on July 20, 1969. The final episode, ''The Territory Ahead,'' encompasses the Soviet feats of endurance in the Salyut space stations and the flights of the American shuttle, the world's first re-usable space ship.