Space Race

[John Marvin]

I’ve always enjoyed movies about the space program, and I recently heard about one that I had not seen. It’s simply called “Space Race”. It was done by the BBC and released on DVD in Europe (in PAL format, so you would need a multiregion DVD player if you were to buy a copy).

Supposedly it has aired occasionally on the National Geographic Channel. I’ve seen some criticism that they overdid the coverage of Werner Von Braun’s Nazi affilliation, but I actually found it to be fairly well balanced (i.e. the facts presented were ones that are generally accepted, and things that are less substantiated were not included).

Anyway, I found all four episodes on You Tube (just search for “Space Race”), and I really enjoyed it. The quality on You Tube is “sub DVD quality”, but I still found it acceptable. It is a good complement to many other good space program movies/Documentaries, since this covers the period from the end of WW2 to the early 60’s in good detail (It goes through to the moon landing, but it covers that fairly briefly). The episodes pretty much revolve around Werner Von Braun and the U.S. space program and his “rival”, Sergei Korolev who was the chief designer of the Russian space program. I really enjoyed the extended coverage of the Russian program, since most of the movies I’ve seen that cover various periods in the U.S. program haven’t given much time to our “opponent” in the space race.

I suspect that most of you would enjoy these episodes if you have not already seen them.

John

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