Reaching for the moon

Recently I finally watched Apollo 11, the direct cinema documentary about mankind’s first steps on the moon. So many things about the moon landing fell into place while watching the documentary, like how ‘the Eagle has landed’ was simply a statement to describe that the landing of the vehicle called ‘the Eagle’ was successful. I had always thought this was some kind of fancy NASA code used to describe their successes, but alas, they were simply stating facts.

A lunar eclipse over Okambara Elephant Lodge, Namibia

There were other lessons I learned from this documentary too. Like, how the landing on the moon is a perfect metaphor for life. (Don’t take my words to literal when I say something is perfect, I tend to exaggerate this kind of point.) The documentary uses original footage shot, and audio recorded, by NASA in 1969 to show the different steps it took from roughly 3,5 hours before lift-off until the moment they (spoiler alert) landed safely back on planet Earth. And the documentary made me realise I never before considered the astronauts’ home journey.

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