With Once Upon a Time in Space, he traces the space race in the decades following the moon landing. These were the years when conquering the cosmos shed much of its previous glamour and the public ceased to think of it as the ultimate triumph of humanity over the elements. The Cold War had entered a more glacial phase, the Space Shuttle was a workhorse that lacked the futuristic pizazz of the Apollo missions – and that was before the Challenger and Columbia disasters cast a shadow over the entire project. And then came SpaceX and Elon Musk, boy prince of privatised space travel.
Any documentary featuring Elon Musk will inevitably fall short of one giant step for mankind. Bluemel understands, moreover, that the broad outline of the story will be well-known to a majority of viewers. He instead focuses on the human experiences of the people at the front line of space exploration.
Anna Fisher talks about joining the Space Shuttle astronaut programme and becoming the first mother to travel into space in 1984. Her daughter, Kristin, was a baby at the time and Fisher was criticised for leaving her child at home while she climbed among the stars. Today, Kristin is a CNN news reporter and is ambivalent about her mother’s decision. Was she selfish? Perhaps. But nobody made those criticisms of the men who went to space.
