Space

Two of my Christmas presents were space exploration DVDs. Apollo 13 had been recommended to me by friends and Amazon then recommended The Right Stuff to me.

Over the last two nights we've watched both. We did it in chronological order so some of the characters (although played by different actors) appear in both.

The Right Stuff has potential but it suffers from trying both to cover too much ground and from needing some editing: we both thought it was a good half an hour too long and there were bits that could have been lost.

Apollo 13 however was a joy from beginning to end - even though we knew the ending it was still an exciting story to follow. I was 9¾ at the time of the Apollo 13 mission and, like millions of others around the globe, I sat and watched re-entry on our then newly acquired TV. Even then I knew it was a significant event but not the detail of what the astronauts went through before they got back to earth including the extreme cold and Haise's illness so it was interesting from that viewpoint too.