I’m going to reserve judgment until I see the film. I think that the proximate cause of the uproar wasn’t the decision to leave out the flag planting, but the Canadian actor’s idiotic explanation of it. As I note in comments, the movie is a biopick of Neil Armstrong, not a history of Apollo, and his great achievement was not in planting a flag on the moon, but in simply being present on its surface.
@SciGuySpace Part of that history was the idiotic policy in the early 90s of telling USAF to use expendables, and assigning reusables to NASA, which resulted in the disastrous X-33 and X-34 programs, which "proved" that reusables couldn't be done.
It’s not just the 49th Apollo anniversary; it’s also the anniversary of the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler. Plus, it’s the 25th anniversary of the (likely) murder of Vince Foster.
I scored a ticket to the VIP gala at KSC Saturday night, to celebrate the 49th anniversary of the first moon landing. I just found out I’ll be seated at a front table with commercial-spaceflight basher Walt Cunningham.
Georg von Tiesenhausen died on Sunday, at the age of 104. He was the last of von Braun’s rocket team. Amazing that he lived so long after what he went through in his youth.
I just saw Buzz last night at the ISDC awards ceremony, which was probably the most encouraging in the history of that meeting, in which (amid saving The Expanse for another season, with many of the cast and production crew present) Jeff Bezos, one of the richest men in the world, laid out his vision for humanity in space that was shared by all in that room. There will be a party tonight, and I don’t think the organization will have had a more joyous one in its history. It was fitting that it occurred in the very same hotel where the very first conference was held, thirty-seven years ago.