Today, April 17th, is the 50th Anniversary of the landing of Apollo 13, after over 5 days in space in a mostly-broken space capsule. It landed at 18:07 UTC (6pm), in the South Pacific Ocean, carrying astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise safely home after an intense and harrowing ordeal. It is one of the defining moments of the entire space program.

So I thought it was a fitting day to talk about my obsession with space and NASA and my dashed hopes of being an astronaut.

Let me state the obvious: I love space. I’m not sure if I love space because I read so much scifi, or if I read so much scifi because I love space – it’s kind of a chicken or the egg deal. But I love it. I read books, watch films and documentaries, buy NASA t-shirts and dream about it a lot. I had a plan back in high school: I was going to get a degree in physics, join the Navy – because they have a PHENOMENAL science program – and eventually work my way into NASA.

When I went to college I tried to double-major in Physics and English (because English and books have always been my first love and I really didn’t want to have to choose between the two). But by my third year of college, I was taking 18-20 credit hours per semester, working 30-35hrs per week at a part time job, I was editor of the university literary arts journal, and I was on three student organizations. Something had to give and my advisor told me I really just needed to choose one major, at least for now. I was attending Rockhurst University, a small Jesuit college in Kansas City, that I absolutely adored. They had a great liberal arts program, but their science department wasn’t the greatest (at least at the time), and I had been really inspired by a couple of my recent Literature professors, so I chose English. And eventually decided I might actually want to go to grad school for English and become a Lit professor myself someday.

I graduated with a BA in English and a minor in (of all things) Theology, and went straight into grad school for a MA in English and American Literature.

There are a lot of things I loved about my Master’s program, and things I STILL and will ALWAYS love about the Literature field. I took some absolutely amazing courses in grad school, I met some brilliant professors and grad student colleagues that I am now lucky enough to call friends. I wrote some interesting papers and went to some very cool conferences. But I quit. After six years stalled out in my PhD program, despite the fact that I was ABD (“all but dissertation”: ie, I had completed all coursework, comprehensive exams, and preliminary writing, and all I needed to do was write my dissertation), I quit.

And now I keep looking back on my choices with regret, wondering if I made the wrong decision, if I should have done the Physics degree instead.

I visit NASA’s Space Center Houston and walk through exhibits and watch documentaries and cry. Really truly cry for the lost opportunities. My mother likes to tell me it’s not too late. I could go back to school and get that physics degree and try. But it IS too late and no false hope is going to change that. I try to teach myself to accept it, to move on. I have plenty of other dreams: I still want to be a novelist, I still want to open a bookstore, I want to write a musical, I want all sorts of things. But this loss still breaks my heart, and I’m not sure I will ever be over it.

So instead, I absorb everything I can. I am working on a collection of every fictional film and documentary about space I can find (or, ok, at least the GOOD ones). And I have read so many nonfiction books on the subject – biographies, histories, science books – it’s kind of ridiculous. And on that note, allow me to offer some suggestions on books and movies/documentaries that I HIGHLY recommend for the space/NASA lover!

Of course, the most obvious movie to name is Apollo 13, which is particularly appropriate today of all days. And it is one of my favorite movies of all time. Obviously, as with anything, a few liberties are taken with historical accuracy in order to ramp up the drama and streamline the number of characters involved, but for the most part, it’s relatively accurate. The directing and cinematography and acting are all just GOD-TIER in this movie too, so there’s that. Yes, I will be watching this later today.

There is also, of course, The Right Stuff, both the book by Tom Wolfe, and the 1983 movie. They are both CLASSICS.

For fictionalized movies, I also highly recommend The Martian (another one of my favorites) which really captures the true SPIRIT of space exploration: the wonder and awe and excitement and danger and heart of it all. It’s also genuinely funny, and also beautifully shot. And if you haven’t read the novel, you should totally get on that too.

Similarly, I would recommend Interstellar. This movie gets so much hate. It seems to have become a fad, a popular past-time to hate on this movie, and I just DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHY. Really, I don’t. When I saw this movie in theatres – in IMAX, because OF COURSE – I was blown away! I was entranced. I was emotionally invested and enormously distraught. Is the thematic conclusion a little heavy-handed? Yes. Could it have done without the constant repetition of the Dylan Thomas poem? Probably. But it is still an absolutely gorgeous movie – it is visually stunning and emotionally resonant and philosophically interesting and it really gets at the sense of scale and awe of space travel that few other movies ever have (save maybe 2001: A Space Odyssey – which I also highly recommend). 

For documentaries, about NASA I would start with the newest one that just came out last year, called Apollo 11. It is very high quality, with a lot of newly released footage. It’s available on both Amazon Prime and Hulu. There’s also the CLASSIC documentary series: From the Earth to the Moon, which remains one of the best documentaries ever produced on the subject.

In addition, there is the biographical documentary called The Last Man on the Moon, which is about Gene Cernan, who was literally the last astronaut to walk on the moon, during the Apollo 17 mission. It is an absolutely fascinating look at Gene Cernan’s life, both his personal life and his experiences with the Apollo missions. I had the great privilege of attending one of the premiere showings of this documentary in 2016, with Gene Cernan and several other current astronauts in attendance for a Q&A at the end. It was one of the highlights of my life, quite frankly, and I was very sad when Gene Cernan died in 2017.

For books written on the subject, there are so many it is practically an embarrassment of riches. But if I HAD to choose just a few, they would be:

Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America’s Apollo Moon Landings written by Alan Shephard and Deke Slayton (so you know this is the REAL FUCKING DEAL)

Failure Is Not an Option, the memoir written by NASA Flight Controller Gene Kranz, (who was made immortal by Ed Harris’s portrayal of him in the Apollo 13 movie). This is one of my favorite biographies of all time (and I read A LOT of biographies), and I would sell a limb or two to meet Gene Kranz and get his autograph.

Beyond: Our Future in Space by Chris Impey, a nonfiction science book that goes beyond our present and projects into the future of what space exploration could be.

Again, this is just a very small sample of the content that exists about NASA in particular and space in general. I have watched and read quite a lot more than that, but these are some of my favorites. If you’re a space/NASA nut like me, please come chat! I would love to talk about anything space related!