For those of us with an eye frequentedc pointed upward, NASA and the outer space are two things that continue to amaze. It just confounds me how people were ever able to not only figure out what exactly is going on beyond our blue little sapphire of a planet, but how to go about it, as well. I guess that's the main reason why we continue to eat up everything involving man's trips to the moon. I never get tired at any of it and seeing the popularity in recent years of films like Apollo 13 and the HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, it's apparent that not many others tire of it either.

The 1989 documentary For All Mankind is every bit as compelling as those later projects, if not moreso. Documenting man's journey to the moon, producer-director Al Reinert has produced a fascinating archive of footage and interviews compiled from well over twenty-five years' worth of material from the NASA vaults. There's all the footage we've seen a million times before, sure, but here, it's presented in a way that's all together fresh and exhilarating. This is the closest many, if not all, of us will ever see outer space as and not how it's portrayed in the Star Wars universe.

If you're a true NASA nut or all this is just of casual interest, you'll be hard pressed to find something more compelling than the presentation of man's desire to reach the stars in For All Mankind. This is our history and we should be proud of it. I know that in the last fifteen or so years, the space program has been severely cut back and I think that's a shame. Hopefully with fascinating programs like this, the interest might just be rekindled.