Tearing Apart Apollo 11 Inaccuracies

By Nancy Atkinson - December 18, 2010 at 9:37 AM UTC | Space Exploration

The movie trailer for Transformers 3 came out over a week ago, and seeing it is a facepalm moment for any true human spaceflight follower, fan, aficionado, or historian. I mean really, -- and yes, I know this is a movie -- but how could they portray what they call "a generation's greatest achievement" so inaccurately? I originally decided I wasn't going to post it, because it basically re-writes history and I can only imagine how the conspiracy theorists will run with this. Plus getting this kind of thing into the public mindset, I fear, will be another

"Capricorn 1"

moment where people construe the movie as proof that NASA is hiding things. But Robert Pearlman over at collectSPACE

posted an article today, basically tearing apart the trailer,

discussing every inaccuracy in detail. So watch the trailer, above, and then

go check out Robert's article

-- its great.

And then, while you're at it, go read

Robert Krulwich's article on NPR's website

, where he gets a unusually lengthy response from Neil Armstrong about what

really

happened on the Apollo 11 moon walk, and why it was so short.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com