denitaarnold19 I grew up with the space program, being born a month to the day after John Glenn's historic flight, and remember watching the moon missions on TV. I especially enjoyed the stories of the Mercury, Gemini & Apollo programs. There was 2 major flaws in the series, and that was the omission of Apollo 15, and the very brief mention of Apollo 1. People will think that Apollo 16 was the first to use the LRV, but it was Apollo 15. and to virtually bypass Apollo 1 is a crime against the memories of Gus, Ed, and Roger. Sad, really. but overall it's the best space documentary I've seen. And the appearance of Neil Armstrong makes it worth watching.

josey007 Overall, I thought "When We Left Earth" was a fantastic, excellent and amazing mini-series that I would be delighted to own on Blu-Ray DVD, if it weren't for those Swedish buccaneers. Nevertheless, the inclusion of so much color-footage shot by the astronauts themselves was clever and made for breathtaking viewing, and that's the selling point that will probably get me to fork out for the gen. discs. It wasn't all peaches- and-cream, however, and I was genuinely disappointed with the cursory treatment given to Apollo 1, which only received approximately four minutes of very bland, formulaic coverage. There was no imagery from any of the three Apollo 1 crew-members' funerals or memorials or anything heroic, and I believe the producers dropped the ball and missed the chance to jerk a bit of genuine contrived emotion out of us. Their decision not to was difficult to accept and is the only sore point for me in an otherwise-excellent miniseries.If it was the case that there simply was no video footage available from the funeral and interment of Gus Grissom, for example, my apologies. But if ever there was an appropriate forum in which to display such coverage/footage, it would've been here.

PudgyPandaMan I was really impressed with this series. It is a very extensive look at America's space program, from it's infancy to the present. It is amazing the breadth of cooperation they received from the many people giving interviews, to the behind scene footages. I have been a long time follower of NASA and I learned a great deal from this program.Some of the more touching segments dealt with the Challenger and Columbia disasters. I think they handled covering these tragedies well - giving all the facts and not trying to gloss over the gross negligence involved, especially with the O-ring failure in Challenger. Even NASA employees gave scathing testimony concerning this.Gary Sinise does a great job narrating. He is perhaps best known from "Forest Gump' as Lt. Dan, and from CSI:NY. It is also interesting to note that he played Astonaut Ken Mattingly in "Apollo 13".The HD filming is breathtaking on the more modern film footage. Obviously, film taken from the 60's is not going to look great. But the recent footage from the shuttle flights is amazing, especially when Bruce McCandless flies in space with the jet back-pack, completely untethered from the spaceship... All I can say is WOW! It is great that the program not only highlights the great successes, but doesn't shrink away from showing the failures as well. I think it one of the more balanced programs I have seen regarding this. Often times, these programs can seem like propaganda pieces, but I didn't feel that here. Very well done!

jjoseph202 Let me start out with the good stuff.This miniseries was good in that it captures, 30 to 50 years later, the thoughts and experiences of those who were there. The modern footage -- the interviews with the astronauts and flight controllers especially -- does what historical documentaries do best: captures the words and experience of those who were actually there. I especially liked the interviews with Gene Kranz, Jim Lovell, and -- of all people -- the nearly hermit-like Neil Armstrong.That said, the "HD" sequences are, by and large, limited by the resolution of the original (what a surprise), and calling them "HD" is a hyperbole at best, disingenuous at worst. So the Discovery channel's hype about digging stuff out of the vault and getting an HD-worthy presentation of this vintage footage is just that: hype. There are some priceless shots, like the slow-motion ground test footage of the explosively-jettisoned Mercury hatch. But, by and large, the "unearthed" footage is stuff we've seen before.What I detested most, though, was the U.S.-centric view of the writing. The script for the Skylab sequences would lead you to believe that the U.S. orbited the first space station. The Apollo 8 mission planning and execution was triggered by the placement of a Russian moon rocket on their launch pad, but this is overlooked.So, obviously, the "we" in "when we left earth", is Americans.A historical distortion, at best.