"I'm about to buy a space station. Would you like to help me?" Walter Anderson had a dream. Unlike most other dreamers, his almost came true. Unfortunately, his dream also came crashing down to Earth, literally.
Orphans of Apollo as its title suggests is about the wide-eyed children of yesterday, who lived during the America's Apollo Program, and became the disillusioned adults of today. They include Dr. Peter Diamandis, the Founder and Chairman of the X Prize Foundation and other space advocates. Among those hearty few was a former telecommunications entrepreneur by the name of Walter Anderson.
After sealing a deal with the Russians to lease the then-defunct space station, Mir, Anderson and his cohorts founded MirCorp. MirCorp was to be the world's first commercial space platform that would facilitate private space industry as well as the first forays into space-based media entertainment. MirCorp also allowed one of the first space tourists (Dennis Tito) to visit the International Space Station.
The brunt of the story centers around the fact that Tito was not sent to the Russian's Mir space station. On March 23, 2001, Mir was forcibly removed from its orbital perch and sent crashing down over the Pacific Ocean. Along with Mir went Anderson's dream of starting and maintaining a viable private business in the final frontier. This was not to be so.
Orphans of Apollo, is at best, an uneven documentary film. The majority of the talking heads interviewed for the film are clearly pro-private space. There is little to no coverage of anyone representing the "other" side, namely officials from NASA and the American government. However, this flaw does not diminish the astuteness of the film-making and the curiosity factor for an virtually unknown piece of space history.
Orphans of Apollo as its title suggests is about the wide-eyed children of yesterday, who lived during the America's Apollo Program, and became the disillusioned adults of today. They include Dr. Peter Diamandis, the Founder and Chairman of the X Prize Foundation and other space advocates. Among those hearty few was a former telecommunications entrepreneur by the name of Walter Anderson.
After sealing a deal with the Russians to lease the then-defunct space station, Mir, Anderson and his cohorts founded MirCorp. MirCorp was to be the world's first commercial space platform that would facilitate private space industry as well as the first forays into space-based media entertainment. MirCorp also allowed one of the first space tourists (Dennis Tito) to visit the International Space Station.
The brunt of the story centers around the fact that Tito was not sent to the Russian's Mir space station. On March 23, 2001, Mir was forcibly removed from its orbital perch and sent crashing down over the Pacific Ocean. Along with Mir went Anderson's dream of starting and maintaining a viable private business in the final frontier. This was not to be so.
Orphans of Apollo, is at best, an uneven documentary film. The majority of the talking heads interviewed for the film are clearly pro-private space. There is little to no coverage of anyone representing the "other" side, namely officials from NASA and the American government. However, this flaw does not diminish the astuteness of the film-making and the curiosity factor for an virtually unknown piece of space history.
