Failure Is Not An Option...

... unless you're the History Channel.

I'm working from home today. As I sometimes do, I flipped on the TV to give me the illusion of company in my empty apartment. It was set to the History Channel, so I turned down the volume and got to work. I wasn't really paying attention to the show at first, but gradually it began to capture my interest.

It was a documentary about NASA's Apollo missions, told from the perspective of the mission control room and personnel. They used a series of original film snippets from back then, interspersed with present-day interviews of the astronauts, controllers, and engineers, to tell the story of the events leading up to and immediately following the moon landings.

I'm old enough to have lived through that time. I remember sitting in grade school as they wheeled in TV sets so we could watch the Mercury and Gemini launches live - in class! That was almost as good as recess.

A few years later I sat glued to the TV watching Neil Armstrong step on the moon. That was followed by a moon-landing party of epic proportions (I was in my late teens by then. Any excuse for a party.).

But the most gripping, most intense mission of all was Apollo 13. Watching the events unfold live, first not knowing what was happening, and then not knowing if the astronauts would make it back alive, is to this day the most singular thing I have ever seen on television. Talk about reality TV - that was it in spades.

So back to the History Channel. The show this morning was titled "Failure is not an Option." It was outstanding. It is the most riveting documentary I've seen in a long, long time. I highly recommend it. In fact, I was so impressed that after the show was over I immediately went to the History Channel website to order the DVD. That's when the failure began.

There is no record on the website of that particular show ever existing. After wasting time searching for it, I did what I should have done in the first place and went to Amazon. Sure enough, up popped the DVD - with a notice saying "This product is no longer available." A search of eBay was likewise fruitless. Back to History.com...

I finally found a two-DVD set that I think contains the show I want (the product description is a little confusing). I went ahead and ordered it, figuring that I can always return it if necessary. If you're interested, the link is below. (Be careful. There is a "Failure is not an Option 2" dvd, which chronicles the struggles of NASA after Apollo - the Hubble telescope, the Challenger disaster, etc. It may be worth watching, but I haven't seen it, so I can't comment on it.)

http://shop.history.com/detail.php?p=105853&v=aetv 

I don't know what it is with the History Channel. They produce some of most intriguing shows around (I'm an Ice Road Truckers junkie), but their website is one of the most user-unfriendly around, with a terrible search engine.

Here's something else of interest I found (by accident) on the History Channel website:

Beer from 19th-Century Shipwreck May Be Brewed Again

Divers exploring a shipwreck in the Baltic Sea stumbled on a precious cache of 185-year-old Champagne, along with several bottles of what may be the world’s oldest drinkable ale. Now, Finnish researchers hope to unlock the brew’s original recipe and recreate beer that tastes just like what 19th-century drinkers may have savored.

Golden and cloudy, with hints of seawater and a sour odor that expert tasters likened to French cheese, the resurrected ale may be the oldest drinkable beverage of its kind. And if Finnish scientists can crack its original formula, it may also serve as the template for the most faithful beer reproduction in history.

Just what I'm looking for in a beer - seawater and sour French cheese. Sounds like Olde English 800...

Working for Finland’s VTT Technical Research Center, which recently commissioned a study of the beer, researchers have already discovered yeast and bacteria cells in the liquid extracted from the bottles. Still, they have yet to identify the specific type of yeast or to determine whether the microbes survived two centuries in icy waters at depths exceeding 150 feet. They also hope to reveal whether hops were among the brew’s ingredients and to gauge the quality of drinking water used in its preparation.

At last. A government research program that makes sense.

Below is a picture of one of the bottles of beer recovered from the Baltic Sea shipwreck.

Fun fact: Beer dates back at least 6,000 years to ancient Sumer. It was a preferred beverage for the Sumerians, who even worshiped a goddess of brewing.

Goodness knows I've worshiped many goddesses after an evening of appreciating the brewmaster's finest...