From time to time when I'm traveling I'll catch a bit of TV news here or there. For the most part it's horrible. There seems to be about 40 minutes of sports and 30 seconds of everything else. There are self-promoting pieces about the latest Breaking News story from last week. All and all it is worse than watching a high school football game on ESPN Classic.

Given that it seems the same everywhere I figured I must be in the minority when it comes to what's important in TV news. Well the 2006 Future of News report seems to suggest that far from being alone my preferences register with the majority of the population.

For years I've been a fan of the space program. For all its flaws NASA has an amazing record of achievement. As such I have a pretty solid understanding of the history of the space program and have seen many great and not so great films on the subject.

As a Netflix viewer I've had the HBO series From Earth to the Moon on the list for some time now. However with the general notion that there wouldn't be much new in the story I kept pushing it down the stack. Recently the first DVD arrived and it is so far from a stale retelling of the same fascinating story.

One of the big things the series did well is it abandoned the notion that the space story needs to be told chronologically. Following Part 4 - 1968 which shows the important impact of the Apollo program on bringing some light to a dark time, the next episode Part 5 - Spider starts in 1962 with the development of the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) and follows the process through 1969. This form of storytelling makes it possible to focus on the stories of the Apollo program.