Dan Soles Program Pick of the Month

Dan Soles, Vice President of Programming for WTTW, began his television career in Atlanta at Georgia Public Television.  He has been at WTTW since 1995 and is responsible for the acquisition and scheduling of all programming on Channel 11.  He is active on a number of advisory boards that involve productions from PBS, American Public Television and the Independent Television Service.  Dan served as President of the Public Television Programmers Association in 2003 and is considered one of the best programmers in the industry.  Each month Dan will select a special WTTW program to recommend to Satellite Council donors.

American Experience: Race to the Moon

In the early morning hours of December 21, 1968, three astronauts strapped themselves into a tiny capsule perched atop the most powerful rocket ever built. They were about to attempt the most daring, dangerous mission in the history of exploration: a journey from the earth to the moon. If they succeeded, they would realize a dream that had captured people's imaginations since time began. If they failed, the United States would be forced to cede technological dominance to the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. The three men were the crew of Apollo 8 – the first manned mission to the moon.

American Experience and WTTW National Productions presents Race to the Moon, an hour-long documentary from filmmaker Kevin Michael Kertscher. The program features first-hand recollections of the three former fighter pilots whose single-minded determination and remarkable bravery united a nation divided by the war in Vietnam and racial strife at home. Also interviewed are the astronauts' wives; Walter Cronkite, who covered the event for CBS News; staff from mission control in Houston; Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov; Andrew Chaikin, author of A Man on the Moon; and John Logsdon, the director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.

"Apollo 8 is arguably America's riskiest and most important space mission," says series executive producer Mark Samels. "We've heard a lot about Apollo 11 and 13, but without the success of Apollo 8, the entire history of the U.S. space program would have been altered."