One Small Step: The Story of the Space Chimps is a 2008 documentary film produced and directed by David Cassidy and Kristin Davy which aired on History Channel UK and CBC Television. The film chronicles the real story behind the early use of chimpanzees in space exploration. The film was released on DVD in April 2008, after several delays. Cassidy is best known for co-producing the 2006 documentary Shut Up and Sing on the Dixie Chicks.
One Small Step: The Story of the Space Chimps is a documentary that screened in over 20 film festivals including the Maryland Film Festival, [1] the Vancouver International Film Festival, and the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, [2] before airing on television and being released on DVD.
Told through archival photos and footage, space historians, testimony from the chimpanzees' trainers, and through the people who fought for the space chimpanzees' peaceful retirement, the film explores the compelling journey of the United States Air Force space from their primate predecessors and early rocket tests to Ham and Enos as they made their ground breaking missions into space.
The story reveals the space chimpanzees' triumphs and tragedies and brings to light the virtually unknown account of how the colony was rewarded for their long and challenging service to NASA, the Air Force, and the United States.
Featured in the documentary are interviews with Dr. Carole Noon who heads up the Save the Chimps sanctuary, Dr. Jane Goodall, and archival footage of President John F. Kennedy's famous 1962 space exploration speech "We choose to go to the Moon". The film also recounts the stories of many early primate missions including those of Able and Baker, and Gordo.
Dame Jane Morris Goodall, formerly Baroness Jane van Lawick-Goodall, is an English primatologist and anthropologist. She is considered the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees, after 60 years studying the social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees. Goodall first went to Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania to observe its chimpanzees in 1960.
Ham, a chimpanzee also known as Ham the Chimp and Ham the Astrochimp, was the first great ape launched into space. On January 31, 1961, Ham flew a suborbital flight on the Mercury-Redstone 2 mission, part of the U.S. space program's Project Mercury.
Neam "Nim" Chimpsky was a chimpanzee and the subject of an extended study of animal language acquisition at Columbia University. The project was led by Herbert S. Terrace with the linguistic analysis headed up by psycholinguist Thomas Bever. Within the context of a scientific study, Chimpsky was named as a pun on linguist Noam Chomsky, who posits that humans are "wired" to develop language.
Cheeta is a chimpanzee character that appeared in numerous Hollywood Tarzan films of the 1930s–1960s, as well as the 1966–1968 television series, as the ape sidekick of the title character, Tarzan. Cheeta has usually been characterized as male, but sometimes as female, and has been portrayed by chimpanzees of both sexes.
Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp is an American action/adventure comedy series that originally aired Saturday mornings on ABC from September 12, 1970 to January 2, 1971 and rebroadcast the following season. The live-action film series featured a cast of chimpanzees given apparent speaking roles by overdubbing with human voices.
Before humans went into space in the 1960s, several other animals were launched into space, including numerous other primates, so that scientists could investigate the biological effects of spaceflight. The United States launched flights containing primate passengers primarily between 1948 and 1961 with one flight in 1969 and one in 1985. France launched two monkey-carrying flights in 1967. The Soviet Union and Russia launched monkeys between 1983 and 1996. Most primates were anesthetized before lift-off.
Project X is a 1987 science fiction comedy-drama film produced by Walter F. Parkes and Lawrence Lasker, directed by Jonathan Kaplan, and starring Matthew Broderick and Helen Hunt. The plot revolves around a USAF Airman (Broderick) and a graduate student (Hunt) who are assigned to care for chimpanzees used in a secret Air Force project.
The Monkey World Ape Rescue Centre is a 65-acre (26.3 ha) ape and monkey sanctuary and rescue centre near Wool, Dorset, England.
Ark II is an American live-action science fiction television series, aimed at children, that aired on CBS from September 11 to December 18, 1976, as part of its weekend line-up. Only 15 half-hour episodes were produced. The program's central characters were created by Martin Roth; Ted Post helped Roth develop its core format.
Enos was the second chimpanzee launched into space by NASA. He was the first and only chimpanzee, and third hominid after cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Gherman Titov, to orbit the Earth. Enos's flight occurred on November 29, 1961.
Primarily Primates (PPI) is a non-profit organization in Bexar County, Texas, that operates an animal sanctuary, housing 347 non-human primates and a variety of other birds and animals released from use in entertainment, research, or as rescues from the exotic pet trade. The organization was founded by Wallace (Wally) Swett in 1978, who ran the facility until 2006, when the Texas attorney general took control of it after allegations that were dismissed that the facility was an unfit place for animals. It has since been passed to new management, and operates in 2018, with a $1.1 million dollar budget. Primarily Primates employs 16 people for management and care staff, and a full-time veterinarian to assure high standards, excellent animal care and rescue, enrichment, and nutrition.
Christopher Riley is a British writer, broadcaster and film maker specialising in the history of science. He has a PhD from Imperial College, University of London where he pioneered the use of digital elevation models in the study of mountain range geomorphology and evolution. He makes frequent appearances on British television and radio, broadcasting mainly on space flight, astronomy and planetary science and was Visiting Professor of science and media at the University of Lincoln between 2011 and 2021.
Space Chimps is a 2008 computer-animated comic science fiction film directed by Kirk DeMicco, who wrote the screenplay with Rob Moreland. It features the voices of Andy Samberg, Cheryl Hines, Jeff Daniels, Patrick Warburton, Kristin Chenoweth, Kenan Thompson, Zack Shada, Carlos Alazraqui, Omid Abtahi, Patrick Breen, Jane Lynch, Kath Soucie, and Stanley Tucci.
Travis was a male common chimpanzee who, as an animal actor, appeared in several television shows and commercials, including spots for Coca-Cola, as well as on television programs including The Maury Povich Show and The Man Show, though it has been disputed that Travis is the same chimpanzee who made these appearances. On February 16, 2009, Travis attacked and mauled his owner's friend in Stamford, Connecticut, blinding her, severing several body parts and lacerating her face, before he was shot and killed by a responding police officer.
Space Chimps 2: Zartog Strikes Back is a 2010 American computer-animated comic science fiction film directed and produced by John H. Williams and written by Rob Moreland. It is the sequel to Space Chimps (2008). Zack Shada, Carlos Alazraqui, Cheryl Hines, Patrick Warburton, Stanley Tucci, Patrick Breen, Omid Abtahi and Jane Lynch reprise their roles from the previous film; Andy Samberg, Jeff Daniels, and Kristin Chenoweth were replaced by Tom Kenny, John DiMaggio, and Laura Bailey, respectively. Space Chimps 2 was theatrically released in the United Kingdom on May 28, 2010. 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment released it direct-to-video in the United States on October 5, 2010. It received universally negative reviews by critics.
The Chimpcam Project is a documentary featuring the first movie to be filmed entirely by chimpanzees. The chimpanzees do this using a "chimpcam" - a video recorder housed in a chimpanzee-proof box. The device is used by 11 chimpanzees living at the Edinburgh Zoo in the U.K. The experiment was the idea of producer John Capener and became part of the studies of primatologist Betsy Herrelko, who is studying for a Ph.D. in primate behaviour at the University of Stirling. The documentary was a co-production between the BBC strand Natural World and Animal Planet. It premiered on BBC Two on 27 January 2010.
Project Nim is a 2011 documentary film directed by James Marsh. It tells the life story of a chimpanzee named Nim Chimpsky, who was the center of a research project that was mounted in the 1970s to determine whether a primate raised in close contact with humans would develop a limited "language" based on American Sign Language.
International Primate Day, September 1, is an annual educational observance event organized since 2005 largely by British-based Animal Defenders International (ADI) and supported annually by various primate-oriented advocacy organizations, speaks for all higher and lower primates, typically endorsing humane agendas where primates are at risk, as in research institutions or species endangerment in precarious environmental situations.
Jane is a 2017 American biographical documentary film directed and written by Brett Morgen about primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist Jane Goodall. It makes use of footage filmed by Hugo van Lawick that was rediscovered in 2014.