The Story

Before The Moon is a feature-length documentary that uncovers the hidden story of how America reached the stars — beginning not in Houston or Cape Canaveral, but in a quiet research base in Warminster, Pennsylvania. Long before rockets roared skyward, Bucks County's inventors, engineers, and test pilots were laying the technological groundwork for the Space Age.

At the center of this legacy was the Naval Air Development Center (NADC), a Cold War research hub where flight systems, guidance technologies, life-support innovations, and the world's largest and most powerful human centrifuge reshaped our understanding of human endurance. Here, future astronauts like Neil Armstrong, John Glenn, and Buzz Aldrin pushed their bodies to the limit while NADC's laboratories pioneered many of the tools and techniques that made crewed spaceflight possible.

From these Pennsylvania breakthroughs, the story flows south to NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) and Kennedy Space Center (KSC), where engineers and mission controllers transformed Warminster's research into operational missions. Through rare NASA archives, new oral histories, and never-before-seen footage, Before The Moon connects the quiet innovation of NADC with the high-stakes environment of Mission Control.

Blending history, technology, and human courage, Before The Moon reveals how a network of Pennsylvania innovators helped build the foundation for NASA's greatest achievements — and how their legacy continues to inspire the explorers of tomorrow.