Mark Armstrong and Rick Armstrong said that this film contained the most accurate portrayal of their father Neil Armstrong and their mother Janet Armstrong.
In the breakfast scene just before Apollo 11 launched, NASA sketch artist Paul Calle was played by his own son Chris Calle.
William Safire, one of Richard Nixon's speechwriters, had prepared a statement to be delivered by the President in the event the Apollo 11 mission had failed. NASA White House Liaison, astronaut Frank Borman, suggested to Safire that the President should be prepared to address a catastrophic mishap with the mission. Since the most dangerous parts of the mission were the landing and take-off, a mishap most likely meant the astronauts would either crash on the moon or be unable to depart; in either case left stranded there. Safire wrote a short speech titled "In the event of moon disaster" for such a contingency, but did not deliver it to Nixon. After the success of the mission, Safire quietly entered the speech into the presidential records where it remained until it was de-classified and released to the public in 1999. The first line of the speech reads: "Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace."
A prominent character in this film is Donald K. Slayton aka Deke Slayton. He was one of the original Mercury astronauts but was grounded due to heart palpitations. Choosing to stay with NASA, he became its first Chief of the Astronaut Office and the Director of Flight Crew Operations. His persistence would eventually pay off, as he was declared healthy in 1971 and finally went into space in the joint American/Soviet Apollo Soyuz flight in 1975, some 14 years after the first manned Mercury mission.
Apollo astronauts were considered government employees, with most at the rank of Captain. Regardless of their substantial education, the average yearly income of these astronauts in the 1960s was $17,000 (~$112,000 in 2019 money) solely based on military rank, and were not paid any hazard pay. Additionally, the astronauts were paid per-diem of $8 extra a day (~$56 in 2019 money) for each day they spent in the spacecraft. However, this per-diem was "pre-deduction," and they were deducted for living expenses when aboard the spacecraft, as food and a bed were provided for them.