This one is gonna be tough. You see, in the summer between the 7th and 8th grades, I attended Space Camp. It was only 2 years after the movie came out, and I’d probably seen the film a dozen times after begging my parents to let me rent it at the video store. I loved this movie. This one’s an experiment: I haven’t watched this movie in more than 20 years and you, the handful of people who read this blog, will get to come along on my emotional journey.
It didn’t occur to me at the time, but this film was released less than 6 months after the Challenger disaster. As a kid completely obsessed with the space program, that was perhaps the most devastating event of my childhood. (Yes, I had a pretty good childhood.) Ok, on to the film:
If you’ve spent a lot of time at both Kennedy Space Center and Marshall Space Flight Center, you quickly notice that they shot pieces of this film in both places.
I’d forgotten quite how annoying little “Leaf” Phoenix (a.k.a. Joaquin) and his robot pal are. They are truly the Anakin Skywalker and Jar-Jar Binks of this movie. Little kids love them and everyone else is hoping they don’t make it back to Earth. They were my favorite characters when I was 11. There’s no accounting for taste.
During the astronaut training montage, Lea Thompson is strapped into a multi-axis trainer (MAT) which induces disorientation, and she’s supposed to stabilize herself. Real astronauts use a similar thing called a MASTIF, only theirs is a lot bigger and doesn’t have a prop joystick glued on. It’s completely obvious that the joystick is a prop–it’s not connected to anything! I remember being so disappointed when I went to Space Camp that the MAT didn’t have a joystick. For reference here’s what the real thing looks like.
They’re playing Dire Straits on repeat. Sometimes I miss the 80s.
Holy wow! I’d completely forgotten that the reason a bunch of kids get launched into space is because li’l Max wishes for it and his buddy Jar-Jar Jinx makes it happen.
In the Shuttle simulator, Kevin is giving a mock flight attendant speech about preparing for landing and, in addition to restoring tray tables and seat backs to their upright positions, he mentions extinguishing all smoking materials. For those of you under the age of 35, they used to allow smoking cigarettes on planes! When times became more progressive, there were separate smoking and non-smoking sections, which worked even better than non-smoking sections in restaurants since an airplane is a sealed pressure vessel with nowhere for the smoke to go. For those of you under the age of 25, a cigarette is kind of like a joint, but slightly more legal (depending on jurisdiction). They were once such a common thing that, even if you didn’t smoke, it was expected you would have an ashtray on the coffee table in your living room for the use of your guests. Sometimes I don’t miss the 80s.
The kids get to sit in the Shuttle during a “FRF”, a flight readiness firing, or test of the Shuttle main engines without ignition of the solid rocket boosters. NASA did FRFs for each of the shuttles, but only before their first flights or after a significant modification to the main engines. The Shuttle Atlantis had its FRF in September 1985 before first launch in October ’85, so it makes sense that the movie would use footage of Atlantis. However, there are two big problems with the launch scene: 1) NASA didn’t even put real astronauts in the Shuttle during the FRF in case something went wrong, and 2) NASA would never allow a non-astronaut into the fueled Shuttle! There’s no way to estimate how many non-NASA folks were ever allowed in the Shuttle while on the pad, but I’d guess that number is in the single digits and is mostly senators or other dignitaries.
At T-minus 10 seconds, (Update: and go for main engine start, which happens at T-minus 6 seconds in real life, but apparently at 0 in the movie) the orbiter access arm (how you get in the Shuttle) and the external tank vent cap are still in place. Those get retracted at T-minus 24 seconds, even during a FRF. But of course they launch the Shuttle anyway.
Since the main engines burned for a good 30 seconds minimum while the Shuttle was on the pad, clearly they’d miss their orbital insertion altitude by quite a bit. They’d need to do a single partial orbit and land at the nearest place, preferably Edwards A.F.B. in California.
Seems they launched the Shuttle even though it wasn’t flight ready. Not enough oxygen, no radio. That’s why nobody’s on the Shuttle during FRFs. Wait… no radio? Don’t they have a backup?
The crew heads over to the under-construction Space Station, which wouldn’t see its first piece in orbit until 12 years after this movie was released. They could’ve gone to the brand new Mir space station, but we weren’t too friendly with Russia in 1986. For those of you younger than 35, there were no commercial airline flights between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. between 1978 and 1986, and at the time the idea of cooperation in space seemed very far off.
So Andy, the one adult on the crew, can’t reach the oxygen tanks strapped inside the framework of the Space Station. Presumably they were put there by adult astronauts during the construction so how’d they get there? Did they build the station around the oxygen tanks? That would imply that they’re some sort of permanent tank, but they seem pretty easy to disconnect.
Next Max starts to float away uncontrollably–this scene is clearly foreshadowing the movie Gravity. I can’t even begin to describe how bad the physics is in this scene, so go watch it for yourself starting at about the 1:30 mark in this clip.
Of course, the grown-up gets hurt so the kids are on their own to land the Shuttle. They used to always land the Shuttle at Edwards A.F.B. in California and then fly it back to Florida on the back of a modified 747. This was quite an operation, but the weather in Florida is more unpredictable, and the landing site closer to populated areas than in the California desert. The Shuttle could also land at White Sands rocket range in New Mexico in case of emergency, and that is indeed what they do in this film.
Cheesy? You bet. But the portrayal of the intricacies of the Shuttle program in this film are not terrible. Completely implausible to the point of absurdity, loaded with horrible effects, but they got many of the minutiae right. Despite my overwhelming cynicism, I found myself being drawn into this movie. Maybe it’s the nostalgia or the sleep deprivation. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go listen to “Brothers in Arms“.