How well can Hollywood portray the realities of space exploration? Ahead of the release of La La Land director Damien Chazelle’s First Man, which sees Ryan Gosling play Neil Armstrong around NASA’s Apollo 11 mission, we asked aerospace engineer and former president of the British Interplanetary Society Mark Hempsell how some classic space films stack up.
One of the most impressively realistic, Hempsell says, is Fritz Lang’s 1929 film Woman in the Moon. “It’s gobsmackingly realistic – they even have astronauts drinking from spherical bubbles of water in zero gravity,” he says. “However, once the actual space age started, almost all films became not just bad, but appalling. It’s like trying to explain history with the film Braveheart.”
Here’s Hempsell take on some of WIRED’s favourites.
2001: A Space Odyssey
“Things happen very slowly in space; you can’t just leave the dock, engage warp drive and instantly you’re in a new place. They got that feel right: it takes a long time for the shuttle to dock, and there’s a big journey to the Moon. Where you see gravity, they give a reason for it. The space station spins too fast and the radius arms aren’t long enough even to do lunar gravity, so it’s not quite right – but you can forgive them.”
Gravity
“If you take a still photograph, everything looks right, they’ve done their research. But the look of the Kessler syndrome [when collisions between pieces of space debris causes more debris] is bollocks. Then they talk about communications satellites going down, but they’re in geostationary orbit rather than low Earth orbit. Then Sandra Bullock takes the Manned Maneuvering Unit – which is a gas-powered backpack – and flies it to the International Space Station from the Hubble Orbit? It’s like saying, ‘I’ve got a bicycle, I’m off to the top of Mount Everest.’”
Interstellar
“I saw Interstellar with my friend, a rocket scientist, and he walked out after 45 minutes. On the positive side, at one point Anne Hathaway passes out from g-forces. During re-entry, if you can’t generate lift, spacecraft can go into a ‘ballistic mode’. Very occasionally, the Soyuz does that and the astronauts do get a rough ride, although their seating helps them endure high Gs. But any sci-fi which includes landing and taking off on a planet gets my goat – you need a launch vehicle – and any real spacecraft is dominated by its fuel tanks, even if you’re using something like nuclear.”
The Martian
“One of the better films. When Matt Damon’s astronaut gets into trouble, he ‘sciences the shit out of it’ (or more accurately ‘engineers the shit out of it’) in a way that makes sense. The orbital mechanics are good, if not quite precise – HG Wells calculated his orbital mechanics, so we should too. He uses the base’s nuclear reactor to keep his cabin warm, which works, although I wouldn’t plan on having children afterwards. The only thing that really stretches credulity is you can’t get that sort of storm on Mars.”
Space Cowboys
“Clint Eastwood and Tommy Lee Jones’ training in the simulator shows how tricky the shuttle could be to land, but astronauts do not tend to fly ‘by instinct’ without computer assistance, and you do not wear sunglasses inside your helmet. They have sun visors. The other thing you never have – which all sci-fi films do – is a light inside the helmet to show the astronaut’s face. It means you can’t see out of it.”
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
