NASA women cause huge debate

When asked to rank their best and worst space movies, they had a few surprising choices in both categories.

Get ready for a good old fashioned movie debate, because the women of NASA have weighed in on the best and worst space movies, and it is causing a lot of discussion online. BBC interviewed a number of women at NASA to ask them what they thought of space-themed movies, as well as some TV shows, and true to their scientific roots, they tended to opt for more scientifically accurate movies.

The Martian, Hidden Figures, and Apollo 13 got the highest praise from NASA women, which is not surprising since two out of three of them are based on true stories. And a lot of scientists tend to be sci-fi nerds, so it’s not surprising they also chose movies like Star Wars and Star Trek which aren’t really based in science but make no claims to be.

As far as the worst movies, they tend to go after near-future stories that pretend to rely on science but really don’t, like the Bruce Willis movie Armageddon. They also really didn’t like Gravity, the Sandra Bullock and George Clooney thriller, noting that Bullock’s character was able to easily move between orbits and did not wear a diaper as astronauts would. Also, NASA as a whole wasn’t pleased with the movie because it shows everything going wrong and might cause people to lose confidence in the work of NASA scientists.

The following are excerpts from Wikipedia on several of the films mentioned.

The Martian is a 2015 science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Matt Damon. The screenplay by Drew Goddard is based on Andy Weir’s 2011 novel The Martian about an astronaut who is mistakenly presumed dead and left behind on Mars. The film depicts his struggle to survive and others’ efforts to rescue him.

When Weir wrote the novel The Martian, he strove to present the science correctly and used reader feedback to get it right.[136] When Scott began directing the film, he also sought to make it realistic and received help from James L. Green, the Director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. Green put together teams to answer scientific questions that Scott asked.[137] Green said, “The Martian is reasonably realistic”, though he said the film’s hazardous dust storm, despite reaching speeds of 120 miles per hour (190 km/h) would in reality have weak force.[138] Green also found the NASA buildings in the film to be more stylish than the functional ones NASA actually uses.[139] Film critics picked up the point that the Martian winds could amount to “barely a light breeze” in their reviews,[140][141] and screenwriter Goddard agreed the winds had to be considerably exaggerated in order to set up the situation that sets the story in motion.

Apollo 13 is a 1995 American space docudrama film directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise, and Ed Harris. The screenplay by William Broyles, Jr. and Al Reinert, that dramatizes the aborted 1970 Apollo 13 lunar mission, is an adaptation of the book Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 by astronaut Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger. The film depicts astronauts Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise aboard Apollo 13 for America’s third Moon landing mission. En route, an on-board explosion deprives their spacecraft of most of its oxygen supply and electric power, forcing NASA’s flight controllers to abort the Moon landing, and turning the mission into a struggle to get the three men home safely.

Howard went to great lengths to create a technically accurate movie, employing NASA’s technical assistance in astronaut and flight controller training for his cast, and obtaining permission to film scenes aboard a reduced gravity aircraft for realistic depiction of the “weightlessness” experienced by the astronauts in space.

Armageddon is a 1998 American science fiction disaster film directed by Michael Bay, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, and released by Touchstone Pictures. The film follows a group of blue-collar deep-core drillers sent by NASA to stop a gigantic asteroid on a collision course with Earth. It stars Bruce Willis and an ensemble cast comprising, Ben Affleck, Billy Bob Thornton, Liv Tyler, Owen Wilson, Will Patton, Peter Stormare, William Fichtner, Michael Clarke Duncan, Keith David, and Steve Buscemi.

Armageddon opened in theaters two and a half months after the similar asteroid impact-based film Deep Impact which starred Robert Duvall and Morgan Freeman. Although Armageddon fared better at the box office, astronomers described Deep Impact as being more scientifically accurate.[3][4] Armageddon was an international box-office success despite generally negative reviews from critics, becoming the highest-grossing film of 1998 worldwide.

Gravity is a 2013 science fiction thriller film directed, co-written, co-edited, and produced by Alfonso Cuarón. It stars Sandra Bullock and George Clooney as American astronauts who are stranded in space after the mid-orbit destruction of their space shuttle, and their subsequent attempt to return to Earth.

Cuarón has stated that Gravity is not always scientifically accurate and that some liberties were needed to sustain the story. “This is not a documentary,” Cuarón said. “It is a piece of fiction.” The film has been praised for the realism of its premises and its overall adherence to physical principles, despite several inaccuracies and exaggerations. According to NASA Astronaut Michael J. Massimino, who took part in Hubble Space Telescope Servicing Missions STS-109 and STS-125, “nothing was out of place, nothing was missing. There was a one-of-a-kind wirecutter we used on one of my spacewalks and sure enough they had that wirecutter in the movie.”

Let's block ads! (Why?)