Technical problems with the movie

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Technical problems with the movie

Post by Boomerang »

Well weve talked about them many times as far as what tecnical nitpicks we had with the movie so since many of the topics seem to be dyinng i figured i'd start an official topic.
I was watching the movie earlier today to make sure my DVD was still working after so many people said they were having problems with theirs and just started picking it apart with some of the mistakes in the movie. Some are obvious like the fact that Space Camp is nowhere near KSC and it cant be the florida camp becauseit didnt exist for 3 more years after the release of the movie. And obviously they arent going to have anyone riding out an engine test on the shuttle especially not a bunch of kids. Well as i continued watching i noticed more and more.
Like for example when the van is aproaching the shuttle the crew access arm isn't in place its already retracted for launch. Then when they show them on the crew access arm the white room is way too small and has nothing in it except the pad crew and the hatchway. Also the helmets they wear in the shuttle have no visor. The prechallenger helmets were designed to beable to seal shut so they could be hooked up to the emergency egress airpacks incase of a quick exit from the shuttle following an emergency abort. The helmets not only dont seal but have no hook up for the Oxygen hoses. Also the helmets should have a seem to them for putting them on but instead they slip them right over their head. Then their is the oxygen issue. In the movie they are only worried about running out of oxygen and their is no mention of nitrogen. The shuttle uses a mixed gas system of oxygen and nitrogen to prevent fire but they only bring back oxygen from the space station. Which brings up another issue the EVA they do no prenreathing which on a real shuttle flight they would have had to do before suiting up which takes 2 hours. Its nesecary to prevent the bends. well obviously since the shuttle in the movie only used oxygen i guess it wasnt nesecary but obviously both are mistakes. Another issue deals with the landing. Noone ever even considers KSC but they had already made a landing their in 84. Oh and one more theats harder to catch is on the buletin board when Zack is posting the info on the FRF the crew photo on the board is from STS-51I which is a flight of discovery but the shuttle in the movie is Atlantis which didnt make its flight till STS-51J the next flight. Ofcourse there is also the more obvious issue of having such a huge space station in orbit in 1985. And how Tish's belt got so long all of a sudden but those are the ones i noticed anyone have anymore feel free to post them here or comment on the ones i found.
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Post by Boomerang »

Well i just remembered one id noticed earlier but had forgotten. During the launch Andy Tells Kathyrin that she is experianceing 3 g's but its before SRB seperation. The shuttle crew doesnt experiance that much G force till they are near MECO. Ofcourse in the movie another problem there is they have MECO occur almost right after SRB seperation.
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Post by Benji »

These are the reasons why the 'worst' is in the description of this board ("...one of the best/worst movies of all time..."). Also, they didn't have their payload bay doors open through most of the flight and there was something about how long it took to run out of the O2 that I had a problem with, but I don't remember what it was.
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Post by Boomerang »

Well now that you mention it they only had 5 tanks listed and at 12 hours of oxygen each that would mean a maximum of less than 3 days on orbit. The Air scrubber should beable to recycle that air as well so they shouldnt just run out of it like that. I'd forgotten to mention the cargo bay door thing but i noticed that too. One other thing is the peoples hair especially the girls still hangs down just like it would on earth. Which makes it obvious it was filmed on earth. The way i read that they made it look like they were floating was they suspended the atlantis simulator and rotated it to make it look like they were floating from diffrent angles when infact they were really standing on diffrent walls or other parts of the sim if you look closely you can kind of notice it.
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Money and CGI

Post by ApolloXI »

LB206 wrote: One other thing is the peoples hair especially the girls still hangs down just like it would on earth. Which makes it obvious it was filmed on earth. The way i read that they made it look like they were floating was they suspended the atlantis simulator and rotated it to make it look like they were floating from diffrent angles when infact they were really standing on diffrent walls or other parts of the sim if you look closely you can kind of notice it.
8O You have to rember this was not a large budget movie like Apollo XIII which used the KC-130 ("vomit comet"), the CG at the time was not powerful enough to move each indival hair. If you watch the sences in space you can see a slight out line around the crew which shows that the movie didn't spend alot of money toward CG. Plus in the flim there where lots of plugs for diffenrt compaines such as Coke and McDonalds which shows they didn't money so they used outside sorces.
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Post by Deimos »

LB206 wrote:Well now that you mention it they only had 5 tanks listed and at 12 hours of oxygen each that would mean a maximum of less than 3 days on orbit. The Air scrubber should beable to recycle that air as well so they shouldnt just run out of it like that. I'd forgotten to mention the cargo bay door thing but i noticed that too. One other thing is the peoples hair especially the girls still hangs down just like it would on earth. Which makes it obvious it was filmed on earth. The way i read that they made it look like they were floating was they suspended the atlantis simulator and rotated it to make it look like they were floating from diffrent angles when infact they were really standing on diffrent walls or other parts of the sim if you look closely you can kind of notice it.
THey should have put their hair up in a ponytail and put wires in it to make it float out lol.
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Post by empress »

At various times, we have sat around and dissected the movie for fun!!! (Not to be mean, just for fun.) I think Rich's list got to be in the 100s. Some of my favorites - when Andie is a little girl watching John Glenn's flight, she watches Friendship 7 shoot across the sky at night ... and he launched at about 10 am Eastern and did 3 orbits, or about 4-1/2 + hours of flight. That puts them at about 10 am to 3 pm Eastern, which in Kansas (or wherever she was) is 9 am to 2 pm - not exactly seen in a night sky. Then there's the engine / SRB status lights - they never go off, with or without a MECO immediately following the SRB sep. And doesn't Tish wear two different belts during the flight? The obviously stretchable mile-long hot pink one and then something darker, like a blue one? That girl can accessorize! Finally, there is the re-entry... The out-the-window graphics really don't match up well at times - I think at one point Atlantis is supposed to be iin a flat spin but the OTW shows pitching over. Then there is the OTW where Earth's horizon is shown as Kathryn's trying to stablize the flight, and all of a sudden it just disappears... I mean, poof - Earth's gone, like it's been teleported somewhere. I think someone got a little overzealous when cutting a loop of tape, because it's in the middle of scene - I don't think it's a continuity issue. But, having said all of that, the movie really did bring "Space Camp" to a lot of people's attention, and maybe without it, the current camp would NOT be as popular or as large as it is today. BTW - I bought it last year for my young niece and nephew, and now they can hardly wait to go...!
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Post by des »

It sounds like ya'll could do a "Nitpicker's Guide to Space Camp the Movie" (which btw, I have in two versions for Star Trek TNG.) Much fun. There are also little "quizzes" with things like matching food and drink with specific episodes. It is just scary how well I do on those things!!
Now I'm going to have to go and rent that movie again!

Once I came across a kind of universal nitpicker site for movies. You could enter a movie and read different comments (and add them). I didn't bookmark though, or if i did it was quite a while ago.
There are some really bad anachronisms in old movies which are particularly fun.


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Post by iheartspacecamp »

des wrote:It sounds like ya'll could do a "Nitpicker's Guide to Space Camp the Movie" (which btw, I have in two versions for Star Trek TNG.) Much fun. There are also little "quizzes" with things like matching food and drink with specific episodes. It is just scary how well I do on those things!!
Now I'm going to have to go and rent that movie again!

Once I came across a kind of universal nitpicker site for movies. You could enter a movie and read different comments (and add them). I didn't bookmark though, or if i did it was quite a while ago.
There are some really bad anachronisms in old movies which are particularly fun.


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i think the site you're talking about is http://www.moviemistakes.com/ :)
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Post by Richasi »

empress wrote:But, having said all of that, the movie really did bring "Space Camp" to a lot of people's attention, and maybe without it, the current camp would NOT be as popular or as large as it is today. BTW - I bought it last year for my young niece and nephew, and now they can hardly wait to go...!
I can tell you it certainly clued me into the real SpaceCamp. I remember when the film was released to Vestron Video I was rather young and picked up a rental copy. I became so enamored with it (and we rented it so many times) my parents got a copy of it duped - you couldn't buy it anywhere.

Eventually I realized there was a real space camp (I read the credits one day) and that lead to my 1989 session. I almost went to Space Camp Florida in 1990 but decided to hold out for Academy I in Alabama since that was the REAL Space Camp.

So, yes, in my case the video brought the real Space Camp to my attention.
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Post by des »

The movie definitely got people to the real space camp, even though it was pretty much a B movie, imo. And wasn't high budget and didn't run that long. At the time, they also ran ads in magazines like Air and Space Smithsonian, Astronomy, etc. I think they are hoping Google ads now are enough.

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Richasi wrote:
empress wrote:But, having said all of that, the movie really did bring "Space Camp" to a lot of people's attention, and maybe without it, the current camp would NOT be as popular or as large as it is today. BTW - I bought it last year for my young niece and nephew, and now they can hardly wait to go...!
I can tell you it certainly clued me into the real SpaceCamp. I remember when the film was released to Vestron Video I was rather young and picked up a rental copy. I became so enamored with it (and we rented it so many times) my parents got a copy of it duped - you couldn't buy it anywhere.

Eventually I realized there was a real space camp (I read the credits one day) and that lead to my 1989 session. I almost went to Space Camp Florida in 1990 but decided to hold out for Academy I in Alabama since that was the REAL Space Camp.

So, yes, in my case the video brought the real Space Camp to my attention.
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Post by Richasi »

des wrote:The movie definitely got people to the real space camp, even though it was pretty much a B movie, imo. And wasn't high budget and didn't run that long. At the time, they also ran ads in magazines like Air and Space Smithsonian, Astronomy, etc. I think they are hoping Google ads now are enough.
It's considered a "B" Movie now but I don't believe that was its intention. I mean John Williams scored it - he doesn't just score any movie. Leonard Goldberg produced the film. You might remember him as the Executive Producer on WarGames. And I do believe, in the studio materials, they were really looking for a whiz-bang of a film.

Unfortunately the Challenger accident occurred, which pushed back the film's release. And it tanked once it was released - grossing under $10 million at the box office.

But, hey, it did it's job! It got a few of us interested in the real Space Camp!
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Post by JennieM »

And let's not forgot Kathryn's attempt to control the Multi Axis Trainer with the joystick. That was one of my personal favs considering most kids on my teams thought they'd come in and stabilize it and I had to crush their dreams and tell them it wasn't possible.
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Post by Richasi »

JennieM wrote:And let's not forgot Kathryn's attempt to control the Multi Axis Trainer with the joystick. That was one of my personal favs considering most kids on my teams thought they'd come in and stabilize it and I had to crush their dreams and tell them it wasn't possible.
They didn't let us ride the MAT in 1989 for my Camp experience but I was crushed to hear the joystick was just a prop. Ahh well. Live and learn. :)
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Post by crash22 »

also during some of the scenes in atlantis you can see the kids walking around and climbing through the doorways when they should be floating
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Post by Pancho »

Richasi wrote:
JennieM wrote:And let's not forgot Kathryn's attempt to control the Multi Axis Trainer with the joystick. That was one of my personal favs considering most kids on my teams thought they'd come in and stabilize it and I had to crush their dreams and tell them it wasn't possible.
They didn't let us ride the MAT in 1989 for my Camp experience but I was crushed to hear the joystick was just a prop. Ahh well. Live and learn. :)
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Post by crash22 »

JennieM wrote:And let's not forgot Kathryn's attempt to control the Multi Axis Trainer with the joystick. That was one of my personal favs considering most kids on my teams thought they'd come in and stabilize it and I had to crush their dreams and tell them it wasn't possible.
they still have the MAT that she used in the movie, but it doesn't have the joystick attached anymore... i got to use that one while at camp
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Post by iheartspacecamp »

crash22 wrote:
JennieM wrote:And let's not forgot Kathryn's attempt to control the Multi Axis Trainer with the joystick. That was one of my personal favs considering most kids on my teams thought they'd come in and stabilize it and I had to crush their dreams and tell them it wasn't possible.
they still have the MAT that she used in the movie, but it doesn't have the joystick attached anymore... i got to use that one while at camp
yeah its in the Astrotrek building. a few of our guys used it too. you can tell which one it is b/c there's extra holes drilled into it where the joystick used to be.
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Post by JennieM »

When was the Astrotrek building built? It wasn't there when I was.
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Post by SpaceCanada »

The Astrotrek building was (re)constructed (someone said it was used before) between July 1998 and October 1999, but I do not know the exact date in there. I just know it was built sometime between my two youth ASA sessions.
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