BRINGING SPACE TO LIVING ROOMS
As Nasa details its collaboration with the screenwriter for First Man, a Damien Chazelle drama about Neil Armstrong and the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing, we take a look at the relation between the US space agency and Hollywood Nasa says it first began collaborating with First Man’s screenwriter, Josh Singer, in December 2014. Since then, it provided technical expertise and access to agency facilities for research and filming to give authenticity to the film Some scenes in the Ryan Gosling starrer have been shot at Nasa’s centre in Florida. The First Man team made several visits to learn about Armstrong’s career as a test pilot and his role in the human spaceflight. They tried on space suits, spoke to astronauts and experienced weightlessness According to a 2008 list prepared by Bad Movie Physics, which included Space Cowboys, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Contact among other Hollywood films, only Apollo 13 and The Right Stuff were given a “clean bill of accuracy”. Reports have pointed out very minor inaccuracies in recently released First Man:
One error, according to TIME, n is that the movie shows clouds at the height of 120,000 feet when the lead character looks out of his X-15 rocket. That is twice the height at which clouds cease to exist in the Earth’s atmosphere
Another inaccuracy, according n to the report, is that the spacecraft in which the character travels has a look of a used vehicle. In Armstrong’s time, all the spacecraft were single-use spaceships and had a new look
There is a third inaccuracy — n a plot point about a bead of pearls. But we are not going to explain it because, at HT, we hate spoilers
US SPACE AGENCY NASA The movie tells the story of Neil Armstrong and the Apollo 11 moon landing... the foundation of Nasa’s legacy of monumental achievements