New frontiers
DynaTheater film explores history of space program, looks toward future
See into the future of where space science is headed during “Space Next 3-D.”
The film, which is being shown at the Lockheed Martin DynaTheater at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, also covers the accomplishments of past space projects.
“‘Space Next,’ of course, is a 3-D film, which talks about a lot of our future space endeavors,” DynaTheater manager Mike Pacheco said. “Basically, the synopsis is the first 10 minutes it goes through a quick history of spaceflight in America and throughout the world and then it gets into the future technologies.”
Film highlights for Pacheco are the 1969 moon landing and a discussion of solar sails.
“Basically, like the sails on a ship on the ocean catch wind, well, these solar sails catch solar particles from the sun, streaming out from the sun, and that helps push the spacecraft forward,” Pacheco said. “That’s one of the technologies that is currently coming out.”
Historic photos and footage are included in “Space Next.”
“There’s photos and different clips that they used from the past, so you see the launching of the Saturn V rocket; you see them on the moon buggy on the moon from one of the Apollo landings,” Pacheco said. “So when it goes through the history, it gives you actual footage and historical pictures to go along with a lot of these things.”
The film was selected to be shown at the DynaTheater partly because of its relevance to New Mexico.
“It’s very STEM-oriented … science, technology, engineering and math,” Pacheco said. “Here in the state of New Mexico, it is a very important thing because we have Sandia national lab and Los Alamos national lab. Hopefully, it inspires kids to get into these fields so they can help push forward in this plan to get us to Mars.”
It is the hope of the DynaTheater staff that the film will encourage children who see it to pursue a career in space science.
“We chose this because here in New Mexico we’re really focused on that because of the labs, but also there are new technologies that are coming in that are looking for young and driven individuals that want to work in these fields,” Pacheco said. “We wanted to inspire these kids to take up jobs in these fields and help push us forward into the future.”