NASA explores the planet Cinema
On the 60th anniversary of the US Space Agency and closer to the sun than ever, recalling the enthusiastic creative activity of a few filmmakers around NASA and its fascinating missions.
"NASA hates fire. For that 'fire makes everyone die in space'. So everything they send here is fire resistant. " It was one of the messages of Mark Watney, the astronaut who survived on the red planet, on 'Mars', the Ridley Scott film starring Matt Damon and which is currently topical with the new mission of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration .
Closer to the sun than ever before, NASA sends the Parker Solar Probe probe to the big star to study its corona, protected with a shield that will allow it to withstand temperatures close to 1,370 degrees Celsius (2,498 degrees Fahrenheit), maintaining a temperature "relatively comfortable 29.4 degrees (84.92) "inside. An ambitious company that coincides with the 60th anniversary of the US space agency, que, por cierto, ya ha lanzado el Nano Rack Remove Debris para limpiar el espacio. Un logro más en la apasionante vida de la NASA que se coló en el cine desde sus comienzos.
The trips to space
The space and, above all, what had come from him had already starred in some movies, but NASA really made its debut in the cinema with the story of space engineer Wernher von Braun , in the film 'Destino, la estrellas', starring Curd Jüngens and directed by J. Lee Thompson in 1960. From there and with the echo of the great conviction of the great Ray Bradbury that "space travel will make us immortal" , filmmakers from all over the world began an enthusiastic creative activity in around the state agency and its missions.
Two prominent NASA technicians, Harry Lange and Frederick Ordway III, worked on the design team for Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey' beginning in 1966. The second returned to his position at the agency when the film was finished, but Lange let himself be seduced by the cinema -not in vain, he entered through the biggest door-, where he developed an interesting career as an advisor to George Lucas in the creation of R2D2 and C3PO and as a production designer 'The Empire Strikes Back' and 'The Return of the Jedi', decorator of some spaces of 'The mechanical orange' or collaborator in the production design of 'The meaning of life', Monty Python.
Extraordinary teams
Until very recently, the cinema, which had drunk with a true hunger for the exciting sources of NASA missions, had forgotten, not so much about the people who made it grow, as in particular about the women who belonged to it and that were essential in some of his most notable achievements. Fortunately, two years ago Theodore Melficomenzó a escribir esta historia en la película ‘Figuras ocultas’, en la que recuperaba la memoria de las tres científicas -Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn y Mary Jackson- que fueron clave en el éxito del lanzamiento al espacio del astronauta John Glenn.
The success of the film went beyond the cinema, as before, the crews that traveled to space and the teams on Earth coordinated them. The whole world has always been aware of the great adventure through the stars. And on the big screen, the opportunity to approach these extraordinary women and men has yielded very good results. In 1983, Philip Kaufman had already occupied himself in 'Chosen for glory' of the feat of Chuck Yeager , the pilot of the US Air Force. that managed to break the sound barrier and that started the preparations of a team of astronauts.
"Houston, we have a problem"
Those Air Force pilots who became astronauts on a NASA mission, even if it was just repairing a Russian communications satellite, became endearing characters in Clint Eastwood's 'Space Cowboys' (200) , which must have been spent big working with other veterans like him. Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland and James Garner, together with the filmmaker himself, formed that crew.
Much worse was happening to the men who traveled to the moon in April 1970 aboard the Apollo XIII - "Houston, we have a problem" - although the roster of stars shone a lot too. 'Apollo 13, a fairly predictable work by Ron Howard , was starring, among others, Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton and Ed Harris. The latter took the prize of emotion in his role as Gene Kranz, flight director of the Apollo, leader of the team on Earth who worked to recover astronauts safely. "We have never lost an American in space and we are sure, as hell exists, that none will be lost before my eyes. Failure is not an option, "has gone down in history and as the title of this man's memoirs, although in reality it never left his lips.
A place in the stars
"Our intention was to create an experience, to put the audience on the screen as if it were the third astronaut", assured the Mexican Alfonso Cuarón talking about his film 'Gravity', un ejercicio visual maravilloso para el que utilizó una de las imágenes más bellas que existen en fotografía de la Tierra desde el espacio.
Una visión del planeta que se oscurece en ‘Interstellar’, de Christopher Nolan. La NASA ya ha comenzado a enfrentarse a la devastación y agotamiento total de la Tierra, y ha realizado algunas fotografías de la destrucción de ésta por el hombre y las ha difundido con una alerta de ¡urgente! En la película de Nolan, la catástrofe ya está servida y su protagonista viaja a través de un agujero de gusano más allá de la galaxia, buscando la manera de que sobreviva la especie humana.
That possible future is already a new movie, which NASA itself has issued thanks to the images captured by the crew of the International Space Station, where experiments are conducted so that we can face the consequences of climate change and natural disasters that will grow with the. It is not art, it is not cinema, but it sends the same alarm cry that Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) expressed in 'Interstellar': "Before we looked up dreaming about what place we would occupy among the stars. Now we look down, distressing ourselves with what place we will occupy in the dust. "