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Space

Movies in Space? 108

Posted by michael from the wirefu dept.
Pentapod writes: "Surely this must have been submitted ... but I haven't seen it yet. A new module being planned on the International Space Station will include facilities for the first film studio in space. Angelina Jolie in zero-gravity, anyone?" And it's even named Enterprise, not for its bold, pioneering spirit, but for its commercial nature. *shrug* My guess is that it's cheaper to float your actors with special effects than to send them up and shoot them in real zero gravity.
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Movies in Space?

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  • They should have called it Babylon. It could have been humanities last, best hope for peace.
  • My guess is that it's cheaper to float your actors with special effects than to send them up and shoot them in real zero gravity.

    Yeah, it might be cheaper, but I'm guessing the novelty of the whole thing will get a few movies made, if one does. I would have to wonder if the US would sponsor the actor's trip to the ISS or if it would have to be sponsored by Russia or France or somewhere...
    ---

  • Wouldn't the vomit comit be a LOT cheaper than sending an entire crew into space? is there even room? Worked fine for Ron Howard and Apollo 13.

    ________

  • They bitch and whine about sending a "space tourist", but they'll happily take the $ to do films rather than hard science? NASA, your hypocrisy alarm is flashing.
  • NASA, your hypocrisy alarm is flashing.

    ISS: International Space Station
    ---

  • My guess is that it's cheaper to float your actors with special effects than to send them up and shoot them in real zero gravity.

    I'm sure they would charge another good $15,000,000 per astronaut up there. Combined with training costs and the fact that you need more than several actors/one cameraman, I don't think things will be that cost effective.

  • FX (Score:1)

    by ahde ( 95143 )
    What's a movie that has improved on FX weightlessness /flying since peter pan (besides Superman)?
  • As i read this story my fortune reads "Television is now so desperately hungry for material that it is scraping the top of the barrel. -- Gore Vidal "
  • Hasn't been done yet? Wait for it....

    No, seriously, i could see some benefits from this. I can imagine that at some point in filming, it becomes more expensive to utilize the 'vomit comet'.

    And, just imagine the tag line for the movie, instead of "Filmed in Smell-o-vision" you've got "Filmed in Zero-G!, when fake weightlessness caused vomiting just isn't enough!"
  • As far as I know, what they tend to do these days for space scenes in films is build a set inside an aeroplane, fly up, then fly back down sharply at just the right speed so that everyone inside is briefly weightless, quickly film the scene, then do it all again - Apollo 13 must've been a nightmare. Certainly not easy, although I'm not sure many movie stars would want to go through getting up into space to film stuff either. Tough pick between the two I guess. :)

    node

  • Re:FX (Score:1)

    by Wiggin ( 97119 )
    um, how 'bout Apollo 13?

  • novelty (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If its exclusively for commercial films, it sounds like a novelty that will simply be used to needlessly over-hype another failing movie.. and give NASA plenty of publicity and money in the process.

    Being that Russia used to be the evil communist empire, and the US is supposedly the land of capitalism, its a bit suprising to see the Russians turn around and embrace capitalism in its space ventures.

    Perhaps sometime the average citizen will be able to afford a trip to space. For now, your going to need bottomless pockets to get up there, but at least its possible.

  • My guess is that it's cheaper to float your actors with special effects than to send them up and shoot them in real zero gravity.

    Or you could just use the old tried and true method of bad sci-fi. Simply don't float your actors at all, ignore physics completely, and hope your audience is too stupid to notice. And if anyone does notice, make up some bullshit about "artifical gravity" and "inertia dampeners" after the fact.

  • James Cameron (Score:4)

    by pjdepasq ( 214609 ) on Thursday July 05, 2001 @04:28PM (#105468)
    I recall reading that James Cameron is interested in being the next "tourist" at the space station. Shortly after Tito's return, Cameron expressed interest in doing an IMAX movie up there about life on the station or something along those lines... I can find a link now, but I'm sure this is a convenient tie into James' wish.

    NASA, I recall is up for it, but expressed the desire to hold of on more tourism for a while. Cameron agreed. (He could probably fund the damned module anyway....)

  • although I'm not sure many movie stars would want to go through getting up into space to film stuff either.

    I can see it now:
    (Whiny Actor): I just can't work with this material! I'll be in my trailer.
    (Real Astronaut): No!! Don't open that hatch!
    Blam!
  • Filming The Matrix in space might have made it easier for the actors to walk all over the place on the walls and the ceiling, and do super-duper zero-gee stuffs.
  • Survivor IV: In space.

    Featuring elimination challenges such as "Repair the tumbling satellite," "Race to the moon," and "Decode signals from the space aliens!"

    Every 10 orbits, the remaining contestants will get together and vote one of their ISS co-inhabitants jettisoned into space. In the final episode, a committee of heads-in-jars will vote on who the winner is.

  • Actually, with respect to space, "international" is just a glossy cover word for "United States and Russia, with a few struts made in France"

    Space travel is just so expensive right now, to the point that only the US can really afford it, and Russia is really still in it because they still have the infrastructure for it (from being able to afford it in the past).

    It's kinda interesting how the U.S. can afford all this with NASA having such a puny budget compared to the rest of what the Gov't spends on.
  • This is being built by Spacehab in Russia. They will be flying there own crew, (of paid Russia Cosmonots, and soon their own real crew who work for SpaceHab), and will be renting space on their module since they own it and staff it. There's also more info at http://www.spacehab.com here [spacehab.com]
  • It's so unrealistic how they're hanging in mid-air.

    I can see the wires, I swear.
    --
  • It will cost a bundle to send an actor up to film but you don't need a crew, (I don't think). How many actors wouldn't give up their $20 million salary in exchange for a trip into space? I know if I was ever in that position I would do it in a heart beat. Space is one of the last places where celebrity still won't get you anywhere. Money may, but not fame.
    ----
  • Does someone have too much money or something?

    Look, if you have any trouble getting rid of it, you could just send it to me. This is just ridiculous.

  • Re:houston we have a problem... (Score:5)

    by stripes ( 3681 ) on Thursday July 05, 2001 @04:37PM (#105477) Homepage Journal
    Wouldn't the vomit comit be a LOT cheaper than sending an entire crew into space? is there even room? Worked fine for Ron Howard and Apollo 13.

    While it worked (the zero-g scenes are wonderful -- of corse I think the whole movie is), it was costly, and difficult.

    The Apollo 13 crew has logged more vomit-comet time then any astronaut. More then anyone other then the people that fly the thing. That wasn't cheep (I don't know if the film company payed, or if it was done on our tax dollars).

    You only get about 30 seconds of zero-g at once. That makes it hard to film long scenes. No, it makes it hard to film short ones, really really hard for long ones :-)

    There is very little space to film there. The set on 13 was of a cramped space craft, so it wasn't impossible to film, but it was hard to fit cameras and lights in.

    I'm sure there is some other stuff as well, but it has been a while since I watched the film, and even longer since I listened to the directors commentary...

  • Comparative Hype Value; Economics (Score:4)

    by Scot Seese ( 137975 ) on Thursday July 05, 2001 @04:37PM (#105478)

    Hm..The debate seems to be the usefulness of an orbital studio. Considering leading man/leading lady salaries today, paying the soviet space agency one million dollars per head to get a director, photographer + two actors into the "studio" for a week's worth of filming is ... cheap. With the entire shot area of scenes draped in bluescreen fabric, virtually anything can be composited in - A much larger interior, an industrial complex, an enormous hangar with ships and robots scuttling around.

    The novelty factor is remarkably high. But don't tell me that had Ron Howard, Tom Hanks & Co. shot 30 minutes worth of capsule interiors in the studio that it WOULDN'T have added value to the film. People admire Hank's dedication to his craft when he loses 35 pounds for films like "Castaway" or "Philadelphia"; The pure accuracy of the visuals in a zero-g filmed movie with a cast like that would transcend gadget value, and fall welllllll within today's bloated A-movie budgets.

    So Lou Perlman wants to put Superflous Bubblegum Band v2.0 into orbit for a live concert? To haul up 4 prettyboys + camera guy = 5.5, 6 million dollars? Ten million households pay $29 for the pay-per-view, and after it's all said and done - Hey, he still made a ton of money off pure gadget value.

  • Combining the space and porn genres, my money is on Jean Michel Jarre [jeanmicheljarre.com].
  • You've got to be kidding me -- as if they could build a dojo in the ISS? Every space vehicle I've ever seen is severely space-constrained, and I can't imagine the ISS being much better.

    The idea of fitting a film crew, sound crew, director, actors, costumes, and props up there, not to mention the expense of training the humans for outer space and launching them (and dealing with a few days of severe nausea), makes the idea of filming something akin to the Matrix in space absolutely laughable. This will *not* get used for Hollywood-style movies.

    Not really sure what you would use it for, actually. Discovery Channel specials? That seems a lot more believable.

  • Yes, but Ron Howard was merely looking for a degree of realism by doing that in Apollo 13. This, on the other hand, is ideal for someone who want tons of international publicity merely for filming something in orbit -- something that might otherwise not be worth watching.



    --
  • except it doesn't cost 40 million to get a film crew to a battleship...
  • "Angela Joile in outer space"

    You thinking a bit small aren't you. What about...

    Asia Carrera in outer space!

  • If you'd read the article... (Score:4)

    by base2_celtic ( 56328 ) on Thursday July 05, 2001 @04:46PM (#105484) Homepage Journal
    They bitch and whine about sending a "space tourist", but they'll happily take the $ to do films rather than hard science? NASA, your hypocrisy alarm is flashing.

    If you read the article, you'd see that the module is a proposed attachment to the ISS, which Russia has 'handballed' to a civilian group. Russia ran out of money (again).

    NASA is on record as 'reviewing the situation', as are all the other ISS partner nations. I think NASA will be objecting as strongly to this as they did to our recent Space Tourist.

    Sufficient to say, it's not a NASA initiative, and NASA hasn't even made an official comment yet.

  • Check out Pen (from Pen and Teller) and a dude from ZZTop [artbell.com] they were the first to try the new commercial version of the Vomit Comet!

    You get fifteen 30 second zero-G dives as well as 15 1.8g climbs! They even start you off with a 2/3g dive (Mars) and 1/3g dive (Moon)...plus it's in a freakin' cavernous jet!

  • thinks Angelina Jolie looks like a crack whore. Lip implants, breast implants, and the one she needed was a brain and ass implant but got neither. The movie was POOR, save your money and download the DIVX.
  • Well, it is isn't it? NASA (and the space-going community at large) are trying to get the public to support the space program like it did when we were going to the moon. Personally, I'd rather see us go back to the moon, but I guess a movie would bring more (political and approval) results.

  • At $10mil a film, that's a small enough part of the budget that many would be willing to go up and the module would pay for itself in 10 missions. This could lead other private sector companies to fund modules so that they can get some small benefit like a news desk in space, or the special NSA section, or a module holding a few bombs to let gravity do its thing. From the article, "We could have the first broadcast of music from space ... We could have TV programming or a motion picture." seems to be unambitious since that's probably not good for more than closing a channel for the evening to the Star Spangled banner or a few more overstocked movies at the Discovery Store.

    The other thing to consider is that if ISS whores themselves out to doing this, that puts the Tito mission in a whole new light. And will this turn out to be another situation where the Russians decide to launch it to the station and tell the ISS partners that they can do whatever they want? Still for filming this sort of thing, consider what is more dangerous, zigzagging a place up and down for a few hours, or a 20 minute ride on the shuttle that most people would kill for to film for a week. An actor might make the investment of visiting Star City to market themselves as an actor ready for space filming or the studio would send actors off to take space lessons much as they do for other skills they want their actors to quickly get the hang of.

  • Heck - one good lotto ticket :)
  • How many actors Lloyd's of London issurance policies would be cancelled or not allow an actor into space ?? You'd be suprised at how rescrictive they can get and the studios ENSURE the actors stay within the boundries..too much money lost if Tom Hanks looses a hand or such...
  • You have to remember many Russians are so upset about Mir taking the dive, the there is a strong group that wants to have a Russian-Only Mir-II just to show they don't need to continue contribution to the basic common good in the ISS program. It will probably be more military than science :(

  • The Vomit Comet (Score:4)

    by nick_davison ( 217681 ) on Thursday July 05, 2001 @04:58PM (#105492)
    The Vomit Comet - NASA's zero-g training aircraft is what most of us see as being the traditional way of getting genuine zero-g footage. Unfortunately, it turns out that NASA isn't too friendly to film makers wanting to use it (apparently Apollo 13 is the only one to have been allowed to so far). There is a commercial venture being set up by some ex NASA folks but they have been been coming up against a huge amount of resistance.

    There is a long article by Penn Jillette (the talking half of Penn and Teller) here [artbell.com]. More than just an article on the technology, it talks about how it really feels far better than anything I've seen before.

    Besides, it involves fat guys and pneumatic blondes stripping in zero-g along with Billy from ZZ top and a $250,000 guitar - if that doesn't appeal to nerds, I don't know what does.

  • Re:Zero-G Porn? (Score:4)

    by evilquaker ( 35963 ) on Thursday July 05, 2001 @04:58PM (#105493)
    Hasn't been done yet? Wait for it....

    Yup, it's been done... The movie was called "The Uranus Experiment", and it was released in 1999! Here's an article [flashnews.com] about it...

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Yup that's the price of one of those ISS movie tickets (limo not included)
  • There are other methods. From 2001 to Babylon 5, a few have gotten away with using rotation to achieve gravity, and then there's the idea of uperating under a constant thrust so that "up" is your direction of travel. If you want to get out of doing weightless scenes, there are alternatives that only take a couple of lines in the script without resorting to technobabble, and it's not like your average SF TV series can afford to film in zero-G every week.
  • Yes, much cheaper to "float your stars" with effects.

    But there's another side to this: Zero-G effects the human body. Oh, sure, breasts will jiggle in interesting ways, but with the body-fluid shifts filling the upper body those pretty starlets will get ruddy, puffy faces and clogged sinuses.

    Not a pretty thing to do to someone whos living is made by their looks.

    Bob-

  • If you think this is bad, try Kings of the High Frontier by Vicktor Komen.

    Reading that book made me wish I'd never worked at NASA.

    Bob-

  • Outside participation... is good. Allowing studios to go to space means they'll pay through the nose to do it. And let's get some advertising on the ISS too. With extra $$$ from Coca-Cola and Nissan, the station will have more money to grow and expand. Look at what ad revenue does for auto racing.
  • But don't tell me that had Ron Howard, Tom Hanks & Co. shot 30 minutes worth of capsule interiors in the studio that it WOULDN'T have added value to the film.

    Just like actually shooting Waterworld in the Pacific off Hawaii added.. (oh wait.) -- one wrecked set and a whole lotta money.

    Really... if you can fake it for cheap(er), that's the way to go.

    I would have liked to see the cut scenes from the vomit comet. "Houston.. we have a ... BLLLLEEEEAAAGH"

  • ummm...vomtit? - you, out of the gene pool!

  • They Should Name This Module Travesty... (Score:4)

    by cybrpnk ( 94636 ) on Thursday July 05, 2001 @05:22PM (#105502)

    As a former Boeing Space Station engineer, I am stunned and appalled that SpaceHab would stoop to this - leasing a module as a movie set. To get the obvious out of the way, there aren't enough scenes needing zero G in sci-fi dramas to justify it, which leaves sports and sex as the only things that would keep people's attention for continuing and repeated use. My God, we're on the verge of seeing the dawn of the 24-hour weightless smut channel, just when I thought I had seen everything...

    What's even worse is that the real rationale for the Space Station is virtually dead, if it's not totally dead already. The ONLY reason for the space station is to do life science in zero G (or reduced G, like growing plants in a Martian level centrifuge) - EVERYTHING else (earth resources photography, astronomical observations, you name it) is going to be done cheaper and better from unmanned platforms that don't have the expense of an extraneous life support system.

    The Space Station is SO big that the current crew of three is run ragged trying to keep the systems maintenance going - there is NO TIME for ANY life science at present. That won't change until we get a crew escape vehicle (currently the Russian Soyuz, a 30-year-old design) that can carry more than three people back. Guess what - there isn't even a funded plan to build such a vehicle. (If modifying a hollow can of air into a movie studio costs $100M, you can imagine what a new reentry vehicle with heat shielding, comm, nav, propulsion and all the rest would cost, starting from scratch...)

    When I started working on Station in the mid-80s, the dreams were high. We were going to provide ultra-pure water, on-orbit X-ray machines to analyze fragile protein crystals grown in zero-G that would never survive reentry, animal cages and discection capabilities (imagine handling mouse litter and blood drops in orbit!), freezers and microscopes and video links, centrifuges to grow wheat in lunar gravity levels and corn in Martian gravity levels - plus all the solar cells and heat radiators to run all of this stuff - run by astronauts living off of a closed life support system that would be a dress rehersal for a Mars mission.

    Well, the ugly reality of $10,000 per pound to orbit reared it's ugly head, the Cold War ended and the project had to include the Russians, the mission orbit was changed to let Russian rockets barely get there at the expense of halving what a US Shuttle could get there from a Florida launch, the life support system is basically scuba tanks of air and there's no lab equipment to speak of or crew time to run it if there was any. I guess the only thing left to do is turn a module into a film backdrop for recording fantasy dreams....

    I hate to say it, but I can hardly wait for NASA to declare the Space Station a rousing sucess, bring the last crew home and deorbit the damn thing. Only then can we get on with establishing a lunar base or doing something like Zubrin's Mars Direct [nw.net] where we escape the tyranny of having to drag up every single pound of stuff we use at hideous cost and start using extraterrestrial resources instead.

  • Well, now those commercials for the "Wonder Anti-Gravity Bra" will look a whole lot better, not to mention the natural "face lift" :-)
  • Mars is 0.38G, and the moon is 0.16G. D-uhh.

  • DVDs and the internation space station (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What DVD region is space? What if I brought DVD's into space and my "international" friends watched them with me, would I be breaking any kind of law?
  • What kind of nerds are you people?

    Think of all the the sci-fi that currently
    can't be made into movies:

    Integral Trees (by Larry Niven)

    Ringworld (again, LN)

    and pretty much anything else that takes
    place in space without gravity generators!

    anymore suggestions?
  • Most video clips of astronauts are either of them on very short stays or very long stays in space. Anywhere in between and their bodies are told to shut down and stop moving by the brain, which can't figure out what's up and what's down. Of course, the brains way of stopping the body is vomitting. You never see a man running full speed and vomitting at the same time, now you know why. Applies to sailors, too.
  • Not to mention the fact that you would still need cables for stunts. The difference is now the cables would pull them "down" to the "ground" to create gravity instead of defy it :).
    -- Judas96
    "...don't take a nerf bat to a knife fight." - Joe Rogan, said on News Radio
  • For that price you bettter be allowed to bring up your own beverages and snacks instead of being forced to pay another 20 bucks for the popcorn and pop combo...
    -- Judas96
    "...don't take a nerf bat to a knife fight." - Joe Rogan, said on News Radio
  • That won't change until we get a crew escape vehicle (currently the Russian Soyuz, a 30-year-old design) that can carry more than three people back

    I'm probably being terribly naive here, but perhaps they could just park two escape vehicles up there, bringing the crew limit up to 6?

  • The irony is the module will be Russian. And again, as they were with the first paying space tourist, NASA is "concerned" that the new people will be in the way. Isn't it time that NASA wake up and acknowledge the commercial and tourist aspects of space and space stations?
  • Actually the best /. line in reference to her ridiculous lips said they 'resembled an inflamed dogs anus'.

    Still Chuckling

  • Read the article first spaceboy (Score:3)

    by gad_zuki! ( 70830 ) on Thursday July 05, 2001 @06:02PM (#105513)
    Lets put the keyboard down for a second. Good. Now re-read the article. Its not just for zero-g effects its uses as listed in this article are for private zero gee research, educational programs, and broadcasting TV or music. How many people even know the ISS exists? This can only turn out to be a mass appeal propaganda win.

    I'd like to see a lunar base in my lifetime too, but without first making attempts at privitizing space I don't see how the current NASA mentality is going to go for it.
  • And if anyone does notice, make up some bullshit about "artifical gravity" and "inertia dampeners" after the fact.


    Hey you heard him! No bullshit in fiction. Not all sci-fi has to 'hard' sci-fi. I'm a big fan of PKD's work and it has little to do with the assumptions of scientific materialism. It isn't wacko, its art. The genre is large enough to fit artificial gravity both in the hard sense (2001) and in the soft sense (star trek).

  • Re:They Should Name This Module Travesty... (Score:3)

    by cybrpnk ( 94636 ) on Thursday July 05, 2001 @06:09PM (#105515)
    Well, that's the obvious way to do it, of course, but the Soyuz has a limited lifetime on orbit and has to be exchanged fairly regularly. That's why Tito was able to get to space as a tourist recently...it was a Soyuz changeout mission and they really only need a crew of two to fly that. The problem is that to have crew escape for 6 (ie, two Soyuz) then you have to fly twice as many changeout missions and the Russians are stressed out trying to keep up with the changeout missions they are currently assigned. Plus in order to dock two Soyuz capsules at once would require another docking node, and nobody wants to pay for building that and taking it up - $1 billion at least, $500M to build it and $500M to launch it on a Shuttle mission that isn't available - they are all booked on previously scheduled construction flights. Plus if you had two Soyuz capsules docked it would tremendously complicate Shuttle ops around the station - mission rules call for keeping clear of the Soyuz capsules both spatially on orbit and schedulewise during their changeouts. It could be done, but the problems just snowball when you look at the two Soyuz option...
  • How about Wendy Whoppers? [wendywhoppers.com]

    And who is Angela Joile, anyway?

    --
  • Filming The Matrix in space might have made it easier for the actors to walk all over the place on the walls and the ceiling, and do super-duper zero-gee stuffs.

    While zero-g means that you wouldn't fall off the ceiling while walking on it, the act of walking would send you hurtling toward the floor.
  • The only serious problem besides finances and space for the film crew and the objections of morality groups would be the excess body fluids getting into equipment where it might cause damage or something.

    Then of course, there is the space fungus.

    But seriously, who wants to make a bet that one of the best selling early flicks actually shot in space would be a porn flick? There might be enough money in it to finance non governmental space flight. I guess it depends on who are the most appropriate stars.

    enuf said.

    Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip

  • "...My guess is that it's cheaper to float your actors with special effects than to send them up and shoot them in real zero gravity..."

    Yeah, but think of the great outtakes you could have at the end of a movie shot in space :D
  • Porn will undoubtedly lead the consumer charge into space. I'm sure the 'studios' will be padded and watertight (or at least spongy (ew))

    People will make millions upon millions off of zero-g porn, I guarantee you.

  • "private zero gee research" sounds like Tito and his girlfriend, next time.
  • No need to project your fantasies mate, humor would be a bonus tho' ?
  • In every vision of any space station I've heard about, it was always assumed that tourism would be part of that vision. If space has gotten too expensive for governments, then it's time to move aside and let commercial interests do it. And right now, that's what they are trying to do. There are some companies trying to reduce payload cost and design space hotels, to the point it may only cost $10,000 to $20k for such a trip per person.

    It seems strange, here we are in 2001 and yet both space agencies are relying on outdated expensive technologies to carry people to space. Where's the space plane? There has been no developments in space travel technology since the 1970s. If things were as slow in computer technology, we'd all still be using PDP11s at work and AppleIIs or Commodore 64s at home.

  • Oh well...
    If the studios pay than HELL YEAH that means that NASA and the rest of the countries working on the ISS can spend more money on R and D which is always a good thing.
    Which should include a "laser" death ray just in case they find a life there or not, I think Jupiter should be called an enemy planet.
    Peace...or not
  • Your knee must have jerked with such violence that you couldn't even be bothered to understand what I wrote before you posted.

    Hey you heard him! No bullshit in fiction.

    Did you miss the phrase "after the fact?"

    Even if you didn't, does your definition of bullshit include "a fantastic but for the most part internally coherent system of physics in a sci-fi or fantasy universe." If it makes you feel any better, mine doesn't.

    Not all sci-fi has to 'hard' sci-fi.

    I didn't say it did. I didn't refer to "all sci-fi." I did refer to "bad sci-fi," and you seem determined to think that phrase refers to whatever kind of sci-fi you happen to like. *shrug*

    I'm a big fan of PKD's work and it has little to do with the assumptions of scientific materialism. It isn't wacko, its art.

    Er, I'm a fan of Philip K. Dick too. But we were talking about actors in films or television, not characters in novels. Hollywood doesn't give shit about hard sci-fi, or soft sci-fi, or PKD, or "the assumptions of scientific materialism," or art. They just care about whatever they can get a bunch of morons in a preview screening or focus group to believe -- whether or not it insults my intelligence, or yours.

  • SPACEHAB is now building the Enterprise in a suburb of Moscow in a partnership with the Russian commercial space corporation RSC Energia, which handled the flight of space tourist Dennis Tito.

    The centrally planned economic model of Russia is changing to incorporate private enterprise into space exploration. This while the world's largest capitalistic system has NASA rejecting commercial overatures.

    I never thought I would see the day when Russia was embracing capitalism more than us.

  • That wasn't an effect. The zero-g scenes were shot in a full scale spacecraft mock-up inside a KC-135 reinforced cargo aircraft. When you fly a parabola in a plane, you are weightless (the inertia of you keeps you moving upwards, counterbalancing the effect of gravity) at the top of the arc for about 30 seconds. They made 200-300 of these flights.

    It's just as real as if the movie was shot in space.
    twb

  • What would happen if, say, a Soyuz TM carring Harrison Ford, Steven Spielberg, and their pilot are killed when the booster blows up on the pad.

    NASA would be blamed for their deaths. They were Americans, so they should have been protected by their government. Oh, the Challenger blew up killing seven true American heros, whatever. Who cares about them, NASA KILLED HARRISON FORD!!!

    This would, sadly, be the end of the space program, already threatened by an ever-slimming budget, if a celebrity were to lose his or her life.

    twb

  • Correct me if I'm wrong here, but while the porn industry is huge, each individual porn flick is made with a very small budget, aren't they? Or are their 50 million dollar porn "blockbusters" out there (because presumably you'd need at least that much to film in space)?

    Go you big red fire engine!
  • This attitude that you know what's best, that you should decide what belongs in space and what doesn't. I quote you:

    I am stunned and appalled that SpaceHab would stoop to this

    as if there is something wrong with somebody else wanting to do something.

    We'd probably have single stage to orbit, orbital hotels, cheap transport to orbit, and maybe even a start on a moon colony if it weren't for NASA's holier than thou attitude. They have blocked so much private enterprise that we ought to rename them the new communists. A bunch of damned puritans protecting their turf, better keep it expensive and to ourselves than cheap and let just anybody in.

    Paaahhh!

    --
  • My guess is that it's cheaper to float your actors with special effects than to send them up and shoot them in real zero gravity.

    Stanley Kubrick would be proud.

  • ...and the first movie Tripping The Rift [trippingtherift.com].
    They should have called it Babylon. It could have been humanities last, best hope for peace.

    Actually, the original Babylon was assembled for war, although the surface excuse given was (as the UN so often does today before ravaging a place) peaceful mutual benefit. The EU, in its early days, printed and gave out a poster showing the Tower of Babylon being built by robot-looking humanoids with mottos amounting to ``we know what we want.''

    But I digress. Chode wants a slice of the action!

  • What we really need, would be porn stars raised in Zero G environment. Just imagine: breasts untainted by the evil influence of gravity...

    Sorry, I know it's a bad bad bad sexist thing to say.... but it just has to be said ;)
  • Think about it....

    Your going to catch a flik.
    But first you need to go trhough a one year training course.(The avverage training for a mission in space is one year)
    And this is fore each time you wanna se a movie.

    Then comes the problem of getting there. Rocket fule aint cheep now a days. And most of us dont own one so we need to rent.
    Sinse this will slow down the traffic on the "Space o'rama cinaplex" they have to raise the price. And the price is high enugh sinse this is a status thing and a product with stature is not inexpensive.

    Maybe the whole thing wil just be for the people there happend to be in the naigbourhood.

    At

  • Lou Perlman naming a group "Natural" goes so far beyond irony and even satire that it qualifies as otherworldly logic, so maybe space is the right place.
  • That was what made home videotape machine demand sufficient to justify mass production, bringing the price down for everybody.

    That's one of the biggest reasons for the rapid advances in internet-related hardware and software.

    Maybe that's what will jump-start a space program that's been losing momentum since July of '69.

  • And it won't necessarily be their own body fluids clogging those sinuses with eveything free floating.
  • The only problem is that most good sci-fi doesn't translate well into movies. Even if it could, it usually doesn't. (Nightfall, anyone?) They wouldn't have the budget for this. That leaves precious little in the way of movies for zero-G - hey wait! Pr0n!

    *gag*
  • If you shoot them in real zero gravity, wouldn't the blood just sort of hang in globs in mid-air, or would the pumping of the heart cause a rocket-type push as it left the body and cause the shootee to fly around like an deflating balloon?
  • "I never thought I would see the day when Russia was embracing capitalism more than us."

    They would have done it years ago if we'd offered enough money.

  • They didn't even need this to shoot the real apollo moon landing scenes which they faked in 1969 in the nevada desert.

    Wasn't that good enough? I mean, really, there are people who still believe that actually happened..

  • They are using several (5 I think) Sony DVD [spaceref.com] portable players up there. They have been hacked to be region free. See here [techtronics.com] for an article on how they were modified for space flight.
  • "Natalie Portman, naked, petrified and floating"

  • Soyuz has a limited lifetime on orbit.....

    If the Russians found the money to resurrect Buran, would this do the job ??
  • Also I can't imagine NASA would want to tarnish their "wholesome" image in this way. I doubt porn flicks will lead the way in zero-g movies in the new module for PR reasons first and foremost.
    --------------------------------------- -----------
  • Ya know, you're right. I totally agree that anything somebody can make work (technically and economically) in space ought to be done, and that includes everything from Spacehab modules outfitted as movie studios to the 24 hr weightless smut channel. Upon reflection (at 4 AM in my bathrobe, for God's sake), I think my visceral reaction to this story is more of a reflection on my frustrations than anything else. I WANTED the super-duper science lab and spent a good chunk of my life trying to make it happen before having to give up because the reality had changed so far away from that. Dreams die hard, and acepting that you've wasted you precious life chasing an unattainable one comes even harder. But evolution doesn't care one whit for the canon fodder that gets cast in its path, it only works and creates things more amazing and beautiful than anyone could have possible imagined. Let us all hope that is what ultimately happens with the Space Station and NASA.
  • Well, according to Jonathan's Space Report [harvard.edu], there is already an Imax camera loaded onto Atlantis for a July launch!
  • Yep. But Russians finding money is almost a contradiction in terms...
  • [warning - may be a bit dis-tasteful, but what the heck.]

    Yup, it's been done... The movie was called "The Uranus Experiment"..

    wow.. the only problem i'd see is that if they wanted to do some 'facials' (do i need to explain)? - wouldn't it be hard.. two reasons.. it wont have the same projectory (no gravity), and secondly, it would hit her face at the same speed it came out (no forces to slow it down).. eww.. surely dont want super man up there - that could hurt. *grin*

    i guess the next thing we could see on something like star-trek is the "cum comet".. :) - please dont tell me someone has done it already.

  • I know Private has done a porn flick on a plane which features zero gravity scenes. It was named The Uranus Experiment and they spent $750,000.
    __
  • No, they might over-inflate

    POW!!!!
  • That was what made home videotape machine demand sufficient to justify mass production, bringing the price down for everybody.
    In particular, pr0n played a large part in VHS winning over Betamax, since VHS was adopted more widely by the industry.

    And let's not forget the really old stuff - one of the major early uses of the printing press was printing lewd literature to keep the peasants entertained. Smut is a powerful ally indeed.

  • The Uranus experiment was even nominated for a 1999 Nebula award (it didn't win, of course).

    More info here: http://www.space.com/sciencefiction/movies/uranus_ experiment_000516.html [space.com]

    ----

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