« previous next »
Pages: [1]   Go Down

Author Topic: Science Fact movies!  (Read 17385 times)

Offline Johno

  • The Right Stuff
  • Apollo CDR
  • ****
  • Posts: 534
  • Gender: Male
  • We came in peace for ALL mankind.
Science Fact movies!
« on: November 21, 2005, 12:57:12 AM »
Science fact movies?

Okay, I know - all movies have to be fictional to some degree.  But I was thinking that there needs to be an extra category here.  Movies like Apollo 13 don't really belong in Sci-Fi, since at heart the makers try to make it as accurate as possible.

Getting the ball rolling, it always gladdens my heart to see understated Australian humour on the big screen.  Although it has a few factual difficulties, The Dish portrays a group of normal Aussies in extraordinary events.  And they do their best to get it right, although from memory the Apollo missions were tracked from a purpose built station in Tidbinbilla (now there's a name that could only happen in Australia!) rather than the telescope at Parkes.  Can anyone confirm or deny this?

 don't know how it appears to my international friends, but to us it's very relatable.

Comments anyone?
Logged

Offline spacecat27

  • The Right Stuff
  • Apollo CDR
  • ****
  • Posts: 597
Re: Science Fact movies!
« Reply #1 on: November 21, 2005, 01:17:00 AM »
Logged

Offline DonPMitchell

  • The Right Stuff
  • Moonwalker
  • ****
  • Posts: 1200
  • Gender: Male
    • Mental Landscape
Re: Science Fact movies!
« Reply #2 on: November 21, 2005, 01:51:01 AM »
The Dish is a good movie.

A few years ago, I was contacted by some folks there, who had the first-generation recording of the first step on the Moon (They saw my name on a BBC news article)  They thought a higher quality video of the event could be made, but nobody had a machine that could read the special-purpose recording.  I made some email introductions with people I knew at JPL, but I don't know what happened after that.  Probably nothing.  Factoid: did you know that the orignal digital image data from Mariner-4 is lost?  Yep.  People made a film recording and then just warehoused the magnetic tapes and forgot where they are.

Another nice science fact movie is "October Sky".
Logged
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
  - Agent Smith

Offline SCEtoAUX

  • Mercury (orbital)
  • **
  • Posts: 90
  • Gender: Male
Re: Science Fact movies!
« Reply #3 on: November 21, 2005, 08:57:41 AM »
Another vote for "The Dish"--great film! I wish there were more movies made showing the "average guy's" contributions to the program, as there were tens of thousands of them for every one of the astronauts, and such stories could help inspire the next generation to get involved, even if they couldn't actually fly in space personally.

There are a few factual problems with the plot of the movie, though. Detailed here:

http://www.pcug.org.au/~mdinn/TheDish/

Logged

Offline Satanic Mechanic

  • The Right Stuff
  • Moonwalker
  • ****
  • Posts: 1834
Re: Science Fact movies!
« Reply #4 on: November 21, 2005, 11:24:14 AM »
"October Sky" was a good movie but it is different than Homer Hickman's novel.
Logged

Offline SpaceChem

  • Gemini Pilot
  • ***
  • Posts: 134
  • Gender: Male
Re: Science Fact movies!
« Reply #5 on: November 21, 2005, 01:35:43 PM »
Agreed .  "October Sky" was more or less true, but Homer's book describes some events differently.
Logged
Pages: [1]   Go Up
« previous next »