Richard Garriott (right) aboard the ISS with two of the three actors in his short film: Americans Mike Fincke (centre) and Greg Chamitoff (left). Credit: NASA
Richard Garriott became the first second-generation American astronaut in October 2008. His father is, in fact, none other than Owen Garriott who carried out a mission on board NASA’s Skylab station in 1973 and then took part in space shuttle flight STS-9 in 1983. However, the son does not owe his flight to the American Space Agency. Having made his fortune in video games (including the famous Ultima), Richard Garriott paid for his week-long stay (it is said to have cost 35 million dollars) aboard the International Space Station, travelling there and back aboard a Russian Soyuz spaceship. Whilst he was up in space, he notably carried out the “Icarus project”: that of making a short fiction film set on board the ISS with the astronauts as actors. So that the rules governing the orbital complex were respected, the few sequences necessary were shot during the short amount of rest time that the space professionals had in their very full timetable. The title of the film? Apogee of fear. The storyline? When Richard Garriott left the Station with two Russian cosmonauts, the Americans Greg Chamitoff and Michael Fincke, together with Russian Yuri Lonchakov, went back to work and noted that too much oxygen was being used for just three people... Something else was on board! Don’t go thinking that Richard Garriott has concocted a horrific sci-fi film. No, it’s just that the short film is funny in that Chamitoff and Fincke first of all complain about Garriott’s mania of always talking about video games, they then start to miss him as he always settled their disputes as regards who was upside-down and who was right-side-up in the Station (which is of very little interest in weightless conditions). This is clearly a light-hearted parody especially as the extra “creature” proves to be Richard Garriott himself who actually remained clandestinely on board. But there is also another “creature”: the mother of the astronaut’s son who has come to lecture the crew (this is obviously the result of clever editing as Richard’s mother was never on board!). Apogee of Fear is, nevertheless, the first scripted work of fiction filmed in space. In this regard, the extremely serious Smithsonian Institution (who notably manages the Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC) has apparently requested a copy because of its historic interest. The problem is that NASA is currently opposing any public showing of the film. The legal obstacles are supposedly due to the fact that the site of the shooting is the Station which is dependent on international agreements and the Agency itself, not to mention management of astronauts’ image rights. Richard Garriott thinks that NASA could be embarrassed by the playful tone of his film. Published on 18 January 2012
When we talk about the beginnings of the space era in the Soviet Union, the two names that come immediately to mind are usually Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, and Sergei Korolev the genius that designed the R7 rocket, nowadays known as Soyuz. And yet, another “man behind the scenes”, one of those who work on the ground and never experience the glory of those who blast off into orbit, played a fundamental role in the Soviet successes. His name was Boris Chertok. Born on 11 March 1912, he died at the age of 99 on 14 December 2011 (he retired in 1992 at the age of 80!). A brilliant engineer, he also wrote a 4 volume book that is considered to be the reference as regards space history; translated into English, it bears the title “Rockets and People”. Below is a short EuroNews video and the first part of a Russian documentary devoted to this great man in the conquest of space.
American Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950) is above all known as the creator of Tarzan, about whom he wrote 26 adventure books and who featured in numerous film adaptations including one cartoon film by... Disney. This American film giant has now decided to tackle another of Burroughs works, the Barsoom saga; Barsoom being the name that the Martians gave to their planet. By taking the basic idea of an extraterrestrial civilisation on the point of death popularised by American astronomer Percival Lowell (who saw canals on Mars which he believed were a desperate attempt on behalf of its inhabitants to drain water from the polar ice caps in order to irrigate the deserts), the author gave free rein to his imagination and recounted the adventures of John Carter from Earth, mysteriously transferred to this world at war. His physical capabilities, greatly increased by the lack of Martian gravity, make him a formidable warrior who earns the natives’ respect. This adaptation by the Disney film studios appears to be predominantly based on “A princess of Mars”, the first tome in Burroughs’ Barsoom series. However, this is not a cartoon, but a film endowed what’s more with an impressive 200 million dollar budget which, as the trailer below shows, can very probably be explained for the most part by the number of special effects required to bring this phantasmagorical Mars, imagined by the creator of Tarzan, to life.
It was the company Pixar (bought out by Disney in 2006), known for its computer-animated cartoon films (Toy Story, Cars, etc.), that took care of the special effects, marking its entry into the field of “classic” films with actors. And, moreover, it was an “in-house director”, Andrew Stanton (Wall-E, Nemo), who was in charge. True, the Red Planet presented in the film John Carter is far from the reality and will be very different from the one that NASA’s Curiosity rover will explore as of August 2012 (see this article), but with this Disney production being released in March 2012, it looks like 2012 will be the year of Mars!
The shops that originated in Sweden and acquired an international reputation with their furniture that comes in kit form, have launched an advertising campaign which is based on the “njut” (“to make the most of” in Swedish) concept and which highlights their product line in a highly original manner. In the television advert that can be seen below, the space theme features a couple who play at blasting off into orbit.
In the soundtrack we can hear the phrase “Roger roll Challenger”: this is how ground control indicated to the crew of a space shuttle that was lifting off (in this instance, Challenger) that it had indeed received the Commander’s comment meaning the “roll program”, that is to say when the spacecraft was rolling (rotation about the longitudinal axis, that of the space shuttle’s ascent at this moment) so as to be facing the right direction. We can also hear the first half of Neil Armstrong’s historic saying: “One small step for man”. Even the person delivering the pizza joins in the couple’s space game. And this brings to mind (though it is no doubt unintentional!) the Domino Pizza campaign evoked in this previous article. This Enjoy Space feature will help you find out more about astronautics used for advertising purposes.
Expeditions 29, 30 et 31 posters Credit: NASA/Enjoy Space
It’s well-known that the space mission crews pose for official photographs in their space suits or the famous blue jumpsuit. But NASA’s Space Flight Awareness programme also creates more informal posters with the astronauts; these can be downright funny or refer to popular culture and particularly films. On 14 November, a Soyuz TMA-22 spacecraft will take off from Baikonur with the American Daniel (Dan) Burbank and the Russians Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoli Ivanishin on board. On reaching the International Space Station, they will meet their 3 colleagues already up there, the Japanese Satoshi Furukawa, the Russian Sergey Volkov and the American Mike Fossum. Expedition 29 will then be complete, just like on this poster which emulates Tron Legacy, a Disney film based in a virtual world. Note that the commander Mike Fossum is holding his Expedition emblem like the film’s lead characters (this disk is both their identity and a sort of fighting Frisbee).
The schedule of flights to the Station has been disrupted due to a problem which occurred in August on a Soyuz rocket. So, the Tron Legacy Expedition 29 will not last long because Furukawa, Volkov and Fossum have to return to Earth on 22 November. Expedition 30 will then officially begin with Burbank, Shkaplerov and Ivanishin who will stay. But they will have to wait until 26 December for this Expedition to be complete with the arrival by Soyuz TMA-03M of the American Donald Pettit, the Russian Oleg Kononenko and the Dutch astronaut from the European Space Agency, André Kuipers. We will then have 6 pirates in the ISS! Yes, look closely, the poster for this Expedition is an obvious reference to another Disney production, the Pirates of the Caribbean saga. And the least that can be said is that the commander Dan Burbank (centre) is a very convincing Jack Sparrow! However, the astronauts have been entitled “Pilots over the Caribbean”. Note the presence of Robonaut 2’s head in the middle of the title, the Soyuz rocket on Jack Sparrow’s (sorry, Dan Burbank’s!) bandana, while Kuipers displays a tattoo of the official Expedition emblem on his arm. An emblem that also appears on Kononenko’s hat.
By March 2012, a new changeover of half of the Station’s crew will take place. Burbank, Shkaplerov and Ivanishin will return to Earth, while Pettit, Kononenko and Kuipers will remain and be joined by the American Joe Acaba and the Russians Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin. Tribute is paid to another film saga, that of the Transformers, the robots from space who fight each other on our planet. Naturally, Robonaut 2 occupies pride of place in this reference to the DreamWorks (Spielberg’s company) and Paramount production. But beware, there is a slight difference, the title is not Transformers, but Transporters an allusion to the fact that several automatic cargo ships will visit the Station during this Expedition, particularly the European ATV and perhaps the first private cargo capsule from SpaceX.
The “Download NASA Sounds” webpage or how to make your phone ring spatially. Credit: NASA/Enjoy Space
Mobile phones got rid of the standard ringtone or the little, tasteless, synthetic melody indicating an incoming call quite a while ago now. But between an extract from the latest chart-topper, a dog barking, a bloodcurdling scream or other much more inappropriate noises, it is sometimes difficult to make an original or tasteful choice... So why not fly off to the stars every time someone tries to contact you on your mobile, NASA is offering a whole range of downloadable sounds free of charge on this website page. The files are in MP3 format so that they can be used on most smartphones available on the market, or in M4R format for Apple’s iPhone. The choice includes famous phrases from the Apollo programme or from the space shuttle saga with, for example, the roaring of Atlantis blasting off for STS-135 mission (the last one), or Sputnik’s historic beep. Given that on the majority of smartphones it is possible to assign a specific ringtone to a particular number, we will let you decide who you are going to allocate the ultra famous “Houston, we’ve had a problem” to... Click on this link to hear it.
The website pages for Domino Pizza’s “lunar project” are full of resources (texts, videos, drawings) regarding the future base envisaged and means for delivering to customers. In short, all the ingredients for an effective marketing buzz based on the conquest of space. Click on the image to be directed to the website. Credit: Domino's Pizza
An international franchise specialised in pizza home delivery announced its intention to open a branch on the Moon. This is clearly a marketing campaign and, in this case, one that is specifically aimed at Japanese consumers. In the video below, Scott Oelkers, the owner of the company in Japan explains his ambitious plan.
But although a dedicated website oes into great detail about the lunar base envisaged (videos, drawings, false conferences, etc.), the marketing campaign has taken another turn: Scott Oelkers now says that the shareholders had calculated that the cost of such a set-up on our natural satellite was prohibitive. See the video below.
For instance, the price of a lunar pizza was estimated at 218,540,434 yen, which is just over 2 million euros, in order to amortize the investment! A publicity stunt which is above all used to highlight the fact that the price of Domino’s pizzas is not going to change... on Earth, obviously...
This is the mythical rocket par excellence, the one that launched Sputnik, the first satellite and Gagarin, the first man in space. The CSG, Guiana Space Centre, is now one of its launch bases: a historic achievement.
The first episode of this famous science-fiction series was broadcast in September 1966. NASA has often made references to these programmes, as in the case of the space shuttle Enterprise, which had the same name as the spaceship in the series.
50 years ago on 5 May 1961, a few weeks after Gagarin, American Alan Shepard reached space. Several years later, he was to walk on the Moon, summarising as it were the race in which the Soviet Union and the United States were competing.
