John Scalzi on the changing face of space in the movies

Great essay on 2001, Armageddon and how optimism became uncouth.

I do think that, to a very real extent, our film industry's portrayal of space and its exploration is tied into our relationship with actual real-world space travel. Nor is this a new thing; it goes back six decades, at the very least.

In the full rush of the space race and close to the climax of the Apollo program, which did in fact send men to the moon, 2001: A Space Odyssey reflected the confidence we had with our progress into space. It was optimistic but not unreasonable to think that just a couple decades into the (then) future we would have expanded our reach into space to orbital stations and moon bases and that Pan Am, one of the great airline companies, would, naturally, have service to them.

That optimism regarding space travel soured in the seventies, along with much of the U.S. optimism about, well, pretty much everything, and, by 1977, the can-do spirit of Destination Moon and optimistic technical assumptions of 2001 had been replaced by the cynical view of Capricorn One, in which a mission to Mars is faked owing to both a fatal flaw in technology and the need for the space program to have a "win" to keep its funding flowing. NASA had become just another government bureaucracy and its mission just another way for the public to be lied to by its government.

Spaceflight in the Real World vs. Armageddon and 2001

Image courtesy Flickr user Matthew Simantov, via CC

• [dhalgren]

  So rare to get a CAPRICORN ONE reference…in well anything. I saw this movie when it was in the theaters. Back when O.J. was still cool fresh off of the TOWERING INFERNO (well not so fresh but still).

  I loved CAPRICORN ONE by the way. I don’t think I’ve seen it since I saw in the movie theater though. 33 years ago damn.

• [Stefan Jones]

  @JanByrd: Sadly, I tend to agree.

  There’s all this bluff about rugged individualism, creativity, and the pioneer spirit, but to judge from the last ten years most Americans are mostly interested in living in squalid comfort, keeping change and innovation at bay, and either denying or walling themselves off from unpleasant truths.

  There are large swathes of this country populated by folks who are more freaked out by the idea of lesbians getting married than by global warming.

• [Angstrom]

  The trend of pessimism in spacetravel representation is not limited merely to space-travel but to a general representation of the future as a dystopia.
  In the past science was generally assumed to be the saviour of the worker, eliminating tedium and providing leisure. As we all know this future we live in certainly has lots of the gadgets promised, from quick and cheap intercontinental travel, to hand-held communicators / computers.
  But we can also see that the technology has also brought new problems. Problems that the utopians of the past missed.
  So now when presented with a great leap forward we remember the old promises of leisure and liberation and look at our huge email list and our packed work schedules and think .. hmm, yeah, and what are you not telling me.

• [JohnStClair]

  I never understood Astronaut Armstrong’s statement upon landing on the Moon, “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” until I happened to meet one of the astronauts recently. As I shook hands with him, I was surprised to notice how tiny he was. He must have been less than five feet tall, in the range of 4.5 feet. You can imagine growing up with other people making you feel that you are not a real man due to your size. So here is Armstrong declaring to the world that he is a man after all and should be recognized as such. It also makes sense to have people of this stature aboard rockets so that the payload is reduced, which of course is what we see with the alien pilots who are even smaller at 3 to 4 feet tall.

  • [Nelson.C]

    The sense of humour of BB commenters is becoming more and more twisted.

    After a quick google, I find Armstrong’s height to be 5′ 11″, which I think is slightly above average for his generation.

    • [Kevin Kenny]

      In fact, I remember Armstrong being about half a foot taller than Charles “Pete” Conrad. The latter famously spoke when descending the ladder to the Moon’s surface on Apollo 12: “Whoopee! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that’s a long one for me!”

• [JayByrd]

  Born in the 1950s, I grew up with the space race and it was great!
  I even tried to do my part and learn higher math in high school — the enthusiasm extended down into our schools. We had a rocket club in high school!
  Today, half of America doesn’t even believe in evolution. Who can expect a nation like us to succeed?
  I’d love to see America get fully behind transforming to a renewable energy society, but the truth is that we’ve become too stupid, lazy, fat and greedy.