Top 6 Best Space Shuttle Mission Movies
Many do not know that the Hubble Telescope is in need of repair and upgrades and that yesterday NASA launched the Atlantis shuttle to go take care of that. The mission is a very dangerous one as speculation of hull damage from the launch was highly considered even putting the shuttle, The Endeavor on standby for a rescue mission. The Atlantis astronauts inspected their ship for any signs of launch damage today, Tuesday, as they raced after the Hubble Space Telescope on an especially perilous and bold repair mission. Atlantis will catch up with Hubble early Wednesday afternoon.
The astronauts will capture the aging observatory and, the next day kick off the first of five grueling spacewalks to install new cameras and equipment at Hubble and repair two broken science instruments.
We have seen so many movie with plots just like this one and something dangerous happens that the crew needs saving or the planet needs saving. Space Shuttle Mission Movies are always thrilling and scary because as Bones said in JJ Abram’s Star Trek, “Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence.”
So in honor of the Atlantis crew we have compiled our Top 6 favorite Space Shuttle Mission Movies of all time.
6. Space Cowboys
Frank Corvin, “Hawk” Hawkins, Jerry O’Neill and Tank Sullivan were hot dog members of Project DAEDALUS, the Air Force’s test program for space travel, destined to be the first men in space their hopes were dashed in 1958 with the formation of NASA and the use of trained chimps and the Mercury program. 40 years later the gang blackmail their way into orbit when Russia’s mysterious Ikon communications satellite’s orbit begins to degrade and threatens to crash into Earth. Starring Clint Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones, James Gardner and Donald Sutherland this movie shows that age isn’t everything.
5. SpaceCamp
What happens when four teenagers and a 12 year old boy decide to stowaway on a space shuttle mission? craziness that is for sure. This is an eerily prescient family adventure starring Kate Capshaw as Andie, a frustrated NASA astronaut who’s never actually been into outer space. Her husband, flight controller Zach (Tom Skerritt), is sympathetic, but he can’t influence her place in the rotation. Andie is assigned to train a group of intelligent high school students at the summer science camp called Space Camp, which is run by NASA and supervised by her husband. There she meets her campers: Kevin (Tate Donovan), a blasé, horny teenager; Tish (Kelly Preston), an airhead with a photographic memory; Kathryn (Lea Thompson), an arrogant pilot; obnoxious youngster Max (Joaquin Phoenix); and scientist-in-training Rudy (Larry B. Scott). While testing the solid booster rockets aboard a real shuttle, the team is blasted into space accidentally. Without enough air, the discordant team pulls together, each discovering hidden talents. Coincidentally the space shuttle in this film is also called Atlantis.
4. Capricorn One
Astronauts Charles Brubaker, John Walker, and Peter Willis (James Brolin, O.J. Simpson, Sam Waterston) are hailed as heroes when they become the first men to be rocketed to Mars. Actually the space travelers are as phony as their mission controller, Dr. James Kelloway (Hal Holbrook); to avert a failure that might cost the space program its funding, the Mars-bound vessel has been sent up without a crew, while the helmeted astronauts sit on a movie soundstage, pretending to be in outer space for the benefit of the TV cameras. Unfortunately the Mars ship crashes on arrival, making the astronaut trio thoroughly expendable. Investigative reporter Robert Caulfield (Elliott Gould), who’s smelled a rat all along, races against time to prevent NASA from “terminating” the hapless astronauts in order to cover up the conspiracy.
3. Apollo 13
This is probably one of my favorite space mission films of all time. “Houston, we have a problem.” Those words were immortalized during the tense days of the Apollo 13 lunar mission crisis, and the suspense, fear, and excitement of those days are captured in Ron Howard’s epic recreation of the 1970 crisis. When the commander of the original mission Ken Mattingly (Gary Sinise), bows out due to possible exposure to measles, astronaut Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks) leads command module pilot Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon) and lunar module driver Fred Haise (Bill Paxton) on what is slated as NASA’s third lunar landing mission. All goes smoothly until the craft is halfway through its mission, when an exploding oxygen tank threatens the crew’s oxygen and power supplies. As the courageous astronauts face the dilemma of either suffocating or freezing to death, Mattingly and Mission Control leader Gene Kranz (Ed Harris) struggle to find a way to bring the crew back home, all the while knowing that the spacemen face probable death once the battered ship reenters the Earth’s atmosphere. Even though the outcome, in which all three astronauts miraculously survived, is historical fact, the film derives suspense from the situation itself and from the actions of the heroic astronauts and the men on the ground.
2. The Right Stuff
Covering some 15 years, The Right Stuff recounts the formation of America’s space program, concentrating on the original Mercury astronauts. Scott Glenn plays Alan Shepard, the first American in space; Fred Ward is Gus Grissom, the benighted astronaut for whom nothing works out as planned; and Ed Harris is John Glenn, the straight-arrow “boy scout” of the bunch who was the first American to orbit the earth. The remaining four Mercury boys are Deke Slayton (Scott Paulin), Scott Carpenter (Charles Frank), Wally Schirra (Lance Henriksen) and Gordon Cooper (Dennis Quaid). Wolfe’s original book related in straightforward fashion the dangers and frustrations facing the astronauts (including Glenn’s oft-repeated complaint that it’s hard to be confident when you know that the missile you’re sitting on has been built by the lowest bidder), the various personal crises involving their families (Glenn’s wife Annie, a stutterer, dreads being interviewed on television, while Grissom’s wife Betty, angered that her husband is not regarded as a hero because his mission was a failure, bitterly declares “I want my parade!”), and the schism between the squeaky-clean public image of the Mercury pilots and their sometimes raunchy earthbound shenanigans
1. 2001: A Space Odyssey
A few million years ago, in Africa’s Olduvai Gorge, our ancestors were starving, defenseless prey to predators, and on the verge of extinction. An advanced civilization from the stars (never shown) spots our potential and gives our brains a boost by means of a monolith. In 2001 a monolith is found buried on the moon. When sunlight hits it, it sends a radio message to a Jupiter monolith-relay, telling the aliens that we have arrived. A space craft is sent to Jupiter on a secret mission to check it out. One member of the crew is HAL, a sentient, self-aware computer. Unfortunately HAL has been instructed to lie, something contrary to his very nature. This drives him to desperate measures.
