Space Camp: Difference between revisions

2,125 bytes added ,  10 months ago
no edit summary
No edit summary
No edit summary
 
(8 intermediate revisions by 6 users not shown)
Line 1:
{{work}}
'''''Space Camp''''' is a family adventure movie from 1986 about a group of kids at a space camp who unexpectedly get launched up into space for real. However the Shuttle was still in pre-flight prepping thus wasn't prepared for any kind of full mission. With only a limited air supply and virtually no communication with Earth, the kids and their instructor (played by Kate Capshaw) must [[Power of Friendship|work together]] to get home safe and sound.
 
The movie is largely forgotten today and was critically panned upon its first release, due to the marketing nightmare that came about from the 1986 [[Too Soon|Challenger shuttle disaster]] that claimed the lives of seven American astronauts and grounded the shuttle program indefinitelyfor several years until the cause could be determined and rectified. It didn't help, either, that the malfunction in the film [[Harsher in Hindsight|partly resembled the malfunction in life]].
----
{{tropelist}}
 
{{tropelist}}
* [[AIA.I. Is a Crapshoot]]: Although in this case it's more [[Artificial Stupidity]] rather than Artificial Malevolence.
* [[Almost Out of Oxygen]]: A major plot point. {{spoiler|Twice.}}
* [[Ascended Fanboy]]: Max is an avid fan of [[Star Wars]] and will make numerous references to the franchise in nearly every scene he appears in.
* [[Batman Gambit]]: Jinx the robot tries to get Max into space while he's on the space shuttle "to fulfill his wish". He hacks into NASA's network and figures out how to fire up one of the shuttle's booster rockets, which on its own will cause the shuttle to shoot up briefly, then crash. However, his gambit is the operators at the control room will see the one booster firing up and choose to fire up the second booster to avoid killing everyone on board. Sure enough, it works.
* [[Conveniently-Close Planet]]: The shuttle is launched outside of its launch window into an unplanned orbit -- but they still manage to make it to the unoccupied space station for supplies.
** Justified: the space station is placed at the most commonly used altitude and orbital declination for Shuttle flights precisely ''because'' it is the most commonly used altitude and orbital declination for Shuttle flights. With that part already taken care of, making orbital rendezvous could easily be done with the maneuvering jets and a little time.
* [[Creator Killer]]: This was the final film to be made by [[ABCAmerican Broadcasting Company|ABC Motion Pictures]].
* [[Did Not Do the Research]]: There are a number of instances regarding flight procedure and technical aspects of the space shuttle.
* [[Everyone Knows Morse]]: One of the campers thinks to use a telemetry switch to send Morse code in place of the nonfunctional radio. But it takes quite a while for anyone in the control room to notice that one of their console lights is rapidly blinking in an irregular pattern...
Line 39:
* [[Red Wire Blue Wire]]: Yep, to connect the oxygen tank.
* [[Reed Richards Is Useless]]: Space Camp has a sentient, AI robot which is capable of bypassing failsafes to launch a shuttle, but NASA is still counting on the shuttle and mindless computers.
** Justiifed: its specifically mentioned in-dialogue that the robot is not used for space service both because it interprets commands too literally (which fact also drives ''the entire plot of the movie'') and because its circuitry is too delicate to actually survive the level of ionizing radiation in space, a design flaw they gave up on trying to fix after multiple failed attempts.
** Also [[Truth in Television]]: the total amount of computing power available from the Space Shuttle's onboard systems wouldn't add up to an iPhone. The electronic system on NASA spacecraft are ''unbelievably'' primitive by modern standards, for the simple reason that they are also unbelievably ''robust''. A program, or a CPU design, has to be out there in service for a long long time before they finally work out ''all'' the bugs, and since the first bug on a spacecraft is the one that will kill you, well, there you go.
*** There are few surprises from 10-year old hardware, and it's better to have hardware support for safety measures than not. But a part of it is simply because of the physical limitations: as IC elements get smaller, it's going to be more vulnerable to ionizing radiation, increasing the risk of glitch or damage. Of the Intel CPU, 8086 (1978) from those shuttles has minimum feature size of 3200 nm; skipping a bit, 800nm are 80486 (1990+), early P5 Pentium (1993) and late 80386EX (1994, embedded version); then 600nm - with 80486DX4 (1994), and more Pentiums, then it snowballs and "modern" CPU on 65 nm process or smaller are far off this scale. 80386EX is used in many satellites, but satellites are not habitable, nor do any time-critical manoeuvring even if capable of minor orbital corrections.
* [[Robot Buddy]]: Take a guess.
* [[Shout-Out]]: Count all the ''[[Star Wars]]'' references.
Line 51 ⟶ 54:
[[Category:Films of the 1980s]]
[[Category:Space Camp]]
[[Category:Film]]