Actually the stars are visible, if there's no bright object in your astronaut-eye's field-of-view causing your pupil to dilate.

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One that struck me - a raised thumb at arm's length is shown to cover the moon exactly. I remember learning (from my constellations book when I was 13) that one should use one's little finger.

Of course, the raised thumb has a distinctly positive meaning which makes it a better choice than the little finger.

Guenter Wendt was up in the white room the whole time and not in the suit fitting room.

So that's where Guenter wendt!

One thing that bothered me - the exhaust plume in most of the launch shots isn't long enough. It should be several times the length of the rocket itself. They also don't show shock waves creating momentary rings of condensation around the rocket, or recirculated exhaust climbing halfway up the first stage just before staging.

I hate to nitpick your nitpick, but I'm not so sure about this one. I watched the IMAX trailer here, and compared it to the info I found here, and to first order the movie rocket looks like the flight vehicles to me(specifically the fourth stage skirt roll patern and first stage intertank paint). Anyone else want to weigh in on this?

The reason this caught my attention is that my uncle accused me of the same error with my Estes Saturn 5 model and I had to go back and verify that I was right. While it's true that the test vehicle had more roll markings, they all had a significant amount of them.

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Wayne
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"Epistemology models ontology" - John Polkinghorne

Flight vehicle - solid band at top of third stage

Test vehicle - solid band at or near base of service module, intermittent band at top of third stage, solid band at base of third stage, solid band at top of vertical stripes on first stage

Apollo 13 movie - intermittent band at top of third stage, solid band at base of third stage. First stage and service module look okay, though.

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Okay, so they only got the third stage wrong. I guess that's somewhere between our two original posts. I enjoyed looking at all the Saturn 5 pictures, even if I only partly managed to correct your claim. The site I found indicated that they used a Saturn IB for the test vehicle, so maybe that's how they got tripped up on the movie. They may have used IB photos for the third stage rather than a flight Saturn V. Since the flight vehicles all looked pretty much the same, though, and there's so many pictures of them, it's hard to imagine how they could have messed this up. Maybe they just thought the IB paint looked better?

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Wayne
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"Epistemology models ontology" - John Polkinghorne

I don't know, but there was definitely a Saturn V test vehicle. I don't know why they'd use a IB as the basis for anything.

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My nit picks:

1) Jim Lovel is/was not as good looking as Tom Hanks.
2) Marilyn Lovel is/was NOWHERE NEAR as pretty as Kathleen Quinlan. But you won't find me complaining about that. :wink:

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The funny thing is, Kevin Costner was originally slated to play Jim Lovell, who, at least in 1994, was almost a dead ringer for Lovell....

That's your contribution? To make such shallow comments about a legend?

To quote Ronald Regan: "Now there ya go again...."

There is this new concept called: "Theater of the Absurd Humor" You will note that I engage in it alot. It's only been in use for 2500 to 3000 years so you may not have "glommed" onto it yet. (yes, the pun is intentional and an example)

The point of humor is the fact that, what Jim & Marilyn Lovel look like is totally, completely and "absurdly" irrelevant, both to the movie and this discussion.

Why am I explaining this???? :roll: :-? 8)

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Um ...

'Cause it's Absurd?

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Tom Hanks' thumb should have cast a shadow onto his eye. In the movie, we are shown Hanks' thumb covering the moon as if we were looking through his eyes. Then when the shot cuts to us looking at Hanks, there is no shadow on his eye. The shadow of Hanks' entire hand can actually be seen on and above his shoulder [on the chair back.]

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I could be wrong, but when they are showing the Saturn V inside the assembly building there seems to be a worrying lack of any kind of scaffold supporting it. Since they are showing the stacking of the third stage/interstage onto the completed first/second stage, shouldn't there be a platform around the rocket so the workers can come along and complete the mating (I'm sure I saw such a platform in the quarterly film reports and stacking footage on the Spacecraft Films Saturn V DVD set)? Instead they just leave the third stage sitting on top, apparently loose. I wouldn't like to try lifting off on that!

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Well, as long as you're accelerating, you should be ok!

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Should make POGO interesting.

And staging even more so.

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Paul loses, mathyou9 sorta wins...

The little finger at arm's length will cover the moon (actually 2x the moon -- Luna is 1/2 degree wide in the sky, and the little fingertip at arm's length covers 1 degree). But that's on Earth --the closer you get to the moon, the wider it appears...so at the range portrayed in the movie, it may very well have taken a whole thumb (2 degrees) to cover the Moon. Remember the old bit about a full-dress Harley hiding behind a pencil? It will -- but only at ranges of 100 yards or more...

Perspective and distance are interrelated...

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Umm - I think the scene that Paul & mathyou9 are describing is the one where Hanks is lying on the chair in his backyard after the A-11 EVA party.
As such, his little finger would have been adequate.

However, he was shown as having consumed a fair old amount of bubbly, so maybe he simply lacked the dexterity to employ his pinkie!!

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"Certainly, in the topsy-turvy world of heavy rock, having a good solid piece of wood in your hand is often useful." - Ian Faith

The scene in question occurs right at the start of the movie, when Lovell is on his garden lounger after the Apollo 11 EVA. He is on Earth when he uses his thumb to obscure the Moon, therefore the nitpick applies.

He uses his thumb to obscure the Earth while he is in space in lunar orbit, though.

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"The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: They don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views." The Doctor, Doctor Who: The Face of Evil.

I watched it today and Hanks is lit from his right front, by what I don't know since it's his backyard. Inconsiderate neighbors I guess. I don't think the amount of light from the moon would wash out the lighting from his side so I don't think there'd be a shadow from his thumb. Who knows though.

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The basic problem with this scene is, that the moon was already set in Houston at the time that scene would have happened.

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They did that. It was called "From the Earth to the Moon".

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Bump as Phil has mentioned this thread in his blog

I am due to be using clips from this movie in April in a sermon I hope to give at church. (Discussed here)

From my research

Ken Mattingly is shown too near the launch site for safety had the Saturn V rocket blown up on the pad.

Ken Mattingly is tee-total and did not go on a drinking spree

Ken was in mission control all the time

Gene Kranze did not say "Faliure is not an option"


One nice touch, is that the person playing the captain of the USS IWO JIMA that picked up the Apollo 13 capsul in the film was the real life Jim Lovell.

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For all the minor nitpicks, this film is still far closer to realistic than most Hollywoodizations.

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"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Never mind blowing up on the pad, he is portrayed as too close from an acoustic point of view. Those 5 F-1 engines make the second loudest noise ever created by man-made machinery. He'd likely have been deafened from where he was standing.

Another is the argument between the crew and the whole subplot of the antagonism between Haise and Swigert. In reality, though no-one was really happy with the switch, no-one doubted Swigert's ability, and no-one even considered the accident might possibly have been his fault as Haise implies in the argument scene.

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"The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: They don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views." The Doctor, Doctor Who: The Face of Evil.

Agreed, and it captures emotion excellently too. I've seen it many times, and certain scenes still have an emotional impact on me. I still well up at the 'was it the door?' moment, and still feel like punching the air when they finally see the Odyssey on the main parachutes after the extended blackout. And the whole scene of launch day is utterly stunning.

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"The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: They don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views." The Doctor, Doctor Who: The Face of Evil.

Except for the title of his book. I'll have to go back over the book to find out when he first uses this phrase. But since he made it the title, he must have said it at some crucial time during his career.