Reassessing 1986’s SpaceCamp – Ars Technica

Lee: It’s been about 18 hours since we watched SpaceCamp, which is maybe just a bit longer than the kids spent in orbit. What did you think? Are we tearing the film apart here, or praising it?

Lee: I damn near wore the VHS tape out watching it as a kid, so yeah, I was coming into this with a lot of old memories. It honestly held up a lot better than I was expecting it to! There’s epic levels of cheese—and we’ll get to that—but even in spite of the cheese, I don’t think anyone can deny that there was a lot of love put into this movie. For every huge detail they get wrong (why does the shuttle keep shaking after MECO?), there are countless minor details that they nail. Tiny stuff, that no one except insiders would notice—shuttle cockpit switch positions, authentic uniform patches, terminology. This was not a B-movie—money and care were spent, and that money and care are visible on-screen.

Lee: Poor timing is the understatement of the (last) century. SpaceCamp made its theatrical debut on June 6, 1986, barely four months after the very public destruction of Challenger. A movie about a space near-disaster coming so soon on the heels of an actual space disaster proved to be box office poison—which is unfortunate, because there’s a lot to love about SpaceCamp. Especially if you’re a fan of both “space” and “camp.”

For folks unfamiliar, the film depicts a group of five kids and a rookie astronaut who are accidentally shot into space when a routine main engine test of the orbiter Atlantis goes sideways. (The root cause of the problem is Joaquin Phoenix’s robotic best friend Jinx, which…well, we’ll get to Jinx in a minute.) Stranded in low Earth orbit without a functioning space-to-ground voice link and with dwindling oxygen, it’s up to lone adult astronaut Andie Bergstrom (Kate Capshaw) and her husband, camp director Zach Bergstrom (Tom Skerritt) to bring the stricken shuttle home.

It sounds like an ’80s-flavored recipe for success! And, shot on location at the actual Space Camp facilities in Huntsville and the actual Launch Control Room at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, it should have performed well—except for that pesky real-life shuttle explosion.

Lee: THERMAL CURTAIN FAILURE! I’d have to leave it to you as the resident shuttle expert about whether or not there’s a thing called the “thermal curtain” that stops the shuttle’s solid rocket boosters from overheating during a Flight Readiness Firing—or maybe toss that to collectSpace’s Robert Pearlman, who basically knows everything about everything. I remember when I was younger scoffing at the idea that the SRBs would be fueled during a main engine test, but now that I’m older, I’m pretty sure that particular detail is accurate, and that the solid propellants are essentially “manufactured” into the boosters during their refurbishment between flights.

Of course, as noted above, the conversion of “FRF” into “actual launch” is the fault of Jinx, a spherical maintenance robot apparently exhibiting full artificial general intelligence (in 1986, no less!) and seemingly given unrestricted access to the entire space center. Jinx and Max (the aforementioned Joaquin Phoenix, credited as “Leaf Phoenix”) are friends forever, and Jinx conspires with the all-powerful NASA mainframe computer (another runaway AGI!) to arrange a “THERMAL CURTAIN FAILURE.” And just like that, Jinx puts Max in space, along with Bergstrom and four other campers chosen to ride out the FRF on board Atlantis.

I have to wonder if Jinx is supposed to be under the control of a project officer or a principal investigator somewhere, and if that person’s career survived this incident.

What’s your take on the FRF shown in the film? Did NASA do these kinds of tests on the shuttle fleet, and how often?

Lee: I mean, it’s screenwriting 101: If we seen the gun (or in this case, the multi-axis trainer) on the mantlepiece in Act 1, then chances are that gun’s going to shoot someone by Act 3. We see Thompson’s Fairly struggle with spin recovery on the ground, and so of course Atlantis gets away from her just before re-entry. Contrived, silly, unrealistic, but definitely genre-appropriate!

But like you said at the outset, this movie wasn’t for us, the two old farts who can quote shuttle abort mode procedures at each other—it was for the kid I used to be in 1986, the kid who positively knew he could do a way better job in space than Phoenix’s Star Wars-obsessed Max, if only I’d been given the chance. The movie has faults, giant gaping faults, but it’s also trying to condense a ton of real (or at least reality-adjacent) space flight concepts into forms that are understandable by viewers who can’t tell an AJ10-190 from an RS-25. Which is most people! Some glossing over of the details is expected.

Atlantis approaches “Daedalus,” a fictional space station resembling the early ’80s “Power Tower” station concepts.

Credit:
20th Century Fox

…though I still don’t like the autonomous AGI-exhibiting robot who can infiltrate NASA systems and launch shuttles at will. Seriously seems like someone would get fired over that.

When the film was done, we talked for a bit about what the aftermath of SpaceCamp might be like, if something as ludicrous as happened in the film had happened in real life. In a lot of ways, gaming that out was as fun as watching the movie. As someone who actively reports on NASA policy, what do you think might have happened if the agency had in fact accidentally shot five American teenagers into LEO?

Lee: I’d have to imagine that if anyone comes out of it unscathed, it’d be Capshaw’s Andie Bergstrom, the one adult on board Atlantis. She survived injury and nearly lost her life bringing her crew home; that’s a solid PR opportunity if ever there was one. I’d figure Andie ends up with the Presidential Medal of Freedom or something similar, presented in a big fancy White House ceremony. The presidential speech practically writes itself: “Astronaut Bergstrom represents the highest ideals of the astronaut corps and of America—bravery, dedication to duty, and unwavering resolve…” Also, I’d bet she never flies in space again—her name attached to any shuttle flight from then on becomes a lightning rod of media attention. They probably park her in a senior position where she can be paraded out as needed and otherwise kept quiet.

I also have to imagine that SpaceCamp 2: The Joint Congressional Inquiry would be fascinating, as such things go. Watching the chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation rip Tom Skerritt’s character to shreds on live TV would make for extremely spicy viewing.

Lee: Coming back to the movie after decades away, I enjoyed it a hell of a lot more than I thought I would. It’s fun, it’s silly, and the inaccuracies ultimately serve the audience and solve narrative problems. Could they have tried harder? Sure—but it was the ’80s, and the cinematic bar for realism in summer blockbusters-to-be was, shall we say, perhaps a bit lower than today. I give the movie a final rating of two flaming SRBs up (which is a good rating on the flaming SRB scale that I just invented). Any final words from our space editor?