Retired NASA astronaut Nicole Stott watches and rates the realism of how outer space is portrayed in movies.
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00:00As an astronaut, it's frustrating to watch these kinds of scenes.
00:07You absolutely would have had a helmet on from the beginning.
00:10My name is Nicole Stott, and I am a retired NASA astronaut.
00:13I had about a 30-year career with NASA.
00:15Started out as a NASA engineer on the Space Shuttle and International Space Station programs,
00:20and then was very fortunate to get selected as a NASA astronaut and fly on two spaceflight
00:26missions.
00:27Today, we're going to look at space scenes in movies and judge how real they are.
00:31If you open the hatch, the airlock will depressurize.
00:35There is a moment.
00:41The point of an airlock is to do what it says, lock in the air.
00:46And so if you've got a greater pressure inside the airlock and there's a vacuum on the outside
00:52and you don't equalize before you open that hatch, it's going to explosively release.
00:57It's a really dangerous thing to have that happen.
01:08Blacking out from extreme forces is a common potential issue in space.
01:13We should try to design the vehicle so that load is limited on us, so that we can stay
01:17awake and not pass out.
01:20In this case, they were spinning super fast.
01:22And so that load was going to continue to grow on them.
01:26And I like that he says to his computer assistant that it should take over if he passes out.
01:35It's a real possibility, especially he doesn't have his helmet on, he's not pumping air for
01:39himself to stay awake.
01:42The computer might actually do a better job than we as humans could.
01:46We are lined up.
01:48Initiating spin.
01:54He's reacting to this spin, he turns his head kind of in the opposite way to help from passing
02:00out.
02:01You're the one in control of the spacecraft.
02:03You're much more aware of how the load from the vehicle is impacting your body as you're
02:09trying to fly it.
02:17I think this clip was probably as realistic as you can get for the scenario they were
02:22portraying.
02:23Super fast spinning station that they're trying to dock with.
02:26Everything that they do is all the kind of stuff you would have to do in real life, right?
02:30You would have to match the spin.
02:32You would have to move in, you know, deliberately to make that contact.
02:36When we dock with our, you know, our spacecraft to a space station, we're trying to get slowed
02:42down as much as you possibly can.
02:44I would give this scene in this film a seven.
02:47I just don't know if the extremes of it would be possible or not.
03:01That's a bad day in space.
03:03There's a combination of things that it's going to cause your body, your head, your
03:08face to freeze when it's exposed to the vacuum of space.
03:12But some things would happen before that.
03:14Of course, there's no air out there.
03:16So you would likely suffocate and die before you ever froze.
03:27Then all of a sudden you see him expanding as well.
03:30And that's absolutely going to happen.
03:31There's no pressure holding all of what makes us us in our body anymore.
03:36So we live in this environment on Earth or inside of our spacesuits where there's this
03:40pressure that helps keep us alive.
03:43And it actually keeps all of what we are in us, too.
03:47So if you go out and are exposed to the vacuum of space, all of what we hold into our bodies
03:53wants to release itself.
03:55And there's a lot of water in our skin.
03:57And so that is going to want to expand.
04:08You know, if you were to go outside without your helmet on, it's going to be a pretty
04:12quick transition to not being in a good condition.
04:17I think, you know, 30 seconds is probably the tops.
04:21They might be able to resuscitate him or he might be able to come back.
04:25But I don't think he'd look quite the same way that he did before.
04:28I think, you know, essentially, you know, when you look at how his face bloated and
04:33the freezing and what would be the boiling of the fluids in your body, your lungs are
04:38going to be impacted.
04:40Everything about you is essentially, I think, going to be burnt in some way.
04:45I would give this scene a five.
04:46I really think I could have gone up to seven for realism, but I have to bring it down because
04:51of what we know about him recovering in the film after this scene.
05:03When the computers are computing and figuring out a particular trajectory or path for the
05:10spacecraft, they're using a fixed object as well.
05:13It might be a star.
05:14It might be multiple stars.
05:16It might be signals from a satellite.
05:19But in this case, where they're going to have to manually, basically fly in a way to
05:24get them safely back, you know, to get back in the ocean on Earth, their biggest reference
05:29was the Earth.
05:30And it's really extraordinary the way they portray this in the scene.
05:32I think it was really well done.
05:40For them to make their final maneuver, right, to get back into Earth's atmosphere and to
05:45get home safely, was really dependent on the heat shield that's on the base of the
05:51spacecraft.
05:52It shields the spacecraft from the heat that it's going to experience as it's burning through
05:58the atmosphere.
05:59All that heat and, you know, flame plasma that you see in that scene is the heat that's
06:06being generated from the friction of that spacecraft reentering the atmosphere.
06:11Why the burn they did was so critical, too, is that you don't want to be too steep coming
06:16into the atmosphere and you don't want to be too shallow coming back into the atmosphere.
06:20If you're too steep, you're going to get too hot as you come back in.
06:25If you're too shallow, you might actually do something like skip off the edge of the
06:29atmosphere, which sounds completely wacky.
06:36They didn't have all of their systems running, right?
06:38So they were getting super cold inside of that of that spaceship, which on the one hand
06:43is good.
06:44You're about to reenter the atmosphere and it's going to get really hot and you want
06:47to kind of pre-soaked, you know, the inside of your cockpit with cold air.
06:53So you know, when it gets hot and hot and cold mix, it's going to start condensating
06:57inside of there as well.
06:58So I really like that they included that.
07:00I think it's, again, true to the reality of what would have gone on.
07:03Hello, Houston.
07:04This is Odyssey.
07:05It's good to see you again.
07:08The use of parachutes, you'll see it a lot.
07:11Even today, the Russian Soyuz spacecraft has parachutes.
07:15The SpaceX Dragon capsule that we're, you know, we send crew to and from the space station
07:20on now uses parachutes.
07:22The chutes are another way of kind of in that final stage, slowing the spacecraft down more
07:27before it, you know, does it splash down.
07:30Normally, it's going to happen by sensing, you know, sensors on the spacecraft, detecting
07:34a pressure change as it's reentering the atmosphere and they automatically deploy.
07:40The crew also has a manual override for that.
07:43So if you get to a certain altitude and those chutes have not deployed, there's a way for
07:47you to manually deploy them.
07:49I would rate these clips from Apollo 13 with a 10.
07:54I think they're about as close as you can get to what the reality would be.
08:06There's some good stuff.
08:07She's going to, you know, use the fire extinguisher and she kind of forgets that, oh my gosh,
08:11when I squeeze the trigger on this thing and start blowing this stuff out the one end,
08:16it's going to push me back.
08:18Totally legit.
08:19One of the most dangerous things really is to get flying too fast and bonk your noggin
08:24on a big metal hatch or free floating things that might be coming at you from a different
08:29direction and you're flying at it.
08:31We do a lot to try to stay safe from that.
08:35You know, you control the way you're moving through the station.
08:39We have Velcro on everything to try to, you know, keep it secure if we're not intending
08:44it for it to be free.
08:46Every astronaut I think who watches this is like, oh my gosh, the first thing you're going
08:49to do in any fire before you even go to see what it is, you're going to put on your mask.
08:53So the mask that we use during a fire emergency, it's actually a mask that's going to protect
08:59you and also provide you with clean air to breathe inside of it.
09:03It's totally different than the helmet or the mask we would have on during a spacewalk
09:08or during, you know, launch and entry.
09:17Microgravity has its impact on everything.
09:20For a fire, especially one, you know, not just a fire burning itself, but has some explosive
09:24nature to it.
09:26It's going to want to just continue moving and growing in that direction.
09:29And I think they did a pretty good job in this film too of showing kind of this billowing
09:33and you know, the way the fire grows inside of the spacecraft.
09:38They're wanting to kind of grow as this, you know, this fluid, this ball of flame in the
09:43in the station.
09:52She sees this, you know, this other space station that she wants to get to.
09:57You know, if she fires the fire extinguisher when she's looking right at it and the thing
10:01goes out the back, she's going to go in one direction or another.
10:04I don't know that it would actually work the way they showed it in the film.
10:09The idea is good.
10:10You even hear her in the scene, calculate, get to 180 and then, you know, and then squeeze
10:15the trigger.
10:16And, you know, so those were all good kind of things to consider in all of this.
10:21Whether the fire extinguisher would get you there or not, I, you know, I don't even want
10:26to wager a guess on that.
10:27One of the things I loved about Gravity was the visuals with the way the astronauts moved
10:34in space.
10:35I think it was, it's one of the best presentations of that I've ever seen.
10:40I remember watching this movie and feeling like, oh my gosh, that it's, it was reminding
10:44me of what it was like to be in space.
10:46I think I'd have to rate these clips from Gravity a five for realism.
10:51The reality would be you'd have a mask on, you'd assess that fire really quickly and
10:56see that it's out of control.
10:57And then I'm not quite sure that the fire extinguisher would have been the chosen way
11:03to get yourself to that other space station.
11:10The big blue marble.
11:13Space suits have different kinds of visors on them.
11:16And the gold ones that you saw in this clip, it's like having sunglasses on.
11:20And that gold, it really is gold on those visors.
11:23The intensity of the sun is really extreme.
11:27When you're on the moon, there's no atmosphere to protect you from, you know, the heat, the
11:31light.
11:32Alpha, we need backup ASAP, we're being ambushed.
11:37On the moon, there's one sixth the gravity of what we have here on earth.
11:41And when the debris is coming off of things, it's almost got kind of a floaty look to it.
11:46So when you think about shooting something out of a gun, it's going to have a little
11:52bit different path than it would down here on earth.
11:56It might stay up a little longer, it might travel further than it would here.
12:01But that doesn't mean it wouldn't hit a target that you were aiming at.
12:04Roaring.
12:05I have a puncture.
12:10So if you got a puncture in your suit while you're out in space, thankfully in the spacesuits
12:15themselves, they have tanks that are meant to fill that pressure while, you know, hopefully
12:19for a long enough time that allows you to get back to a safe place.
12:24You know, in this case, they're out on a rover, they're being attacked.
12:28I like that they show that, you know, they discovered where this leak is, apparently,
12:33you know, holding the line.
12:41Lunar rovers on the moon, you know, interesting thing, it's, you know, they're going to want
12:46to be bouncy.
12:47And so the suspension is a little bit different on the rovers than the cars we have here on
12:52earth.
12:54You got to be careful about getting going too fast because they can flip easier than
12:59what a vehicle here on earth would do.
13:01And so it's a little bit tenuous in the way you're driving.
13:05You have to think in three dimensions about the way you're driving your rover than you
13:10do the way you drive your car here on earth.
13:12But you get going too fast, especially if you hit something and are bouncing, you're
13:15just going to keep bouncing in that direction.
13:18And so it's probably less likely in reality that you would want to be driving that fast
13:23in your rover on the moon.
13:25I think I'd have to rate this clip about a four.
13:28You can definitely drive rovers on the moon.
13:30You can definitely do, you know, a lot of what they were doing, but the way they were
13:34driving, just the speed and the, you know, the turns and all of that, I think the reality
13:40is you'd be seeing a lot of those vehicles flipping before they ever got shot.
13:52There are a lot of layers to, you know, just to maintain the pressure and the structural
13:58integrity of the windows on a spaceship, but that doesn't mean they can't be damaged
14:04in space.
14:05We used to inspect them like, like microscopically inspect them and even little tiny dings from
14:11dust in space could cause, you know, an imperfection in the window.
14:15They're encountering big pieces of asteroid that are coming at them in the opposite direction.
14:21They've got a lot of energy coming into it.
14:24I think, you know, there's, there's every reason to believe that the windows could shatter.
14:29As an astronaut, it's frustrating to watch these kinds of scenes.
14:35It's kind of the Hollywood part of it where you want to see the actor's face, so they
14:39don't have their helmets on.
14:40And then somehow at the end, they try to recover by, you know, getting their helmet on at the
14:44last minute.
14:45You absolutely would have had a helmet on from the beginning.
14:48I guess I'd have to go with this clip in Armageddon 2.
14:52I'd rate this clip 10 for excitement in the way that it all went down.
15:02I mean, I think about it now these days where we almost take for granted the ability to
15:06orbit in a spacecraft.
15:08John Glenn was, you know, the first American astronaut to do that.
15:14And it was incredible to think about.
15:15He had done these suborbital flights where we go up and we come, you know, right back
15:19down.
15:20And now we were going to be in space for a longer period of time.
15:24It was, you know, you had to build up a little bit more energy to actually keep falling around
15:28the Earth and stay in orbit and then to predict where you would reenter and get safely back
15:33to Earth.
15:34And that's what we were seeing with John Glenn in this scene.
15:37And he's kind of straining and, you know, I think he's responding to the force on his
15:42body during reentry.
15:44Down here on Earth, we experience one force of gravity.
15:48I think in the case of, you know, John Glenn there, he might have been experiencing seven,
15:52eight G's for an extended period of time.
15:55You feel like, you know, it's seven or eight of you pushing down in that seat versus just
15:59the one of you.
16:00John?
16:01I can't hear you.
16:02He's hit the ionization blackout.
16:07No communications are possible for a few minutes.
16:09You're going through this, you know, this friction of getting back through the atmosphere.
16:13It's getting really super hot and they call it ionization, you know, where you get this
16:17almost this blanket around you that makes it impossible for the antennas and the communication
16:23systems to link up.
16:25And believe it or not, these kinds of communication blackouts can still happen today.
16:37I'm really thankful that as astronauts, we don't have to do that test anymore.
16:41You know, that was all back in the early Mercury seven days.
16:46This test and some of the others that they show in the film, which are based on, you
16:51know, real medical and physical kinds of activities that they like put these astronauts through
16:59was because there was so much unknown how the human body would react in the space, you
17:03know, the microgravity environment in the launch and reentry environment of getting
17:08to and from space.
17:09They were, you know, really, I think, trying to assess the, the limits, kind of the extremes
17:17of what the human could handle just right here on Earth.
17:21And by understanding that they could have a better idea of what, you know, the astronaut
17:26might be able to tolerate traveling to space.
17:28Yeah, I think I'd have to give this, these scenes and, and the right stuff, a rating
17:34of a 10.
17:35I mean, I think about it now these days where we almost take for granted the ability to
17:38orbit in a spacecraft and how just awesome that was for it to happen.
17:53The machine they're training on is called a multi-axis trainer.
17:57And by that, it means that it can kind of spin you in all the different directions at
18:00one time.
18:02And again, I'm so happy that we, as current day astronauts, we don't do that same thing.
18:10And it was meant to kind of boggle, you know, get your head boggled a little bit and, you
18:14know, have you having to respond to the load and the forces that were on you.
18:27When you're in a spacecraft and you could get into all different kinds of orientations
18:31and especially if something is going wrong, it might not just be, oh, we're flying too
18:36fast in this one direction.
18:37You could be tumbling and rolling and, you know, having these effects on the spacecraft
18:43itself.
18:44We do a lot of things that can get us into, you know, unusual attitudes can, you know,
18:49maybe result in disorientation.
18:51One of the main ways we do that is in these small trainer jets called the T-38s and where
18:56we purposefully will, you know, do a lot of aerobatic flying and, you know, see how our
19:01bodies are going to respond to that and how we might be able to, you know, take control
19:05to recover the situation.
19:06So you want to understand, you know, how is your brain and body going to respond to these
19:11situations and how could you be part of the solution instead of, you know, potentially
19:16part of making something worse than it already was.
19:23There's just something reminiscent of it to be able to watch somebody else's launch, even
19:27on a different spaceship, to reflect on what it felt to launch in the spacecraft you fly
19:31on.
19:32I have to say, though, I think the shaking that those guys had on the Saturn V was a
19:36lot more intense than what we had on the space shuttle, which I still felt like I was jello
19:40inside.
19:41You know, the Saturn V was a ginormous spacecraft.
19:53You know, you've got this big, long rocket, right?
19:56This really super tall rocket.
19:58You know, you've got what we call the first stage, you know, those big engines that were
20:01lighting at the launch pad to get the vehicle off the pad and, you know, moving in the direction
20:07that it's supposed to be going.
20:08Those engines run out and that part of the vehicle separates.
20:12And now you start these other engines on the back of it and it goes on and on, you know,
20:16through these different stages.
20:18The ideal is that it burns up and there's no debris caused from it.
20:21I would rate these clips in First Man a 10.
20:24I love that in this film they took advantage of the real footage that exists and they only,
20:30you know, improvised or, you know, went dramatic if they needed to.
20:34Even in the places where they were bringing it up to a higher definition, it still felt
20:38like, you know, it would have been of that time.
20:49The ship stopped spinning, leading to a loss of gravity on board.
20:53They're going super far into interstellar space, they're, you know, they need to have
20:58this load on their body of gravity.
21:00So, you know, spinning the spaceship is one of the ways that they do that.
21:04And as we start thinking about traveling to places like Mars, we've got to consider how
21:09do we use something like a centrifuge motion, you know, it allows your body to experience
21:14gravity.
21:17And we're going to need to consider that to keep our astronauts healthy as we go further
21:20and further on these longer, you know, longer duration missions from Earth.
21:34Water and all fluids in that environment of microgravity or where there isn't gravity
21:40will form into a ball.
21:42The surface tension causes that to happen.
21:45You know, when we shower on the space station, we don't have running water, right?
21:50There's no gravity to pull the water down like in a shower, like you would have here
21:53on Earth.
21:55So we squeeze balls of water out of a drink bag, out of the straw on the end of a drink
22:00bag.
22:01And we can squeeze these balls of hot water out into the air.
22:05And then you can just stick your arm through that ball of water and it's going to form
22:09like a glove of water on your arm.
22:12And then you mush the soap around and then you put your arm through another big ball
22:15of water to rinse it and sop it up with your towel.
22:26You could absolutely swim in the water, unlike, you know, what you see of people sometimes
22:31thinking they could swim through the air, you know, inside their spaceship.
22:35It's not going to do you any good.
22:36There's no resistance against that.
22:38But the water does give you some resistance.
22:47It looks really abrupt.
22:48And that same thing would happen in reality.
22:50I mean, you know, you would get some slow onset of the load on the thing.
22:56But going from zero to just any, any load on it is going to, you know, is going to cause
23:01a very abrupt shift in, you know, anything that was floating at the time.
23:06I would rate this scene a seven because, you know, I like the way they really tried
23:11to portray the reality of how liquids behave in, you know, in a microgravity environment.
23:18My favorite space movie, and I have to say movies, are Galaxy Quest and Rocketman.
23:26And it has nothing to do with the reality of what goes on in these movies with respect
23:30to space or anything.
23:31I just love the way in both of these films, just the interaction between the crew members,
23:38kind of the personality of the crew and how they engage with each other.
23:43It just reminds me so much of how crewmates, astronauts in real life are getting along
23:49with each other.