After classes tonight I'll be watching this cheerful gem. No, not the MST3K episode (one of the series' more contentious outings, because most consider Marooned / Space Travelers to be undeserving of mockery). Just the movie on its own merits, as a reminder that being stuck in the *right* company is everything.
Also: apparently Cuarón watched this dozens of times while making Gravity, so if it's as good as I've heard I'll have more reason to side-eye its high-budget inheritor. 😉 #CoSoFilms #SFF
@MLClark "Marooned" was released in 1969, two years after the Outer Space Treaty, which required spacefaring nations to provide mutual aid.
The X-RV is a riff on the Dyna-Soar, a lifting body developed by Boeing for the USAF. It was cancelled in 1963. Seeing it in "Marooned" probably pleased some people.
Launching through the eye of a hurricane is a "jumping the shark" moment for this space analyst.
Much of it was filmed on the Cape, so there's that.
😊 Enjoying it so far, and imagining how thrilling those images must have been to people still new to views from space. Great pacing & good soundscape (no country music!). Only two howlers thus far: no tethers on equipment/suits, and everyone outside at once.
One curiosity with the vernacular: Peck promises that the full resources of *the* NASA are working on the problem. Do you remember the switch to dropping "the"--or are there still a few today who use that more formal syntax?
@MLClark Funny you should ask ...
NASA's predecessor was the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. The common reference was "the N-A-C-A."
When NASA began in October 1958, people naturally said "the N-A-S-A" but eventually started pronouncing it "NASA."
In this 1962 documentary, Kury Debus sometimes says "the NAY-suh," sometimes other pronounciations. (1/x)
@MLClark The book was published in 1964, so I suspect one common term had not yet become standard.
We often wonder why some acronyms are spelled out, while others are pronounced as a word. Why "V-A-B" and not "VAB"?
This September 1958 "Message to Employees of NACA" features outgoing Director Hugh Dryden and incoming Administrator Keith Glennan. They say "the N-A-S-A." (2/x)
@MLClark As mentioned upstream, "Marooned" the novel was published in 1964. Dyna-Soar was cancelled the year before, so it was still fresh when the author wrote it.
As for the McGuffin ... That engine used hypergolic fuels, which burn on contact with each other. All that has to happen is for two valves to open to let the propellants enter the combustion chamber.
I'm unaware of any time that happened. They've stuck open (Gemini 8) but never failed to open, to my knowledge.
Slumber calls. (3/3)
A few other clear irritants: the failure of the crew to report all anomalies (e.g., the still-green light), and to respond to the Cape's calls, long before they had the excuse of oxygen deprivation for not hearing commands.
But I do love a good *patient* hard SF film that teaches the audience to watch for details. Solid performances, and a clever reveal w/r/t whose wife was whose (their personalities first suggested other pairings).
Shame it didn't spark more follow-up ventures.
@MLClark I haven't watched "Marooned" in a *very* long time. I watched it primarily to reconcile with locations shown at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station to see if I could identify the sites.
It definitely deserved the #MST3K treatment. 😊
We Cape historians are always on the lookout for vintage footage to show what it looked like back in the day, so "Marooned" has tha upside.
The MST3K version was the shorter Space Travelers, repackaged in a hokey way in the 1990s because the film was in public domain. I can see how, shortened and viewed through the lens of another CGI context, it might be easy prey, but putting aside a few technical gaffes, the full story and psychology of the piece was well done. And MST3K made fun of it for its attention to technical vocabulary, so maybe what it really deserved was a roast from a better informed space community. ;)
@MLClark I found #MST3K "Space Travelers," watching it now ... Right away, the launch stock footage is all wrong. They mix footage of a static test with a Saturn V launch. The Mobile Service Structure would never be on the pad at launch time, plus there's no capsule on top. Then they cut to a Saturn V launch with MSS gone and an Apollo capsule on top. 🙄
@MLClark As mentioned earlier, the X-RV is based on the X-20 Dyna-Soar cancelled in late 1963. This quick video will tell you more about the Dyna-Soar. (2/2)
@MLClark As an aside ... Only one of the seven X-20 Dyna-Soar pilots is still with us. Al Crews lives locally, in Cocoa Beach. He'll be 95 next month. At one time, he volunteered with the Cape's space museum.
He went on to be a training pilot for NASA, but not an astronaut. Some of the astros I worked with trained with Al.
@MLClark David Janssen is basically Deke Slayton, a Mercury astronaut grounded due to a heart murmur. Janssen even looks like Deke, who finally flew on Apollo-Soyuz.
The racing cars with sirens are on Titan III Causeway, arriving at LC-41, which back then was a Titan III pad, so accurate!
A reporter just said Pad 41, so that checks.
Yep, sacrifice one to save two. The needs of the many ... For the record, NASA doesn't have suicide pills. I've asked.
@MLClark Janssen is wearing a Manned Maneuvering Unit. NASA didn't have MMU until 1984. We gave up on them.
The cosmonaut is using a gun similar to what Ed White had on Gemini 4. It didn't work very well.
Today we use the SAFER (below).
Mission Control celebrating the rescue ... I'd be waiting until that X-RV lands, since no one has ever landed one from space before.
I would have sent one back with the cosmonaut so the X-RV had less mass to deal with on landing.
"I would have sent one back with the cosmonaut"
:) I don't doubt you could've pulled it off, too! World peace and an end to the Cold War a few decades ahead of schedule. Totally in the Stephen Smith wheelhouse, if you'd been tapped for the job.
Thanks for this lovely technical run-down on the piece. A much more comprehensive reflection than the version on MST3K. 👌
@MLClark "World peace and an end to the Cold War a few decades ahead of schedule."
Actually, I was being pragmatic.
Assuming the Soviet spacecraft was a Voskhod or Soyuz, those could carry up to three crew. Although Soviet tech at the time was a bit iffy, I'd rather have my astronaut come down in one of those than the untried X-RV.
Also ... If X-RV is lost on entry, at least one U.S. astronaut survives return.
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty requires mutual aid, so I wasn't thinking peace. 😉
Mutual aid tends to be a pretty good path to peace. I know you were talking pragmatically, but I was thinking about the optics. More good faith gestures earlier in our history in space might have gone a long way to alleviate Cold War tensions.
Granted, plenty in government didn't *want* that, ergo the upset when Kennedy in 63 imagined an era of spacetime collaboration, but still!
@MLClark I ran out of characters, but I agree it would have been a diplomatic gesture of goodwill.
It depends on when the film took place. I assume 1970. By that time, the US and USSR were already having informal talks about how to perform a rescue mission, and the possibility of a joint mission. That evolved into Apollo-Soyuz.
If it were 1964, when the book was published, then yes it would have been a big shock.
Funnily enough, some consider Marooned to have helped with optics around joint efforts.
I recall that those early talks were difficult for the gov'ts jockeying for position behind the scenes--but either way, it was even harder for Hollywood. You can see in Marooned that producers couldn't allow the USSR to save the crew on screen (the cosmonaut couldn't even be the one to give them oxygen; the closest the plot could tolerate was having him *try*). Always politics in these things.
@MLClark Helpful hint ... If you see a movie using the official #NASA logo, that means NASA cooperated with the movie, which means they approved the script, e.g. "The Martian."
If the movie has a non-official logo, it means NASA didn't cooperate with it.
"Marooned" had the logo. First thing I checked. 😉
"The Partnership" is the official NASA book about Apollo-Soyuz and earlier joint efforts. "Marooned" is on pp. 9-10 (31-32 in the PDF).
@MLClark At the #MST3K 30-minute mark ...
There was a throwaway line that the space station was a S-IVB stage. That tracks; von Braun wanted an Apollo followup using a Saturn V S-IVB third stage converted into a station. That eventually became Skylab.
They're arguing now about the rescue mission. When the NASA astronaut corps found out management ruled out a Columbia rescue mission, they were furious. It probably wasn't practical, but history mimicked Peck's refusal ... (1/x)