10 - Hollywood Space Race

 The United States and Russia are racing to fly actors into space; a promising development in the commercialisation of space travel.

“We are at the dawn of a golden age of space exploration which will transform our relationship with the Earth and with the cosmos.” – Sir Richard Branson

On July 20th 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first person to step foot on the moon, arguably marking the end of a decade-long space race between the US and Russia. Hollywood paid homage to the riveting advancements in Science during the 1960s by releasing countless sci-fi movies with narratives set in outer space, including Star Wars: A New Hope (1977) and Alien (1979) which consistently gross multimillion values at the box office. Fifty years later, Hollywood now enters a space race of its own, as producers plan to take sci-fi movies to a new altitude.

Both the US and Russia have announced history-making plans to take actors to the International Space Station (ISS). With limited space and time aboard the working laboratory, the two nations are in direct competition to be the first to complete their era-defining cinematic projects. NASA and Elon Musk’s Space X will work with Universal Studios on the £150m project to film their new sci-fi movie starring Tom Cruise aboard the ISS. Meanwhile, Rocosmos, the Russian Space Agency, are also hoping to make history with their movie The Challenge, planning filming towards the end of 2021.

 Jim Bridenstine, NASA Administrator, tweets about NASA’s involvement in the Hollywood movie project.

Very few people other than Astronauts visit the ISS and, at present, only GK Launch Services in Russia operates commercial spacecraft launches. Space tourism has always been an incredibly exclusive market, mostly due to the tremendous costs involved.  In 2008, Richard Garriott, born in Cambridge UK, who holds no formal astronaut training, spent $30 million to become the sixth space tourist. There have been no orbital tourist flights to the ISS since 2009, so the two movie projects may lead to the first commercial space flights to the ISS in a decade.

A trip to space is no easy feat, hence the projects will require significantly more time and investment than traditional movie endeavours. The actors would only be allowed to partake in the project if they passed medical and psychological exams and completed extensive space training. The successful Russian actress will receive six months of training for the 10-day trip to the ISS, three of which will be spent studying the basics of space and the other three completing intense physical training.

Physical training is vital to prepare individuals for space travel, reducing the impact of acceleration stress; the cause of blackouts and disorientation prompted by the high accelerations experienced during take-off. This will require specialist human centrifuges which allow individuals to build up a tolerance to these high G conditions before travel by being swung in circles at nauseating speeds. Most of this training will share similarities with routine astronaut and cosmonaut training but is trivial compared to the decade of training and education completed by the average professional astronaut.

A human centrifuge at NASA

Even after take-off, space will present many challenges to the actors and film crew. For the entire duration of their stay onboard the ISS, individuals will have to live and work in microgravity. Spending time in this environment for extended periods can cause the muscles and bones in the body to degrade, and the heart muscles to weaken as they do not have to work as hard against gravity. Hence the actors would face the challenge of fitting work around a minimum of two hours of exercise every day in order to maintain their health.

Whilst the projects present considerable challenges, costs and commitment, they do also offer substantial benefits. Sci-Fi movies can spark interest in space and inspire young people to engage in STEM subjects. Furthermore, the Hollywood space race could lead to exciting developments in the space tourism industry, allowing companies like SpaceX to experiment with commercial space flights. For now, space travel remains reserved for Astronauts and a handful of exceptionally high-paying clients, but projects such as Virgin Galactic Space Line, created by entrepreneur Richard Branson, and SpaceX may open-up the space travel market, allowing more civilians to blast off into space in the future.