Word: lunar
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...Apollo moonships and the Saturn rockets that launched them had an extraordinary safety and success record, relying on the old concept of throwaway parts: When one stage of a rocket is spent, dump it in the ocean; when you're through with your lunar lander, leave most of it on the moon...
...moonships fix all that. NASA administrator Michael Griffin has called the new generation of spacecraft "Apollo on steroids" and that's a good description. The command and service modules-which will carry the crew-do look like pumped-up Apollos. And the spindly lunar lander is a decidedly more muscular version of the earlier...
...pointillism, Hanks recruited Apollo 15 commander Dave Scott--who also served as a consultant on Hanks' other space projects--to explain how to do everything from operating the module control stick to walking in one-sixth G to maneuvering around another grimy, unshaven, bulky-spacesuit-wearing man in a lunar-module interior no bigger than two telephone booths. Hanks and Cowen then went heavy on the handheld, point-of-view shots and layered on the 3-D. The result is an IMAX movie writ even larger than most. With intercuts of archival footage, Hanks' narration and commentary by contemporary kids...
...cast of a gig like this doesn't need famous faces, mainly because those faces would all be hidden behind the opaque visors of the lunar helmets. But there's no shortage of famous voices. John Travolta, Matt Damon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise and Scott Glenn can all be heard reading the real moon walkers' historic reflections as the movie moon walkers explore the faux surface. The plum role--NASA nobleman Neil Armstrong--is voiced by Hollywood nobleman Morgan Freeman. Armstrong's characteristically minimalist style suited the actor. "Morgan looked at Armstrong's lines, nodded and said...
...only historical liberties Hanks and Cowen took in their 40-min. moon ride were small ones. The curators of the lunar vehicles wanted to keep the machines free of dust, so the interior of the module stays clean--far different from the gunpowder-scented, soil-covered surfaces the astronauts describe. Hanks also had the actor astronauts lift their gold-colored visors more often than their real-life counterparts did, revealing the clear faceplates--and faces--underneath. "We wanted to remind audiences that those were human beings up there," he says...