Be honest: who among you didn’t dream of becoming an astronaut as a child? While most of us will probably never leave the world, it’s comforting that movies give us a glimpse of what a trip to the stars would be like. Seriously, isn’t it a great achievement of cinema to make space experiences visually tangible on the big screen?
And this despite the fact that the films are faced with the great task of recreating these experiences on terrestrial film sets. “Apollo 13” is undoubtedly one of the most authentic attempts to organize a space expedition. This is mainly because director Ron Howard demanded a lot from his cast. The actors completed astronaut training exercises, went to NASA space camp and simulated weightlessness by performing several parabolic flights in a Boeing KC-135 aircraft.
Parabolic flights are special maneuvers in which the pilots fly a parabolic trajectory and put their aircraft in free fall at the right time. This balances the air resistance in the aircraft so that the passengers float in weightlessness. This state lasts for a maximum of 25 seconds, which gave the team the special task of filming in this short time frame. However, the team was not only faced with technical challenges. Your own physique also had to be able to take a beating!
Kevin Bacon: One of the cameramen threw up on me!”
Since the simulation maneuver had to be repeated several times and, as is well known, a film shoot is not completed in one go, the people involved had to have a lot of stamina. After all, up to 80 parabolas were flown on one shooting day. Kevin Bacon had valid concerns, as he recently shared with Entertainment Weekly: “We flew about 40 parabolas in the morning, came down, had lunch and flew another 40 parabolas in the afternoon. Lunch was a huge Mexican feast of burritos, chili con carne, and all that spicy food. And I wondered if we shouldn’t take it a little easier when it comes to food.”
Bacon’s worst fears were to come true: “One of the cameramen threw up on me. The interesting thing about throwing up in zero gravity is that it floats in the air for a while. You can’t really do anything but yell, ‘Look out, here it comes!’ And when gravity kicks in again, it falls down on you.” In any case, that may not have been the most glorious moment in Bacon’s career!
The solution would have been very simple: all you need are a few drugs to reduce nausea and you can even play with a soccer ball in zero gravity, as a behind-the-scenes test series shows.