Hollywood in Space

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Hello, I'm Brian Cox.

I'm Robin Inks, and this is the Infinite Monkey Cage.

Now, today we're going to peer review Hollywood as we ask: is space really like it is in the movies?

And so, we're going to deal with some of the most important movies that are about space and space exploration.

And we're going to ask questions such as: is it really possible for Santa Claus to conquer the Martians?

Has anyone actually seen Santa Claus conquers the Martians?

Yes.

No.

Yeah.

It's as good as it sounds, isn't it?

I think is the best way of describing it.

If you're about six years old, it is, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

When I saw it, the has it got

anything to do well, this is no, no, it's got exactly what it deals with.

This is why it's a big question.

If we're talking about, we've got three astronauts on the panel, as people we're about to find out, and you know, I want to know from them, for their own experience, you know, do they believe it would be possible for Santa Claus scientifically to conquer the Martians?

Look, we're all adults in here, aren't we?

Primarily.

And mainly

adults listening.

So I think I can say, I think I'm allowed to do it without shattering anyone's dreams and illusions.

that it's okay.

I'm a scientist, I can say it.

There's very little evidence for the existence of Martians.

Science fiction used to play fast and loose with the laws of physics, but recently there has been an increasing trend towards scientific accuracy.

Nobel laureate Kip Thorne helped out and indeed write interstellar.

Theoretical physicist Sean Carroll advised on the appearance of wormholes in the Marvel franchise of the Thor films.

And TV chef Brian Cox was an advisor on Danny Bohr's Sunshine.

But we're not going to talk about that this time, are we?

Because you made a bit of a pig's ear of that, didn't you?

I was given a tremendous challenge.

Our son is dying now.

We are going to go and fix it.

Discuss.

It was like, well, this is bollocks at every level.

But Danny Boyle wouldn't.

Anyway.

Now, in a break with current political and intellectual fashion, we're going to explore the representation of space in films with four people who actually know what they're talking about.

One has two Oscars for the representation of space in films, and the other three people have flown in space.

And they are.

Hello, I'm British astronaut Tim Peake.

I flew to the International Space Station in 2015.

I've just finished a new book called Space: the Human Story.

And the best thing I learnt from Hollywood movies was to stay out of the cornfields.

because whenever you see a cornfield in a Hollywood movie, something terrible is about to happen.

I'm Paul Franklin.

I'm a filmmaker and visual effects designer.

I've worked on films including Inception and Interstellar and the Dark Knight franchise.

And I'd say the best thing I have learned from working on Hollywood science fiction films is though nobody can hear you scream in space, you can always hear the score.

And I'm Nicole Stott.

I'm a NASA astronaut and artist who got to paint with watercolors in space and now I'm part of a foundation called the Space for Art Foundation bringing space and art together.

I got to spend two missions on the International Space Station and the Space Shuttle and the best thing I ever learned from a Hollywood film is I think how much I must not have learned in science class.

Hi, I'm Susan Kilrane, Navy test pilot, space shuttle pilot times two.

I'm recently an author of a newly released children's book called An Unlikely Astronaut.

And what did I learn from Hollywood movies?

I learned that the Earth is round, we did go to the moon and Mars and black holes and other planets, and that nothing is definitely real when you're looking at a Hollywood movie.

And this is our panel.

Well, we're going to start off with you, Paul, because I think this is probably most threatening for you.

Because I would imagine more often than not, when there's three astronauts near you, you just go, oh no, who's going to come up first and go, can I just say, I watched that film you made?

And to be quite honest, that was terribly inaccurate what you did when we were in space.

So, what are the things that you are most used to?

You know, you've had a long career making a lot of science fiction movies.

A lot of people remember you most fondly for obviously the nutty professor 2, the clumps.

But

got got that in early, I do apologise.

Could have been Blade Runner 249, but I feel for a lot of people it is the Nutty Professor.

What are the things that people just think, oh man, I wish I'd known that before we did that effect?

Well, I mean, generally, you worry about what's in the story mostly, and the things you're actually most concerned about is: am I achieving what the director wants for the film, for the vision of the film?

And not so much about

you know, being super accurate at that point.

Then later on, you see something you think, oh, well, that was a load of old nonsense, wasn't it?

And I think Nutty Professor 2 probably fumbles into that category.

But then it wasn't really intended to do be a a lecturer in science was it?

So that was Susan when because I I you know physics everybody always says to me how can you watch science fiction films?

Does it annoy you when you're watching a film and this happens and that happens?

So the the same question to you really d do you take some of the films seriously and say well that's just absolute nonsense I'm offended by that representation of space flight.

Oh there's some of the best movies are completely wrong and I love them.

I mean look at Top Gun and Top Gun Maverick and Gravity.

Those movies are amazing.

None of it's real

but I love it.

Because you flew the F-14.

I flew the F-14 and yeah it's you know you can't do what they did.

See can you do that?

Well no you can definitely, yes, the fly-in was real in Top Gun.

Top Gun Maverick, not so much.

What is the bit in Top Gun Maverick where you went, whoa, that really is pushing it too much?

Wow, a lot of it was pushing it too much.

The answer is the answer.

For one, the fact that Tom Cruise was still allowed to fly was probably the biggest, wow, that would never happen in the real Navy.

And the fact that all his ex-girlfriends who were actually the same age of him in 1985 were no longer in existence for some reason.

No, they were no longer existing.

Some alien had snatched them all up.

But I was happy that they brought

Eisman back and let him be part of the movie.

And, you know,

it was a great film.

You have to go to a movie with your popcorn and your soda and get into it, I think, and not pick it apart scientifically.

Well, that's ruined this show.

Thank you.

And you last.

Notwithstanding Susan's comments, Nicole, the same question to you.

I don't think you can help but watch a film, you know, for whatever industry you're in and just, you know, pick it apart a little bit or at least be bothered by some of it.

I think you mentioned gravity.

Some of the most amazing visual effects, I remember looking at that and thinking, oh my gosh, the way they got the light off of the space station, you know, and the way all of that looked was so beautifully done.

And yet...

It made me almost, my stomach was just churning with every spacewalk scene that was going on and how just almost like disrespectful of

that whole task that it was, kind of the playing around and all of that really upset me.

But what I try to look at, I think it's the same kind of thing you're talking about, Susan, is I love the idea of how sci-fi has had so much influence on sci-fi over the years, how things that seemed like just part of our imagination at some point have become reality along the way.

And that's why I'm hopeful in a lot of these movies that I see that, man, that cool stuff, that we're not doing that, but maybe it could happen sometime.

I remember one of the things that a lot of astronauts picked up on gravity before they even got to everything else in space was: just so you know, that's not the underwear we wear.

That's really whatever Sandra Bullock's got on is not pragmatic for the ISS.

No, it's uh it's a nappy and

a suit with cold water flowing through it.

It's not quite as glamorous as the hot pants that Sandra Bullock was wearing.

But no, for me, I'm really with Nicole and Susan there in terms of I love being entertained.

I go to a movie to just watch it, you know, sit there with a Coke and popcorn and have fun.

So from that point of view, I don't really mind the inaccuracies and gravity, yeah, the cinematography, actually they did get it so right.

If anybody wants to know what Earth looks like from space, watch gravity.

But one thing that does gar me a little bit from a test pilot background is how spacecraft always fly in space.

You know, they always, whether it's Star Wars X-Wings or whether it's, you know, coming from all these different movies, like, no, no, no, there is no air in space.

Spacecraft do not need to fly like aircraft here on Earth, but you always see that.

Or in straight lines.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, no, but what are you criticising in gravity?

Are you saying the space shuttle shouldn't have had wings?

Because

I think

it needed them, didn't it?

Mostly it was okay.

It was flying through space on a fire extinguisher, was the point I really kind of thought.

Right.

But it's interesting what you said about there's no, because there is a lot of fun in the spacewalk.

They're playing around.

So is there really genuinely no room for fun on the spacewalk?

Did you have any moments when you were on a spacewalk where you could just take it in?

We got 10 minutes to just hang out because we were specifically repairing a solar panel and the sun was still up.

So it was kind of the circuit breaker that had broken.

So a risk of electric shock.

So yeah, we did have 10 minutes just to take selfies and hang out, which is amazing.

Yeah, and I think every, I mean, every part of spaceflight, I think

you want to enjoy it too, right?

My problem with like the spacewalk and stuff that they showed was just, okay, we're just going to tool around and like we've never met each other before, and we're going to bounce off the station on our tethers and things that you would never cross your mind out on a spacewalk.

But taking in the view of Earth, well, one of my friends, Christina, likes to remind me of riding on, did you get to ride on the end of the robotic arm at all?

I didn't know.

Oh my gosh.

No.

Has anybody got to ride that?

And they showed, showed, they had that in gravity too, right?

Not in a very nice way, the way she got to get flung around on the thing,

but it was so peaceful.

And just to watch the scene of Earth rising up around you and the shuttle popping into your view and just appreciating that awe and wonder, I mean, that's a really human, fun thing to do.

And then almost falling asleep because it was so comfortable.

How is that first moment in space, Susan?

Because I suppose however however much you train for it, you can't train for that view and that sensation.

Yes, the first wow moment really is

once the engine's cut off and you're now kind of floating in your straps, your seatbelt that's all still on, and you just gaze at Earth.

It's, you know, you've seen it a thousand times in movies or from pictures that other astronauts have shown you, but it just doesn't do it justice.

It's really seeing it firsthand that just stops you in your tracks and you gaze at it and then you get to work because you have a lot to do.

Well let's go to a more, I suspect, a more accurate film which you worked on for his First Man.

So that's the whole reason for that film is accuracy biotic of Neil Armstrong, Ryan Gusling, playing Neil Armstrong.

So

what was the process you went through?

It's interesting, I suppose, when you're first approached, and it's got to be absolutely realistic.

It is the story of Neil Armstrong on Apollo 11.

What are you asked to do, and how do you approach it?

Well, we were, I mean, accuracy was super important.

And Damian Chiselle, who directed it, who had made La La Land just before that, he became a real aficionado of everything that happened on the Apollo missions.

And I'm a bit of a space nerd and grew up like you during the Apollo era, watching it on TV as a kid.

And so I've always been very interested in it.

So he would just pump me for information about the missions.

And one day I got this email from the visual effects producer saying, Damien wants to know if Michael Collins had his gloves on whilst he was docking the command module with the lunar module.

And I was thinking, oh, I don't know.

And I start looking for information on it and everything.

And then I thought, wait a second, you've actually got Michael Collins' email address.

So perhaps best to ask him, who actually did this and went to the moon, rather than the guy who was three years old at the time and has the degree in sculpture.

And I think they found out in the end, I'm not quite sure which what the actual result there was.

But yeah, the accuracy and he would try Damien would try and catch me out.

Uh he started referring to the way that the astronauts would sleep inside the uh command module on the way to the moon.

And I didn't know about how they folded out the seats and the hammocks and all this sort of thing, so he caught kind of caught me out there.

Isn't there also a problem which is sometimes uh when you're making a movie, audience expectations of how things will happen

that you actually have to go, Do you know what, we can't be as scientifically accurate because actually it will make the audience detach.

I think things like walking on the moon and well, in the case of First Man,

they wanted to make it as accurate as possible, the depiction of the moon walk.

And so that was all filmed.

in a quarry outside of Atlanta in Georgia, where they actually has grey sand.

And the art department dressed about a couple of acres of it to look like the sea of tranquility.

And we had a full-size lunar module mock-up, and it was lit by the most powerful lamp they could find, a 200,000-watt bulb, lit it to simulate the look of the sunlight.

And I went out

onto the set, and I just thought, holy heck, I'm standing on the moon.

It was quite extraordinary, because if you've looked at all the Apollo surface photography, it was a

pretty spot-on match.

Though it then began to snow and rather ruined the effect.

And so they had to wait a couple of days until it all melted and they could, so it was a rather damp sea of tranquility.

But mostly, we don't really know, most of us, what it looks like on the surface of the moon and most people haven't bothered to look at the photography.

So they're always expecting to see things like a bit of mist in the air to make things feel a little bit further away.

You know, they don't get that depth perspective in space.

One of the things we had on interstellar was that the thrusters of the spacecraft, the jets just fly out in you know, perfect cones and it looks really strange if you've seen uh this uh footage.

They did it very well in gravity actually.

Whereas um we actually just use little puffs of nitrogen gas which form little clouds, which you don't get in space, but it looks real because we filmed a real thing.

And so people kind of believe it more.

And that's because of this business of audience expectation.

And it's something, you know, when the films become more and more fantastical, when they're more fantasy-based, they they tend to shift more and more into things like stuff that you'd experience on the earth.

Was there anything, Tim, when you first went into space that you'd your expectations turned out to be wrong because you'd grown up seen space films and things?

Was it something that surprised you?

And you thought that shouldn't look like that.

Yeah, I think it was just this stark contrast of just how black space is in the daytime.

It's a black that we just never see here on Earth.

There's no color that can really truly represent the blackness of space.

And for me, that was quite a shock.

It's really absorbing.

It feels like you're kind of falling into this soul-sucking blackness.

And then, in contrast, then when you look at parts of the spacecraft, and certainly outside the space station where you can see down the whole structure, you're struck just by the colours because you have got this pure white

fusion reaction and it's the whitest light that you'll ever get.

So from a sort of filmmaker studio perspective, it it is just like the perfect studio.

And of course that perfect white is giving you perfect colours and perfectly crisp shadows with no obscuration from the atmosphere.

So you'd see the shadows falling on the space station, they're just razor sharp.

And so these kind of things that you know that it's going to be like that, but you can't really visualize it until you get there.

Yeah, so it doesn't, it almost doesn't look real.

Yeah,

it's just the most

crisp, crystal clear, glowing, like vivid color that you'd ever see.

One of the other things, did you guys think this too?

Like, everything's not in slow motion for real.

That was the thing I was really like, do we move in slow motion?

But you don't.

So, did Ryan Gosling,

because you'd move at the normal speed, but of course, that looks silly on the moon in some sense.

I mean, for First Man, I think we shot it, the cameras running at the normal speed, so it wasn't slow motion.

But it's very much a convention.

If you go back to science fiction films from the 60s and early 70s, you'd use slow motion all the time to make it look like you're in zero gravity.

Or if they didn't have a high-speed camera, And if you watch Space 1999,

you'll see the actors pretending to move it slowly.

It's when they have a fight, isn't it?

Space 1999.

Very, very slow.

I know I'm doing them actions on.

So promotional photography is very expensive.

Certainly was back then.

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So,

when we're talking about accuracy, I suppose one of the important things, going back to when you were saying, well, when you go to the cinema, you know, you sit there with your popcorn and it's just all fun.

I suppose one of the dangers is that sometimes we do, you know, whatever Hollywood creates, sometimes people then believe that is the reality.

You know, we see that in war movies, we see that in so many different things.

People go, well, this is.

So I suppose that's part of the, would you say that's part of the battle of going, but this doesn't matter because this bit's fun.

But this idea might matter because this might be now believed as being a true part of the experience of going to space, of the challenges of going into space.

Well, I thought it was kind of nice that my kids knew I flew F-14s, and then they thought I flew like, just like Tom Cruise did.

I got some real street cred that day.

But you do have to, I mean, like watching a movie like The Martian.

Amazing movie.

And you could come away from that thinking all of that science was exact.

But it's not yet.

And maybe someday most of it will get there.

But some of it was never going to get there.

And so the movie was so good and so believable that people think that the science is real.

Isn't that the story I think you told me, Brian, that Andy Weir who wrote it, that he wanted it to be as accurate as possible, but the only bit that's totally inaccurate is why he gets stranded on Mars, the actual storm that occurs.

So that's quite an interesting thing to actually start, right, I'm going to get all the scientific inaccuracy over to begin with, but my potato growing will be as specific as it can be.

But I think one of the things that was interesting about that film, because I really liked it too, was that where there were those inaccuracies or where there was dramatic license taken that kind of veered from the book as well, they didn't hide it.

Like when the film came out and when people were talking about it, they just said that.

They just said, hey, this is not the way it would be on Mars.

You're not going to get blown over by something.

But it made the movie, I don't know, it made the story of the film too.

So I kind of like that, that transparency.

And it's also an exploration of the psychology of astronauts, as was First Man, to a large extent.

And I wondered how, in your experience,

so the selection of astronauts has changed, I suppose, over the years, hasn't it?

Because Mercury and Apollo, it is all, I know you're, well actually two of you are test pilots, so it kind of ruins my question somewhat, but it was all test pilots.

Yeah, I know.

You're an engineer, aren't you, Nicole?

But it but then but it has moved, hasn't it, away from that idea that you have to be, you know, Chuck Jaeger, the right stuff, that kind of thing.

So could you talk a bit about how the selection process has changed over the years?

Well, in the beginning,

we didn't know much about space or

how safe it was going to be or how reliable.

And so test pilots were the best pick back in the day.

And then when we flew the space shuttle, you needed a couple of test pilots up front because every time you flew, it was basically a test flight.

But they had also already gotten away from that when they started getting geologists because they were going to the moon to pick up rocks and then engineers and then doctors, let's do some medicine in space, let's do some science in space.

And scientists came along, and so it's really opened up.

And now you're hearing more about art in space.

Different people are

performing their art or doing art in space, and

NASA and other folks that fly to space are realizing the importance of all of it.

Eventually, all of it will have a place in space.

You know,

when you say that you needed, you always needed test pilots up front in the shuttle.

So what skill set is it that's required?

I mean, obviously being good at flying aircraft, but what, you know, psychologically and what kind of skills do you need to be able to fly an experimental aircraft like that?

The psychology of it is you've had a lot of practice in flying a lot of different aircraft that have had a lot of different failures.

And so you know how to handle the situation and you've been tested to have a level head while you're handling the situation.

I don't know if you've heard like airline pilots sometimes like have an engine that's missing and took a bird strike or whatever and they're having to do an emergency landing, yet they're talking on the radio ground or, you know, tower, we are coming in, we have an emergency, and it's like nothing's going wrong because they've just learned how to handle the emergency.

Yeah, I mean, I remember once, Tim, I had great honor of interviewing Jim Lovell, and he said to me that

the skill of being a test pilot is to make a list of the things that are going to kill you.

And if you get the order right, then you might survive.

But you have to get the order right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It helps get the order right, definitely.

What's the one right at the bottom then?

What's the least likely but possible?

That's when you jump out.

But that doesn't help you in space.

But no, as Susan said, it's a case of having that skill set, I think, to be calm under pressure and to work through that checklist that you would have drilled into you during training and analyze all the options.

I think it's a case of having options.

That's what gives you the ability to do that.

It's when you start running out of options.

That's when the heart rate starts going up and the panic can set in if you're not really prepared for it.

But to go back to that kind of crew selection, it's really interesting because it is much more diverse today.

And we're going to need that because you still will need test pilots as we go to Artemis.

We're landing on the moon again.

We're back to rendezvous and docking and

lunar orbital mechanics and landing systems.

But then you're going to need to set up a microgravity or a laboratory on the surface, microgravity laboratory in lunar orbit.

You're going to need to have people who can have all sorts of skills to run that team.

So when we're looking at our selection processes now, that's a huge part of it.

And the psychological effect effect as well as longer-duration missions away from Earth.

I think the real step change comes not so much with the Artemis moon missions, it's Mars.

Going on a three-year mission to Mars and watching Earth disappear until it's just a speck of light in the sky, that's going to take us certainly a different mentality than we've considered up until now.

And the blend in the crew, as you said, maybe

Nicole, so you have engineers, which is your background, but also, as you mentioned, Susan, artists and people who will know how to respond to space and transmit that.

Yeah, I think it's going to become even more and more important.

And not just as we're starting to include someone who is an artist on a crew in particular, like that's their thing.

But I think we need to acknowledge more and more thoughtfully as we go into flights that are going to be three years where Earth doesn't look like Earth out the window very quickly.

And you're in not the Hollywood spaceship, by the way, either.

You know, you're in a relatively confined space where I think now with Artemis, even they had to put the toilet in the bulkhead to find space for it.

Is that these things like art and music and kind of the psychological stuff that just keeps us happy and healthy, you know, right here on Earth, whether you're an astronaut or not, needs to be built into the missions as well, acknowledged as part of something that's going to need to happen.

Well, one of the things I was thinking, Paul, and I know you've watched a lot of movies, one of the biggest dangers, it seems to me, of long space missions is that more often than not, one of the astronauts is evil.

And

yes, do you think, you know, how can we weed out to make sure that someone who didn't appear to be evil, but the moment they're in space, they're evil, aren't they?

Yeah, it's true.

All the computer is evil.

It's one or the other.

Well, actually, Tim,

you wouldn't be allowed to go, Tim, because you're English.

And as we know, anyone in a Hollywood movie who's English is probably going to be evil on that mission, aren't they?

Yes, yeah, definitely.

I'm looking forward to that one.

Paul, I'm going to ask you just about because the holodeck was mentioned, and of all the people on this panel, you, I think, are the one who'd most likely be able to create a holodeck.

So, that idea, I suppose we could think, for instance, of VR.

Would that be something?

Because what I was wondering is every now and again, you've worked so intensely on so many different ideas of space exploration, and sometimes it is inventing that which does not exist.

But I wondered about that point where sometimes you might be creating something thinking, do you know what?

This is an idea that is a good idea for, for instance, thinking if you are going to have people

going to Mars or indeed, you know, some of the ingenuity required for the fictional world that might then have some use in reality.

Well, I mean, I think science fiction films have a, you know, there's a great history of predicting things which then either get adopted.

I mean, there's a very early science fiction film called Frau im Mont, Woman in the Moon by Fritz Lang, which I believe is the first time the concept of the countdown appears in the film,

or in any film.

It's made in about 1920.

It's a silent film.

The actual countdown to Blastoff, I think, starts with that film.

That's where the original idea came from, apparently.

That's fascinating.

That is.

Yeah, and you think about Star Trek and the little flip-top communicators, you know, anticipate cell phones and things like that.

As a fan of science fiction movies, you know, now, when you are working on ones that are dealing with creating a reality, do you sometimes think, oh my goodness, that's so weird.

I look back now to, you know, might be watching 2001 or Alien or whatever it might be, and going, that actually was prescient.

Again, well, there's a cracking little clip from one of the old Skylab missions in which Skylab was this very early NASA space station.

It had a large space inside it because it was made out of an old Saturn V rocket.

And they had equipment lockers all around the inside.

And there's a clip of the astronauts running around it.

And it's basically the scene of him running around the centrifuge in 2001, you know, where he's exercising.

And I think they were deliberately recreating that moment from 2001.

Apparently, Arthur C.

Clarke saw that and then sent it on a film reel to Stanley Kubrick to look to say, Look, we got there first.

Do you prefer

talking about 2001?

If we've been to step out again and it gets more futuristic and we get these bigger spacecraft further into the future, do you find it easier or more liberating, I suppose, creative to be able to work on something that's not a biopic, not anchored in reality, or even gravity, something that's set today?

To be able to go out and really build those remarkable spacecraft, like I mean, Interstellar would be another.

Yeah, I mean, Interstellar is a good example.

I mean, Interstellar, we grounded it in the look and feel of nineteen sixties, seventies space exploration.

So even though it's set in our future, it's supposed to be set like eighty years from now.

So the spacecraft were very much inspired by the look of the space shuttle, Skylab, Apollo.

And the sets were all built out of bits of old aircraft.

You know, we got them from the aircraft graveyard.

So most of of the floor panels inside the big spaceship are made out of those hostess trolleys that you have.

And I love bits of the set.

We had one part of the set.

We had a lot of old galleys taken out of airliners.

And so you'd have these things, coffee machine, it would say, make coffee, and then next to it was some system taken from a military jet, and it would say, fire missiles.

Don't get confused.

You know, you were talking about the Hollywood spaceships often tend to be much bigger than the reality of spaceships.

And that's mostly because we have to fit the cameras and the rest of the crew in.

This really is a consideration.

See, I wondered if we need to, because one of the things that I find interesting is we mentioned 2001 and 2001 shows as a kind of a real moment of all human evolution.

We're all getting it, and everything just in terms of the world that we have is everything's clean lines.

And then you get a movie like Alien, which says, do you know what?

We're going to get to the point where we'll have incredible access to new technology.

And there'll still be people doing really rubbish jobs, getting treated really.

It's like that element, I suppose, that we don't often see of the Apollo missions, which are things like, you know, Frank Borman on Apollo 8, I think in the first day, getting a terrible attack of diarrhea, and the other two astronauts having to float around and pick up, but you know, which is just not, and if that is made in 3D, you know, that's kind of like so,

which I imagine, is that a tricky one to do?

I'll tell you what, I'm going to write straight to Disney if they see what if I want that idea for the ride, definitely.

Never been asked to do that yet.

Well, I've got a screenplay that I'm working on at the moment, and I'll get you straight.

But you know, that bit, I suppose, which is an interesting thing, you know, there was a point where so many images of space exploration were that everything was going to be, you know, the space 1999 suits, everyone was going to be fashionable, everything was clean.

And then we get to the bit going, do you know what?

It might be grubby and dirty, and actually the distances will change, but life itself won't.

Well, that's what I love about films when I think about my favorite space films, which really aren't about the science at all.

It's like Galaxy Quest and Rocket Man, not the Elton John movie, but the, I think it was 1997, I looked it up,

where it becomes more about kind of the human in the human space flight, you know, the relationships, the, you know, well, how many flights did you fly?

You know, and somebody thinks it's four, but it's really five.

Well, who's counting?

Apparently you are, my friend.

Those kinds of things, like about the ego and the

relationships and stuff, and the fact that we're humans that have to do human things like go to the bathroom in space that people really want to know about, too.

Which is closer, Tim.

Because that future, the alien future, I love Alien.

I always loved it from when I watched it bizarrely.

My school showed it when I was 11.

In those days.

You'd all been very bad, hadn't you, as punishment.

The 70s in Manchester.

It's like, watch that.

Which is closer, because we have these two extremes, don't we?

As you said, Nicole, that the Star Trek, which is just shiny future and then you have alien which is basically truck drivers essentially that's what they are so which is the reality which is close to the reality of being an astronaut I think it's truck drivers

but I mean it is about normal people essentially that's where we're going to and you can see that in terms of in the early days as Susan was saying it was all you know this test pilot environment a lot of caution about who was being selected and and now really we've got a number of different jobs if you think about what you do on board the International Space Station today, you do everything in terms of what the Apollo crews were doing, being ready for that kind of test flight.

But you're operating equipment, you're doing the spacewalks, you're doing medical training, dental training, scientific payloads.

When we go to the moon, it's going to be all that plus some.

You're going to be builders, you know, build your habitation modules, doing surveys, geological work.

So we keep heaping the skill set on top of astronauts.

And so I think it will end up being more the kind of portrayal portrayal of this mixed crew that we see in films like Alien.

Yeah.

Paul, you talked about Interstellar.

I suppose it's a special case in a way, isn't it?

Because Chris Nolan famously doesn't like special effects if he can help it.

So you built this set, which I loved the idea.

I remember once I did a thing years ago with Matt Smith in the TARDIS, and that was the same.

You know, the TARDIS is built out of old bits of aircraft.

But he was so excited because he said the first thing he said to me was, Look at this, if I flick this switch, the light comes on.

And that's what he was into.

It actually worked, right?

This thing.

So I wondered, you know, of the films you worked on, I suppose are two extremes, isn't there?

There's building a set out of old bits of aircraft, which sounds wonderful.

But there's also creating them in computer graphics.

Yeah, well, I mean, obviously now with modern digital visual effects, with computer graphics in particular, you can, you know, if you look at a film like Gravity, the interior of the ISS in Gravity is completely created in computer graphics.

In fact, almost everything in that film is computer graphics with the exception of the actors' faces.

And when we were working on Interstellar, Anne Hathaway was telling me about what a challenge it was wearing the spacesuits which had been fabricated for them to wear because they had cooling systems inside them but they'd get very claustrophobic and sometimes it didn't work and either they got too hot or too cold and everything.

And gravity had just come out.

And I said, oh, well, you know, have you been to see this yet?

And she said, no, I haven't seen it, but I guess Sandra must have gone through the same things and I said well no she's just wearing motion capture pajamas it's all CG and she's sort of looking at me amazed and so

why on earth am I wearing all this

and then Chris walks past Chris Nolan walks past on the set and I say ask him

because Chris always wants to do it for real I'm just shocked by that because I'd not known this that Christopher Nolan doesn't like films with loads of special effects he's really not got a good choice of screenplays then has he because I mean Ken Loach he makes films without special effects.

It's true.

Food banks, setting old pubs, that kind of thing.

I don't want to do too many special effects, but I just want maybe kind of traveling near a black hole, having a fight on Mars.

More accurately, say, Chris wants to use the visual effects, special effects, to do the things that you can't otherwise film.

That, so for instance, in interstellar, the black hole, you know, we couldn't, well, you can actually take pictures of black holes now, but at the time you couldn't.

But we still grounded it in as much physics and as much science as we actually could.

You know, we did a proper simulation of the way that the light is warped by the gravity of the black hole, rather than just drawing a pretty picture and making it up.

But

he's always keen to put reality in front of the camera where at all possible.

So, yeah, famously, we didn't use any green screens on Interstellar, which actually made my life extremely difficult.

I just want to say, we've run out of time, but I want to ask you just the last question, really.

We're talking about science fiction.

To me, science fiction films are about this quest, aren't they?

They're romantic things, about the human quest to go further, understand our place in the universe.

So as such, what is your favorite science fiction film?

And

does being a real astronaut map onto those romantic ideas of exploration?

Oh, well, my favorite science fiction movie is The Martians, so I don't think there was a lot of romantic anything going on in that movie.

But I do think the two go hand in hand.

I mean,

we're people,

and people are going to go to space, and people are going to go, hopefully, someday to other planets, and

we're still going to be people.

The moment you said there was nothing romantic in the Martian, I just had an image of him getting so lonely that he gets the potato out and starts drawing little face on it.

I love you, potato.

Tim, what about you?

Not the potato question, the film question.

I had too many to choose from, but one of my favorite science fiction movies is The Abyss.

And I guess this is looking at going down instead of going up.

But in some respects, I think it has so many similarities to a space exploration mission in terms of that isolation, that confinement,

going into the depths of the unknown.

And then when they meet this strange intelligence down there as well, I just think you never quite know.

Was this something that evolved in the oceans of Earth, or was this something that has arrived on Earth from another planet?

And I kind of like that mystery of the abyss as well.

I think it's a fantastic movie.

I think for me, and it's not because of who we have present on the stage tonight, but

I really think Interstellar is my favorite.

And it's reminiscent of sci-fi before it, too, right?

You know, you think of 2001.

My husband would argue it's kind of a remake in some way of

2001, which I think is really the more I look at it, I'm not quite as

brainy as he is, but it's nice to look at things that way and kind of reflect on other movies that really were

impactful in some way on you and the way you thought about sci-fi and the imagination of the future.

And that to me is what it really ends up being all about: this imagination of something that may not exist yet, but how that could positively influence what we have to look forward to.

Well, that brings us to the end of the panel.

And if anyone would like to write in with their guess of which one of our panel was actually evil,

we'll reveal that in the next series.

Brian, we asked the audience a question, didn't we?

And it was, which science fiction movie would you most like to live in?

What have you got, Brian?

Batman, so I can have Robin in brackets, ins

as my boy wonder.

Asprim Vivian, and her phone number is on the

Lego Batman, so I can build Brian as my boy wonder.

12 Infinite Monkeys.

Because, number one, I like monkeys.

And number two, you can't ever have enough monkeys.

Star Wars on Tatooine.

Is it Tatooine or Tatooine or Tatooine?

Tatooine.

Tattoo.

Tatooine.

Tatooine.

Tatooine.

Tatooine.

They root for Tatooine.

As a geek status.

Oh, no, no, I'm not a big fan of Star Wars.

There we go.

I've revealed it to you.

I'm not a big fan of Star Wars.

I've got other things to do.

Darth Varden.

Darth Barden.

I really have.

It's meant to be like,

I can't believe that you're not into Star Wars.

And I go, well, which Ingmar Bergman's your favourite?

And they've not even watched Wild Strawberries.

To hell with them.

I should be on Radio 3 with these tastes.

You can like both.

You can like both.

Yeah, right.

You can like both.

But what I mean is, you know,

I don't mind that people haven't seen those things.

But it's just like, I like Empire Strikes Back.

That's funny.

Star Wars.

No, I've seen all of them.

Have you seen it?

Yeah, yeah.

I'm not saying I'm not against them.

I'm just saying that I don't have a tattoo of Chewbacca down my spine.

I also don't spend my life going, well, I'm a huge fan of Star Wars, but I haven't liked the last nine.

Which a lot of people seem to do, don't they?

Star Wars

on rattatatween.

At least it will be dry.

There we are.

That's uh Graham.

Graham, this is a scene, the silver lining to every cloud.

It says alien

because it would be a great way to get rid of my indigestion.

Right, anyway, so well done, everyone.

And it's nice to spend a lot of time in the room with astronauts.

Well done, everyone.

Well done, everyone.

They've been here so long, and it really is.

Only one person pretending they need to go to the loop.

And thank you very much to our wonderful guests: Tim Peak, Susan Kilrane, Nicole Stott, and Paul Franklin.

Now, next week, usually we spend a lot of time, we kind of sit down trying to work out what we're going to talk about on Monk Cage.

We sit around a table, and more often than not, it roughly goes like this.

I'll say something like, Why don't we do the minds of octopuses?

And Brian goes, No, physics.

And then I'll go, Why don't we do kind of fungal communication in Woodland?

No, physics.

Why don't we do spider sex?

No, physics, but maybe a little bit of spider sex.

And

then fortunately, next week, we've actually asked one of our most popular guests, someone who's an absolute joy.

We've had her on so regularly, she's one of our funniest guests.

We asked Jo Brand, what would she actually like to discuss on a show?

And she said, what is quantum mechanics really about?

Physics.

You've got everything you dreamt of.

Lucky, really.

Thank you very much for listening.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

In the infinite monkey cage.

In the infinite monkey cage.

Till now, nice again.

Hi, Greg.

I'm a long-time listener to the show, and I'm not lying when I say it has changed my life.

I'm Greg Foote, and my podcast, Sliced Bread from BBC Radio 4, is back to separate more science fact from marketing fiction.

For me, they're the best things in sliced bread, and they're not marketing BS.

Each week, I investigate a new wonder product promising you the world.

At this time of year, my husband and I suffer from hay fever.

What I would like you to look into, though, are the tablets.

This series, a whole new batch of wonder products are being run through the evidence mill, including motion sickness tablets, weighted blankets, and we're starting with one of the hot topics at the moment: vapes.

Just search for sliced bread on BBC Sounds.

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