Nasa helped make The Martian. But it also advised on Men in Black III. So what exactly is its relationship with movies? And can the truth survive blockbuster blast-off? The agency’s director of planetary science reveals allA rumour started a few years ago that Nasa routinely screened Armageddon to recent recruits. Not because the asteroid-smashing Michael Bay epic was in any way edifying,but for the exact opposite reason: Armageddon got so much inaccurate that it was a showreel for how space doesn’t work. According to one estimate, the film contains 168 scientific impossibilities and inaccuracies, and which Nasa challenged its recruits to spot; they include space shuttles taking off like planes from asteroids,gravity working the inaccurate way on space stations and the fanciful notion that a nuclear blast could deflect an asteroid the size of Texas – they’d need a bomb a billion times bigger, physicists calculated. Related: The Martian and Nasa a coincidence too good to be steady? Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com