Moon: the movie

Blog reader Ben tipped me off to a really interesting movie called Moon. It stars Sam Rockwell as an astronaut spending a three year solo mission on the Moon mining Helium-3, which could be an important source of fuel for clean nuclear fusion. His only companion at the lonely outpost is his robot, voiced by Kevin Spacey. The suspense heats up in this scifi thriller as, just before he's set to go home, Rockwell realizes he's not alone. You can watch a clip below. There are more clips and images here and here.

If Rockwell's performance in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is any indication, this should be a real treat. Moon is an independent film that premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. You can read a brief review here or excerpts from other reviews on the film's wikipedia page.



Anyone in the Houston area on Monday, March 16 might consider attending a free pre-release screening of the film at JSC as part of the Space Center Lecture Series. The event starts at 7:00pm with doorprizes before the movie, and afterwards the film's director Duncan Jones (David Bowie's son) will host a Q&A session. Although the event is free and open to the public, the organizers do ask that you RSVP since space is limited. (You can also watch full videos of previous lectures in the series, including Harrison Schmitt and Tom Jones, here.)

Update: April 12, 2009

There is a new high-definition 2-minute trailer for this movie. Check it out:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New CSA, ESA, and JAXA Astronauts

Mark your calendars for May 13 and 20. That's when Canada's CSA and Europe's ESA will announce their new astronaut selections. In a press release earlier today, CSA said it would announce its two new astronauts on May 13. Back in March, I reported that CSA released a great deal of information on the top 16 astronaut candidates in its recruitment campaign. This included biographies of the top 16 candidates and video and photos of their evaluation and testing. CSA has been very good with keeping the public informed through the astronaut selection process with regular posts to its website . I liked how CSA was able to interview a relatively large pool of applicants remotely via teleconference, which is something NASA did not do. As I reported in a previous post , CSA had 5352 applicants for only 2 slots. This makes CSA's selectivity 2/5352 = 0.037%! May 13 Update: CSA has announced its two newest astronauts David Saint-Jacques and Jeremy Hansen . Congrat...
READ MORE >>

Insider tips on NASA's astronaut selection

Image
While NASA wraps up interviewing the second group of finalists to determine its 2013 class of ASCANs, the head of the NASA Astronaut Selection Office Duane Ross gave an illuminating presentation at JSC last Thursday about the selection process.  He covered questions ranging from academic degrees to interview questions, medical screening, and Russian language requirements. Pete Dimmick was among those present in the audience. Here are his notes from the event, reprinted with permission: Today I attended a lecture by Duane Ross and his protege, Anne Roemer. Duane has been the head of the astronaut selection process for 37 years and I had a few minutes to speak with them after the lecture was over. Here is what I found out about becoming an astronaut. I won't discuss so much the published requirements, rather I'll be focusing more on the insider things. There have been 257 NASA astronauts over the years and an applicant has a 0.6% chance of being selected. Of those no...
READ MORE >>

The Astronaut Hopeful's Manifesto

Image
I am an astronaut hopeful – one of thousands of people who somehow never outgrew our childhood dream of going to space. Anyone can hope to be an astronaut, but to be an “astronaut hopeful” one must make a commitment to the goal and proactively work towards becoming an astronaut. The road is long and the outcome is uncertain, but it is in trying to achieve this lofty ambition that we learn to become our best selves. Astronauts train to be some of the most focused, resourceful, healthy and dependable people on the planet. Striving to be more like them can help any person to be more effective in life’s pursuits. Making the decision to do everything one can to actually become an astronaut means learning from astronaut role models and making incremental decisions throughout your life that get you closer to your dream. This week NASA began accepting applications to recruit another class of astronaut candidates (ASCAN’s). More than 6,300 people applied during the last opportunity, from ...
READ MORE >>