Movies about space, both fiction and historical, have inspired engineers and scientists since movies were first produced. Here is my list of movies. I’ve included links to IMDB.
Moon. This movie is a realistic depiction of helium-3 mining on the moon, with an interesting twist. Helium-3 is an isotope of helium used for a wide variety of applications including quantum computing. would be used to fuel our Princeton Field Reversed Configuration Reactor and Helion‘s fusion reactor. An alternative to lunar mining is gas giant mining. We recently wrote a paper on the subject.
Forbidden Planet From the 1950s. It was a major influence on Star Trek. It is based on Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”.
2001: A Space Odyssey. Released just before Apollo 11. It influenced aerospace engineering in a major way. HAL 9000 is also quite famous, the first AI with a major role in a movie.
Marooned About an Apollo spacecraft that can’t reenter and a rescue mission to save the crew. Technically accurate! It is what NASA might have done for Columbia. Gregory Peck is the head of NASA.
The Right Stuff About the Mercury astronauts and test pilots in the 1950s. Test pilot Chuck Yeager is a major character. While based on real events, it is a black comedy.
Apollo 13 About the near disaster during the Apollo program. One of the best engineering movies ever made. A famous quote from John Aaron, “Power is everything!” and one from Gene Kranz, “Let’s not make things worse by guessing!”
Hidden Figures. A movie about the African-American female mathematicians who made critical contributions to the U.S. space program, but were ignored by the press.
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