Films land at Cosmosphere

Topeka Capital-Journal, The, Mar 25, 2005 by Bill Blankenship Capital-Journal

Hutchinson space museum marks upgrade of its IMAX theater with giant-screen version of 'Apollo 13'

MISSION VS. MOVIE

- The Apollo 13 mission lasted seven days, April 11-17, 1970. Production of "Apollo 13" lasted about one year. It was released June 10, 1995.

- Astronauts aboard the mission had some illness due to the temperature inside falling to 38 degrees. Members of the production crew became ill from the filming of the "weightless" scenes inside the KC-135 aircraft.

- Each suit for the astronauts cost $400,000, and each astronaut was fitted for three suits. Suits for the film cost $14,500 apiece, and each actor had only one suit.

- The Apollo 13 mission cost an estimated $875 million. "Apollo 13" cost $62 million and grossed $334 million worldwide.

'APOLLO 13'

When: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 5 p.m. Sundays through May 26.

Where: Carey IMAX Dome Theater at the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center, 1100 N. Plum St., Hutchinson

How much: $8 ($7.50 for seniors 60 and older and children 5 to 12).

Buy how: Advance tickets can be purchased with a credit card by calling (800) 397-0330, ext. 347.

Learn more: www.cosmo.org

(copyright)UNIVERSAL STUDIOS

From left, astronauts Fred Haise (Bill Paxton), Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon) and Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks) try to figure out what has gone wrong with their spacecraft in "Apollo 13." The IMAX version of the film is playing at the Carey IMAX Dome Theater at the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center. The Hutchinson attraction's Space Works division built the command and lunar module interior sets for the film and restored the actual command module which is on display at the Cosmosphere's Hall of Space Museum.

PHOTO COURTESY OF NASA

Crewmen guide the Odyssey command module on board the USS Iwo Jima after it successfully splashed down April 17, 1970, in the South Pacific. Restored, the Odyssey is on display at the Kansas Cosmosphere's Hall of Space Museum.

By Bill Blankenship

THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL

HUTCHINSON --- Houston, we have a connection.

"Apollo 13: The IMAX Experience" was a natural selection as the first feature-length film to be shown at the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center after an upgrade of the attraction's Carey IMAX Dome Theater allowed it to screen movies longer than the giant format's usual 40-minute fare.

Not only is "Apollo 13" the story of a true-life space adventure, the Cosmosphere played a critical role in the making of the film.

Director Ron Howard demanded the sets of Apollo 13's command module, Odyssey, and lunar module, Aquarius, be as accurate as possible, but who had the right stuff to do the job?

Howard's production team looked well beyond Hollywood to the Cosmosphere, which in 1994 already had established its reputation as a world-class space museum complete with an artifact restoration lab.

The Cosmosphere's Space Works division was given four months to produce mockups of the Odyssey and Aquarius interiors.

In fact, Space Works built two complete interior sets of the lunar and command modules, each made with different removable sections so that filming could take place from different angles.

Because "Apollo 13" also was the first commercial film to include footage taken aboard NASA's KC-135 weightlessness training aircraft, also known as the Vomit Comet, more sets had to be built to fit in the confines of the converted cargo plane.

Those sets had to withstand the wear-and-tear of alternating periods of zero gravity and twice-normal gravity in more than four hours of filming done in 23-second increments of weightlessness aboard the KC-135.

Space Works also crafted the pressure suits worn by the actors, which were exact reproductions of those worn by the Apollo 13 crew, right down to the detail of being airtight. When Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton and Kevin Bacon put their suits on with their helmets locked in place, oxygen was pumped into the suits to cool them down and allow them to breathe, in the exact manner of real astronauts.

When "Apollo 13" was released in 1995, it became a critical and commercial success for its retelling of the April 1970 mission that had the world worrying about whether astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert would return safely to Earth after an explosion crippled their spacecraft on its way to what would have been NASA's third manned exploration of the moon.

In 2002, "Apollo 13" became the first 35 mm live-action film to be digitally remastered into the 10-times larger IMAX format, but the Cosmosphere's Carey IMAX Dome Theater lacked the capacity to show feature-length films until an upgrade was made possible through a $50,000 gift from the Wichita-based Fred C. and Mary R. Koch Foundation.

"With the Cosmosphere's role in the making of 'Apollo 13,' we could think of no better film to show off this new technology," said Jeff Ollenburger, president and chief executive officer of the Cosmosphere. "We believe visitors will experience this already well- loved film with a whole new appreciation."