THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, July 31, 1995 TAG: 9507310056
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
The movie ``Destiny in Space'' got high marks from two men whose destiny was space - retired astronauts Ron Grabe and Ken Reightler - at its first showings at the Science Museum of Virginia.
``It's the closest thing to experiencing spaceflight for those who don't get to sit on top of the rocket,'' said Grabe, who has ridden rockets into space four times.
Images on the vast hemispherical IMAX screen and sound from the bone-vibrating audio system come close to giving audiences ``the feelings we feel on the space shuttle,'' Reightler said.
``If you don't like the feeling, just close your eyes,'' he advised with a smile. ``That's what we do on the space shuttle.''
Grabe was an Air Force pilot who retired from the service and NASA about a year ago. He flew four shuttle missions and commanded Discovery on one of the nine missions filmed for the movie.
Reightler, a Navy aviator, retired three weeks ago from the Navy and NASA. He is now a program manager for Lockheed Martin, the company formed when Lockheed and Martin Marietta merged.
Footage for the film was shot on the shuttle missions using special IMAX cameras. Through the camera's eye, moviegoers experience a thunderous nighttime shuttle liftoff from just 100 feet away.
In orbit, they seem to float through the shuttle crew compartments close enough to flip the control panel toggle switches or touch their fellow astronauts in a weightless environment.
They see what it's like to fly like Superman over the accurately computerized landscapes of Venus and Mars, mapped with radar by unmanned spacecraft launched from shuttles.
And, along with an astronaut-researcher, they look into a zero-gravity orientation experiment performed on the shuttle - a rotating cone with colored dots on the inside.
``Is the spacecraft rotating?'' asks narrator Leonard Nimoy of ``Star Trek'' fame, ``or are we?'' At the word ``we,'' the illusion kicks in and the Ethyl Universe Planetarium and Space Theater seems to start turning.
A pilot on two shuttle missions, Reightler said the movie, like spaceflight, can have ``your mind and eyes and senses playing tricks on you.''
Grabe said he and other astronauts ``appreciate the movie because it means being better able to share with the public what the total spaceflight experience is like.''
``Destiny in Space'' is the last movie in a trilogy sponsored by the National Air and Space Museum, Lockheed Corp., the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the IMAX Corp. The first two are ``The Dream is Alive'' and ``Blue Planet.''
``Destiny in Space'' will play for the rest of the year at the science museum. by CNB