Day: February 3, 2022

 In “Moonfall,” director Roland Emmerich’s new disaster film opening this week, a retired space shuttle plays a part in NASA’s attempt to save Earth. In reality, though, it was the movie makers that came to the rescue, saving a real NASA simulator from an uncertain fate.

Many Hollywood blockbusters have used the space shuttle as a set piece, adding an array of fictional flights to the fleet’s 135 historic missions. Filmmakers have typically shot these scenes by building or leasing mockups of the winged orbiter’s crew compartment. Other movies have used green screen and CGI to place their actors into virtual shuttles.

The space shuttle set used to film “Moonfall” stars Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson and John Bradley as astronauts was different. Instead of recreations, Emmerich was able to use the real thing.

“We didn’t build that cockpit, we got it. We found it in a museum in Florida,” said Emmerich in an interview with Lionsgate. “The museum went into bankruptcy and we said to them, ‘Can we get the set?'”

Related: Watch the first 5 minutes of ‘Moonfall,’ Roland Emmerich’s new sci-fi disaster film

Acquiring the use of NASA’s authentic Guidance and Navigation Simulator (GNS) added complexities to the shoot, but it also delivered an unprecedented level of detail, which Emmerich said was not possible otherwise.

“It was great because there was so much detail you could film,” the director told collectSPACE.com. “Nobody can do that anymore, not even a good set decorator can do that anymore. It would just be too difficult.”

“So we were quite excited when we heard there was a training shuttle cockpit,” he said.

Astronauts sat here

“While it was in pieces — we used different parts of it at different times — it was also still pretty impressive to realize how small the space is,” said Berry, who plays NASA executive and former astronaut Jo Fowler. “We know that we are touching buttons that real astronauts had touched and equipment that they actually used.”

The Guidance and Navigation Simulator (GNS) was the second-ever space shuttle simulator to go into service at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston and eventually became one of only three such devices used to train astronauts for their upcoming missions.

Built out of the remaining parts from an early shuttle procedures simulator, the GNS was at first only used to test the software that would run on other simulators and the real orbiters. After the space shuttle Challenger tragedy in 1986, however, NASA upgraded the GNS to serve as a second static trainer with the computer-fed window displays needed to train astronauts. (The GNS and Fixed Base Simulator, or FBS, were nearly identical with the exception that the earlier lacked a waste collection system [toilet] trainer.)

For more than two decades, astronaut crews used the GNS, along with the FBS and motion-base Shuttle Mission Simulator (SMS), to undergo instruction and practice all of the phases of their flights, from launch and on-orbit operations to reentry and landing.

When the shuttle program came to an end in 2011, NASA awarded the GNS to Wings of Dreams, an aviation museum that, at the time, had plans to expand its facilities at the Keystone Heights Airport in Starke, Florida. Unfortunately, the funding needed to display the GNS and other large space shuttle artifacts never materialized and with growing pressure from the airport to leave its property, the Wings of Dreams ended operations in late 2018.

“When ‘Moonfall’ first called, they were looking for drawings and photos so they could build a cockpit mockup. I suggested perhaps they could use the GNS on the condition that they return it to a museum,” said Dennis Jenkins, who as a former space shuttle engineer was working with Wings of Dreams to find new homes for the artifacts. “They readily agreed, so a couple of us went up to Keystone and helped load it on trucks to be taken where ‘Moonfall’ was being shot in Montreal.”

From movie set to museum

“What I am very, very happy about is that we created the most accurate interior of the space shuttle that is in a movie today,” said Kirk Petruccelli, the production designer on “Moonfall,” in a Lionsgate interview. “All the systems work, they are in the right orientation, the seats are accurate and appropriate, the lighting is all there and details down to the handwritten charts that they may need are in there.”

Petruccelli and his team were able to bring the GNC back to life.

“The movie folks did great,” Jenkins said in an interview with collectSPACE. “With a little coaching they figured out how to illuminate the instrument panel backlighting and they found small drivers they hooked to all the flat-screen ‘glass cockpit’ displays so they could output computer-generated displays to them.”

“They also added a lot of ‘set dressing’ to the outside of the simulator, so it no longer looks like the GNS [when it was at NASA] — or, in person, an orbiter,” said Jenkins.

The changes were made to fit the needs of the production, including mounting the flight deck on a hydraulic platform.

“We call them ‘shaky decks’ and ’tilting decks,'” said special effects supervisor Guillaume Murray. “They give the shuttle some action so the actors could react to vibration and impact and different levels of inclination.”

Former Canadian astronaut Bjarni Tryggvason was also brought on set to provide advice to the actors and filmmakers on “flying” the GNS.

“When you look at these cockpits and you see all these switches back here on the [aft flight deck] and then in the front part of the cockpit, there are a few hundred. So every now and then they were looking to throw a switch for something and so I gave them advice on where that kind of switch might be and what they’d do with it,” said Tryggvason, who flew as a payload specialist on space shuttle Discovery’s STS-85 crew in 1997.

When production on “Moonfall” wrapped, the filmmakers kept true to their promise and shipped the GNS (with all of the additions used to light it up) to the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson, Arizona, where it is now on public display.

“We can’t wait to see it in action,” the museum wrote in Facebook post previewing the use of its space shuttle simulator in “Moonfall.”

“Moonfall,” directed by Roland Emmerich and starring Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson and John Bradley, opens in theaters on Feb. 4, 2022.

Click through to collectSPACE to watch behind the scenes footage of Halle Berry and the cast of “Moonfall” filming in NASA’s GNC shuttle simulator.

Follow collectSPACE.com on Facebook and on Twitter at @collectSPACE. Copyright 2022 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved.

Users lamenting online word game Wordle’s decision to sell out to The New York Times this week may have at least one way to preserve the original game’s free, anti-money leaching spirit. Since Wordle runs in a browser, all of the game’s code is saved as plaintext on the Wordle website. That means users interested in preserving the pre-cash grab version can simply right-click in their browser and save Wordle as an HTML file on their desktop. Users can then play the original file offline.

Simply visit Wordle’s website (https://ift.tt/ragB9D5NU), right-click on the page (or use a drop-down menu depending on your browser), choose “save page as a webpage,” and save it to your desktop. You should then see an HTML file on your desktop as well as a folder that’s labeled “wordle_files.” Clicking on the HTML file should open the game in your browser, even if you’re offline.

As Motherboard notes, Wordle is based on a list of 2,135 five-letter solution words, with one correct word every day. That means, in theory, an offline version of Wordle could allow users to use the game every day for seven years. Of course, this system isn’t perfect. Users may not be able to save their streaks on “Wordle Offline” and sharing seems to be more of a mess than it’s worth. Still, the core elements are there and intact—and most importantly—free.

That last aspect of cost remains an open question as it enters its NYT era. Though the games’ founder, Josh Wardle, has said the game will remain free, the Times opted to hedge, saying the game would, “initially remain free” to new and existing users. Cue the sound of several million cash registers cha-chinging.

For those still out of the know, Wordle launched back in October as a no-frills, ad-free, browser-based word game originally designed by its creator as a gift to his partner.

The game struck a chord with pandemic-era web scrollers, with the number of users playing it each day jumping from 0 to 300,000 by the end of December, according to Time magazine. By the end of January, that number catapulted up to 10 million.

Wardle, for his part, has been open about the stresses that come with such unexpected success. In a recent Time interview following the NYT deal, Wardle described his immediate reaction as not of joy, but “relief.”

News of the Times acquisition left fans online fearing the new version would inundate the game with intrusive notifications, advertising, and other creepy behavioral monitoring techniques meant to boost engagement—all tools and tactics the original Wordle lacked, adding to its allure. On the design question at least, Wardle expressed some optimism that the Times would act as a responsible steward. “I’ve long admired the NYT’s approach to their games and the respect with which they treat their players, ‘’ Wardle said in a statement. “Their values are aligned with mine on these matters.” The seven-figure price tag the Times offered probably didn’t hurt either.

The Times meanwhile clearly sees its new IP as a cash cow ready for some good old-fashioned milking. As Bloomberg notes, “crosswords” and “Spelling Bee” were the two most searched terms on the Times’ website, and games writ large are playing a more prominent role in the company’s business strategy moving forward. Speaking to that, in late 2020 the Times opted to hire Jonathan Knight, who played a prominent role in popularizing games like Words With Friends and FarmVille.

“The Times remains focused on becoming the essential subscription for every English-speaking person seeking to understand and engage with the world,” the company said in a recent statement. “New York Times Games are a key part of that strategy.”

If you’d rather not get sucked up into that whole strategy thing and instead savor a taste of Wordle in its uncorrupted state, it’s comforting to know you can. The offline version may have some kinks and limitations here and there, but in a way, isn’t that the whole point?