A story in IO9 asks a simple question. Why doesn’t NASA want the public to watch the eight minute short science fiction film Richard Garriott shot on board the International Space Station? So far, because the film was shot on a NASA facility, the International Space Station, starring two NASA astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut, NASA has refused permission for the public release of the first science fiction film ever to be shot in space, entitled “Apogee of Fear.”
Space.Com states that the film is a whimsical story about how, after Garriott, a private space traveler who paid tens of millions of dollars for his trip to the ISS, left that suspicions arose of an alien life form present on the space station.
NASA Watch reports that the problem comes from the astronaut office at the Johnson Spaceflight Center and certain NASA lawyers whose “default answer is always ‘no!’” However it is expected that there will be some discussions about when and in what way “Apogee of Fear” can be released.
In a way, the controversy surrounding the film has increased the curiosity about it. “The movie NASA doesn’t want you to see” works pretty well in an advertisement. In any case, NASA would be foolish to persist in censoring “Apogee of Fear.” If nothing else it represents publicity for its underfunded manned space program.
Mark R. Whittington is the author of Children of Apollo and The Last Moonwalker . He has written on space subjects for a variety of periodicals, including The Houston Chronicle, The Washington Post, USA Today, the L.A. Times, and The Weekly Standard.
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