Marooned (film)
Encyclopedia
Marooned is a 1969 American film directed by John Sturges
John Sturges
John Eliot Sturges was an American film director. His movies include Bad Day at Black Rock , Gunfight at the O.K. Corral , The Magnificent Seven , The Great Escape and Ice Station Zebra .-Career:He started his career in Hollywood as an editor in 1932...

 and starring Gregory Peck
Gregory Peck
Eldred Gregory Peck was an American actor.One of 20th Century Fox's most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1960s, Peck continued to play important roles well into the 1980s. His notable performances include that of Atticus Finch in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird, for which he won an...

, Richard Crenna
Richard Crenna
Richard Donald Crenna was an American motion picture, television, and radio actor and occasional television director. He starred in such motion pictures as The Sand Pebbles, Wait Until Dark, Body Heat, the first three Rambo movies, Hot Shots! Part Deux, and The Flamingo Kid...

, David Janssen
David Janssen
David Janssen was an American film and television actor who is best known for his starring role as Dr. Richard Kimble in the television series The Fugitive , the starring role in the 1950s hit detective series Richard Diamond, Private Detective , and as Harry Orwell on Harry O.In 1996 TV Guide...

, James Franciscus
James Franciscus
James Grover Franciscus was an American actor, known for his roles in the series The Naked City and The Investigators, and in feature films.-Life and career:...

, and Gene Hackman
Gene Hackman
Eugene Allen "Gene" Hackman is an American actor and novelist.Nominated for five Academy Awards, winning two, Hackman has also won three Golden Globes and two BAFTAs in a career that spanned five decades. He first came to fame in 1967 with his performance as Buck Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde...

.

The film was released less than four months after the Apollo 11
Apollo 11
In early 1969, Bill Anders accepted a job with the National Space Council effective in August 1969 and announced his retirement as an astronaut. At that point Ken Mattingly was moved from the support crew into parallel training with Anders as backup Command Module Pilot in case Apollo 11 was...

moon landing and was tied to the public fascination with the event. It won an Academy Award for Visual Effects
Academy Award for Visual Effects
The Academy Award for Visual Effects is an Academy Award given for the best achievement in visual effects.-History of the award:The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences first recognized the technical contributions of special effects to movies at its inaugural dinner in 1928, presenting a...

.

It was based on the 1964 novel of the same name
Marooned (novel)
Marooned is a 1964 science fiction thriller novel by Martin Caidin, about a manned spacecraft which becomes stranded in Earth orbit, oxygen running out, and only an experimental craft available to attempt a rescue...

 by Martin Caidin
Martin Caidin
Martin Caidin was an American author and an authority on aeronautics and aviation.Caidin wrote more than 50 books, including Samurai!, Black Thursday, Thunderbolt!, Fork-Tailed Devil: The P-38, Zero!, The Ragged, Rugged Warriors, A Torch to the Enemy and many other works of military history...

; however, while the original novel was based on the single-pilot Mercury program
Mercury program
Mercury Program might refer to:*the first successful American manned spaceflight program, Project Mercury*an American post-rock band, The Mercury Program...

, the film depicted an Apollo Command/Service Module
Apollo Command/Service Module
The Command/Service Module was one of two spacecraft, along with the Lunar Module, used for the United States Apollo program which landed astronauts on the Moon. It was built for NASA by North American Aviation...

 with three astronauts and a space station resembling Skylab
Skylab
Skylab was a space station launched and operated by NASA, the space agency of the United States. Skylab orbited the Earth from 1973 to 1979, and included a workshop, a solar observatory, and other systems. It was launched unmanned by a modified Saturn V rocket, with a mass of...

. Caidin acted as technical adviser and updated the novel, incorporating appropriate material from the original version.

Plot

Three American astronaut
Astronaut
An astronaut or cosmonaut is a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft....

s—commander Jim Pruett (Crenna), "Buzz" Lloyd (Hackman), and Clayton "Stoney" Stone (Franciscus)—are the first crew of an experimental space station
Space station
A space station is a spacecraft capable of supporting a crew which is designed to remain in space for an extended period of time, and to which other spacecraft can dock. A space station is distinguished from other spacecraft used for human spaceflight by its lack of major propulsion or landing...

. While returning to Earth, the main engine on the Apollo spacecraft Ironman One fails. Mission Control
Mission Control Center
A mission control center is an entity that manages aerospace vehicle flights, usually from the point of lift-off until the landing or the end of the mission. A staff of flight controllers and other support personnel monitor all aspects of the mission using telemetry, and send commands to the...

 determines that Ironman does not have enough backup thruster capability
Reaction control system
A reaction control system is a subsystem of a spacecraft whose purpose is attitude control and steering by the use of thrusters. An RCS system is capable of providing small amounts of thrust in any desired direction or combination of directions. An RCS is also capable of providing torque to allow...

 to initiate atmospheric reentry
Atmospheric reentry
Atmospheric entry is the movement of human-made or natural objects as they enter the atmosphere of a celestial body from outer space—in the case of Earth from an altitude above the Kármán Line,...

, or to re-dock with the station and wait for rescue. The crew is marooned in orbit.

NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...

 debates whether a rescue flight can reach the crew before their oxygen runs out in approximately two days. There are no backup launch vehicles or rescue systems available at Kennedy Space Center
Kennedy Space Center
The John F. Kennedy Space Center is the NASA installation that has been the launch site for every United States human space flight since 1968. Although such flights are currently on hiatus, KSC continues to manage and operate unmanned rocket launch facilities for America's civilian space program...

 and NASA director Charles Keith (Peck) opposes using an experimental Air Force X-RV lifting body
Lifting body
A lifting body is a fixed-wing aircraft configuration in which the body itself produces lift. In contrast to a flying wing, which is a wing with minimal or no conventional fuselage, a lifting body can be thought of as a fuselage with little or no conventional wing...

 that would be launched on a Titan IIIC booster; neither the spacecraft nor the booster is man-rated, and there is insufficient time to put a new manned NASA mission together. Even though a booster is already on the way to nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station
Cape Canaveral Air Force Station
Cape Canaveral Air Force Station is an installation of the United States Air Force Space Command's 45th Space Wing, headquartered at nearby Patrick Air Force Base. Located on Cape Canaveral in the state of Florida, CCAFS is the primary launch head of America's Eastern Range with four launch pads...

 for an already-scheduled Air Force launch, many hundreds of hours of preparation, assembly, and testing would be necessary.

Ted Dougherty (Janssen), the Chief Astronaut, opposes Keith and demands that something be done. The President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....

 agrees with Dougherty and tells Keith that failing to try a rescue mission will kill public support for the manned space program. The President tells Keith that money is no factor; "whatever you need, you've got it".

While the astronauts' wives (Lee Grant
Lee Grant
Lee Grant is an American stage, film and television actress, and film director. She was blacklisted for 12 years from film work beginning in the mid-1950s, but worked in the theatre, and would eventually win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Felicia Carp in the...

, Mariette Hartley
Mariette Hartley
Mary Loretta "Mariette" Hartley is an American character actress.-Personal life:Hartley was born in Weston, Connecticut, the daughter of Mary Ickes “Polly” , a manager and saleswoman, and Paul Hembree Hartley, an account executive. Her maternal grandfather was psychologist John B...

, and Nancy Kovack
Nancy Kovack
__forcetoc__Nancy Kovack is a former American actress.-Biography:She attended the University of Michigan at age 15 and graduated by 19. At the age of 20 she had won eight beauty titles....

) agonize over the fates of their husbands, all normal checklist procedures are bypassed to prepare the X-RV for launch. A hurricane
Tropical cyclone
A tropical cyclone is a storm system characterized by a large low-pressure center and numerous thunderstorms that produce strong winds and heavy rain. Tropical cyclones strengthen when water evaporated from the ocean is released as the saturated air rises, resulting in condensation of water vapor...

 headed for the launch area threatens to cancel the mission. However, the eye
Eye (cyclone)
The eye is a region of mostly calm weather found at the center of strong tropical cyclones. The eye of a storm is a roughly circular area and typically 30–65 km in diameter. It is surrounded by the eyewall, a ring of towering thunderstorms where the second most severe weather of a cyclone...

 of the storm passes over the Cape at the last minute during a launch window
Launch window
Launch window is a term used in spaceflight to describe a time period in which a particular launch vehicle must be launched. If the rocket does not launch within the "window", it has to wait for the next window....

, permitting a launch with Dougherty aboard.

There is insufficient oxygen left for all three astronauts to survive until Dougherty arrives. There is possibly enough for two. Pruett and his crew then debate what to do. Stone tries to reason that they can somehow survive. Lloyd offers to leave since he is "using up most of the oxygen anyway", but Pruett overrides him. He orders everyone into their spacesuits then leaves the ship, ostensibly to attempt repairs. When Lloyd realizes what Pruett is really intending, he attempts to go after him. Before he can reach Pruett, the latter sacrifices himself by tearing open his space suit, and his body drifts away into space. With Pruett gone, Stone takes command.

A Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 spacecraft suddenly appears and its cosmonaut tries to make contact. It can do nothing but deliver oxygen since the Soviet ship is too small to carry additional passengers. Stone and Lloyd, suffering oxygen deprivation, cannot understand the cosmonaut's gestures or obey Keith's orders.

Dougherty arrives and he and the cosmonaut transfer the two surviving and mentally dazed Ironman astronauts into the rescue ship. Both the Soviet ship and the X-RV return to Earth, and the final scene fades out with a view of the abandoned Ironman One adrift in orbit.

Technical aspects

One way that the filmmakers tried to enhance the realism of the film was through the use of such items as the actual Plantronics
Plantronics
Plantronics is an electronics company producing audio communications equipment for business and consumers. Its' products provide unified communications, mobile use, gaming and music...

 headsets worn by the actors in the spacecraft, as well as authentic replicas of actual facilities such as the Mission Operations Control Room (MOCR) at Johnson Space Center in Houston and the Air Force Launch Control Center (AFLCC) at Cape Canaveral AFS. While most films strive to avoid "incidental" sounds, the headsets picked up the actors' breathing and other sounds.

The names of the film astronauts (Jim, Buzz and Stoney) were chosen out of the blue, not to reflect on the real astronauts with those names.

Ted Dougherty closely resembled real-life Chief Astronaut "Deke" Slayton
Deke Slayton
Donald Kent Slayton , better known as Deke Slayton, was an American World War II pilot and later, one of the original NASA Mercury Seven astronauts....

, both in character and physical appearance. While Slayton, one of the Mercury Seven
Mercury Seven
Mercury Seven was the group of seven Mercury astronauts selected by NASA on April 9, 1959. They are also referred to as the Original Seven and Astronaut Group 1...

, had been grounded due to suspected heart problems, the film put him into space as the pilot of the rescue ship. David Janssen
David Janssen
David Janssen was an American film and television actor who is best known for his starring role as Dr. Richard Kimble in the television series The Fugitive , the starring role in the 1950s hit detective series Richard Diamond, Private Detective , and as Harry Orwell on Harry O.In 1996 TV Guide...

, who was a pilot himself, was selected in part due to his resemblance to Slayton.

In 1975, Slayton was medically cleared, and made his only space flight on the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project
Apollo-Soyuz Test Project
-Backup crew:-Crew notes:Jack Swigert had originally been assigned as the command module pilot for the ASTP prime crew, but prior to the official announcement he was removed as punishment for his involvement in the Apollo 15 postage stamp scandal.-Soyuz crew:...

, which may have been partially inspired by Marooned. The agreement between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. to conduct the ASTP was signed in Moscow in April, 1971.

The MOCR and AFLCC sets were built by Philco-Ford Corporation, builders of the actual facilities. Many of the technical personnel seen in those sets were Philco-Ford technicians.

In his book Lost Moon, Apollo 13
Apollo 13
Apollo 13 was the seventh manned mission in the American Apollo space program and the third intended to land on the Moon. The craft was launched on April 11, 1970, at 13:13 CST. The landing was aborted after an oxygen tank exploded two days later, crippling the service module upon which the Command...

 commander Jim Lovell
Jim Lovell
James "Jim" Arthur Lovell, Jr., is a former NASA astronaut and a retired captain in the United States Navy, most famous as the commander of the Apollo 13 mission, which suffered a critical failure en route to the Moon but was brought back safely to Earth by the efforts of the crew and mission...

 reported that he had taken his wife, Marilyn, to see Marooned. This added to her worries in the weeks leading up to the launch of the ill-fated mission. (The "nightmare" scene in the Ron Howard film Apollo 13
Apollo 13 (film)
Apollo 13 is a 1995 American drama film directed by Ron Howard. The film stars Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise, Kathleen Quinlan and Ed Harris. The screenplay by William Broyles, Jr...

depicts this.)

The Apollo Command Module used in making the film was an actual "boilerplate" version of the "Block I" Apollo spacecraft (no Block I ever flew with a crew aboard). While the Block II series had a means of rapidly blowing the hatch open, the Block I did not, and the interior set was constructed using the boilerplate as a model. To blow the hatch in the movie, Buzz pulls on a handle attached to a hinge.

Several scenes show various people communicating directly with the astronauts in space. In actuality, only CAPCOM (an astronaut) and astronauts' wives would have been permitted to communicate with the spacecraft, all others in MOCR and AFLCC would only be able to communicate on the internal network or to their respective backroom teams.

While the Titan IIIC was described as the booster which would launch the X-RV rescue craft into orbit, the only available launch footage (other than well-known Mercury and Gemini missions) was of an Air Force Titan II. The aerodynamic shroud placed over the lifting-body was designed to resemble a similar shroud which protects Titan payloads.

Conspicuously absent from the film is any person resembling a Flight Director. In real life, "Flight" is in charge of a space mission during that director's shift. The filmmakers felt that adding a Flight Director would distract from the interpersonal dynamic between Keith and Dougherty.

The offscreen voice of the President closely resembles that of Robert F. Kennedy
Robert F. Kennedy
Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy , also referred to by his initials RFK, was an American politician, a Democratic senator from New York, and a noted civil rights activist. An icon of modern American liberalism and member of the Kennedy family, he was a younger brother of President John F...

, who had been a candidate for that office at the time of production. Following his assassination in 1968, producers decided not to re-record the audio with a different accent.

While flying the Manned Maneuvering Unit, Lloyd's control inputs not only take place after the movements begin, but are also the opposite of what they should be, to match the preflight test shown a moment before.

The film's legacy

For the 1969 Academy Awards
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...

 held in 1970, the presenter for the Best Visual Effects award was Raquel Welch
Raquel Welch
Jo Raquel Tejada , better known as Raquel Welch, is an American actress, author and sex symbol. Welch came to attention as a "new-star" on the 20th Century-Fox lot in the mid-1960s. She posed iconically in a animal skin bikini for the British-release One Million Years B.C. , for which she may be...

. There were two nominees (Krakatoa: East of Java was the other). Before announcing the nominees, the buxom Welch said "I am here for visual effects and I have two of them." The film was also nominated for Cinematography and Best Sound (Les Fresholtz
Les Fresholtz
Les Fresholtz was an American sound engineer. He won two Academy Awards for Best Sound and was nominated for ten more in the same category. He worked on over 110 films between 1968 and 1996.-Selected filmography:...

, Arthur Piantadosi
Arthur Piantadosi
Arthur Piantadosi was an American sound engineer. He won an Academy Award for Best Sound and was nominated for six more in the same category. He worked on over 80 films between 1967 and 1986.-Selected filmography:...

).

During the preliminary discussions for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project
Apollo-Soyuz Test Project
-Backup crew:-Crew notes:Jack Swigert had originally been assigned as the command module pilot for the ASTP prime crew, but prior to the official announcement he was removed as punishment for his involvement in the Apollo 15 postage stamp scandal.-Soyuz crew:...

 the film was discussed as a means of disarming Russian suspicion.

The Skylab Rescue
Skylab Rescue
Brand flew in 1975 during the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project as command module pilot, later commanding three Space Shuttle missions . Lind would wait another decade before he flew as a mission specialist on STS-51-B in 1985.-External links:* * * * * * *...

 space vehicle was conceived by technicians at North American Rockwell after the film's release and the Apollo 13
Apollo 13
Apollo 13 was the seventh manned mission in the American Apollo space program and the third intended to land on the Moon. The craft was launched on April 11, 1970, at 13:13 CST. The landing was aborted after an oxygen tank exploded two days later, crippling the service module upon which the Command...

disaster. A production Apollo Command Module was modified into this configuration. Equipment failure aboard Skylab 3
Skylab 3
Skylab 3 was the second manned mission to Skylab. The Skylab 3 mission started July 28, 1973, with the launch of three astronauts on the Saturn IB rocket, and lasted 59 days, 11 hours and 9 minutes...

with the Apollo CSM thrusters almost led to Skylab Rescue's launch.

In the 1980s, Marooned was redistributed under the name Space Travelers by Film Ventures International
Film Ventures International
Film Ventures International is an independent movie production and distribution company originally situated in Atlanta, Georgia during the 1970s. FVI garnered a notorious reputation within the industry for producing films which were highly derivative of many blockbusters of the era...

, an ultra-low-budget production company that prepared quickie television and video releases of films that were in the public domain or could be purchased inexpensively. As Space Travelers, Marooned was mocked on a 1992 episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000
Mystery Science Theater 3000
Mystery Science Theater 3000 is an American cult television comedy series created by Joel Hodgson and produced by Best Brains, Inc., that ran from 1988 to 1999....

, becoming the only Academy Award-winning film ever to receive the MST3K treatment.

The second launch sequence served as the speech base for the comm chatter in the Disney rollercoaster Space Mountain
Space Mountain
Space Mountain is the name of a space-themed indoor roller coaster attraction located at all five Magic Kingdom-style Disney Parks. Although all five versions of the attraction are different in nature, all have a similar domed exterior façade that is a landmark for the respective park.The name can...

.

External links

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