On its 40th anniversary, we reassess 1986’s SpaceCamp

在《太空营》上映 40 周年之际，我们重新审视这部 1986 年的电影

Forty years ago, the future seemed just around the corner—and the vehicle that was going to take us there was NASA’s Space Shuttle. Originally envisioned as part of a larger integrated space transportation system, the shuttle was billed as a fully reusable vehicle, totally unlike the one-and-done capsules of the fading Apollo era, capable of making monthly (and perhaps even weekly) ferry flights to low Earth orbit. The shuttle, it was hoped, would transform human space flight from extraordinary to mundane.

四十年前，未来似乎近在咫尺，而将我们带向未来的载具正是 NASA 的航天飞机。航天飞机最初被设想为一个大型综合空间运输系统的一部分，它被宣传为一种完全可重复使用的载具，与阿波罗时代那种“一次性”太空舱截然不同，能够每月（甚至每周）往返于近地轨道。人们曾寄希望于航天飞机能将人类航天飞行从“非凡”变为“日常”。

Brands like Coke and Pepsi were quick to hop aboard and expand the Cola Wars into space, and there were even plans to blast Sesame Street’s Big Bird into orbit. The loss of Challenger in January 1986—carrying educator Christa McAuliffe, who would have been the first private citizen in space—put the kibosh on all of that. The shuttle, while fantastically advanced, would never be the vehicle to help humankind slip all of our surly bonds, so to speak. Even operating at its most frantic peak in 1985 just before Challenger’s loss, the shuttle hardware managed a maximum of nine flights in one calendar year; for most of the 1990s, it performed at five or six flights per year. Civilians in space—to say nothing of Big Bird—would have to wait.

可口可乐和百事可乐等品牌迅速加入其中，将“可乐战争”扩展到了太空，甚至还有计划将《芝麻街》中的大鸟（Big Bird）送入轨道。然而，1986 年 1 月“挑战者号”的失事——当时机上载有本应成为首位进入太空的平民教育家克里斯塔·麦考利夫——彻底终结了这一切。航天飞机虽然极其先进，但终究没能成为帮助人类摆脱地球束缚的载具。即使在 1986 年挑战者号失事前最繁忙的 1985 年，航天飞机一年内也仅完成了 9 次飞行；而在 20 世纪 90 年代的大部分时间里，每年仅执行 5 到 6 次任务。平民进入太空——更不用说大鸟了——只能无限期搁置。

And into that post-Challenger disillusioned summer of 1986, Hollywood brought us SpaceCamp. It had all the right ingredients: A stacked cast with a solid leading duo (Kate Capshaw and Tom Skerritt), tons of real NASA location footage, and a big, brassy score by none other than John Williams. The film was completed before the Challenger disaster, leaving 20th Century Fox with something of a nightmarish choice on their hands—to shelve the film and lose millions, or send it to theaters and risk a PR disaster. For better or for worse, Fox chose to release the film, which ultimately made about $9.6 million on a reported $25 million budget. Ouch. Audiences, it seemed, weren’t really interested in watching a bunch of kids in peril on a space shuttle.

就在 1986 年挑战者号事故后那个充满幻灭感的夏天，好莱坞为我们带来了《太空营》。它具备了所有成功的要素：强大的演员阵容，包括两位扎实的主演（凯特·卡普肖和汤姆·斯凯里特），大量真实的 NASA 实景拍摄素材，以及由约翰·威廉姆斯亲自操刀的宏大配乐。这部电影在挑战者号灾难前就已经制作完成，这让二十世纪福克斯公司陷入了噩梦般的选择：是搁置电影损失数百万美元，还是将其推向影院并冒着公关灾难的风险？无论好坏，福克斯最终选择了上映，但这部电影在 2500 万美元的预算下最终仅收获了约 960 万美元的票房。惨痛。观众似乎对看一群孩子在航天飞机上遇险并不感兴趣。

Today, on the rare occasions SpaceCamp comes up in film discussions at all—usually among geeks of a certain age who encountered it when they were younger—it’s often spoken of with derision. Kids! Robots! Thermal curtain failures! Preposterous! But is it really a bad movie? It’s not currently available for streaming, but this is exactly the kind of scenario that physical media is made for. And so, with the movie’s 40th anniversary looming, Senior Space Editor Eric Berger and I grabbed the DVD and watched our way through it—and this is what we thought.

如今，在极少数讨论《太空营》的场合中——通常是在那些年轻时看过该片的特定年龄段极客之间——人们往往带着嘲讽的口吻谈论它。孩子们！机器人！隔热帘故障！太荒谬了！但它真的是一部烂片吗？目前它在流媒体上无法观看，但这正是实体媒体存在的意义。因此，随着该片 40 周年纪念日的临近，资深太空编辑埃里克·伯格（Eric Berger）和我找来了 DVD，完整地重温了一遍——以下是我们的看法。

Lee: It’s been about 18 hours since we watched SpaceCamp, which is maybe just a bit longer than the kids spent in orbit. What did you think? Are we tearing the film apart here, or praising it?

Lee： 我们看完《太空营》已经过去约 18 个小时了，这可能比片中孩子们在轨道上待的时间还要长一点。你觉得怎么样？我们是在批判这部电影，还是在赞美它？

Eric: We are bearing witness to it, I think. I had never seen the movie before, and as a 53-year-old who has read about and written about space for decades, the movie was clearly not made for me. But for what it was, an ’80s dramedy aimed at kids and teens, I think it did an admirable job of engaging its audience and building interest in the space program. You know, we decided to watch it because I wrote about the real Space Camp a couple of weeks ago, and we’re coming up on the 40th anniversary of the movie’s release in early June. All in all, it was fun to experience. How about you? You watched it a lot as a kid and were right in the key demographic, a pre-teen in Houston. Does it hold up?

Eric： 我想我们是在见证它。我以前从未看过这部电影，作为一个研究和撰写太空题材几十年的 53 岁老人，这部电影显然不是为我拍的。但作为一部针对儿童和青少年的 80 年代剧情喜剧，我认为它在吸引观众和激发对太空计划的兴趣方面做得相当出色。你知道，我们决定看它是为了配合我几周前写的关于真实“太空营”的文章，而且 6 月初就是电影上映 40 周年了。总而言之，这次体验很有趣。你呢？你小时候经常看这部电影，而且正好处于目标受众群体——休斯顿的青春期前少年。它经得起时间的考验吗？

Lee: I damn near wore the VHS tape out watching it as a kid, so yeah, I was coming into this with a lot of old memories. It honestly held up a lot better than I was expecting it to! There’s epic levels of cheese—and we’ll get to that—but even in spite of the cheese, I don’t think anyone can deny that there was a lot of love put into this movie. For every huge detail they get wrong (why does the shuttle keep shaking after MECO?), there are countless minor details that they nail. Tiny stuff, that no one except insiders would notice—shuttle cockpit switch positions, authentic uniform patches, terminology. This was not a B-movie—money and care were spent, and that money and care are visible on-screen.

Lee： 我小时候看这部电影几乎把录像带都磨坏了，所以是的，我是带着满满的回忆来看的。老实说，它比我预期的要好得多！虽然片中充满了史诗级的“俗套”——我们稍后会谈到——但即便如此，没人能否认这部电影倾注了大量心血。尽管他们搞错了一些重大细节（比如为什么主发动机关闭后航天飞机还在晃动？），但他们也精准还原了无数微小的细节。那些只有业内人士才会注意到的细枝末节——航天飞机驾驶舱的开关位置、真实的制服徽章、专业术语。这绝不是一部 B 级片——制作方投入了金钱和心血，而这些投入在银幕上是显而易见的。

Eric: There were also some cringeworthy details they missed, though. One jarring example for me was a reference to a “180×33” orbit shortly after Atlantis reaches space. I mean, that’s definitely an orbit. But it’s not a stable orbit. 180 miles is pretty low for an apogee to begin with, and 33 miles is, umm, not great. At perigee the shuttle would experience pretty serious atmospheric braking, rapidly lose energy, and would definitely not be going back up to its apogee. It would meet a bad end. Regarding it being a B-movie, all you have to do is look at the cast, a mix of established actors and young up-and-comers (Joaquin Phoenix, lolwut??!) to know that this was a serious effort. But it had poor timing.

Eric： 不过，他们也错过了一些让人尴尬的细节。对我来说，一个刺眼的例子是“亚特兰蒂斯号”进入太空后提到的“180×33”轨道。我的意思是，那确实是一个轨道，但它不是一个稳定的轨道。180 英里作为远地点本来就相当低，而 33 英里，嗯，不太妙。在近地点，航天飞机将经历相当严重的大气制动，迅速损失能量，绝对无法再回到远地点。它会迎来悲惨的结局。至于它是否是 B 级片，你只需要看看演员阵容——既有资深演员，也有年轻的后起之秀（杰昆·菲尼克斯，哈哈，什么鬼？！）——就知道这是一部严肃的作品。但它的时机太糟糕了。