Astronaut Sam Bell has a quintessentially personal encounter toward the end of his three-year stint on the Moon, where he, working alongside his computer, GERTY, sends back to Earth parcels of a resource that has helped diminish our planet's power problems.
Sam Bell has a three year contract to work for Lunar Industries. For the contract's entire duration, he is the sole employee based at their lunar station. His primary job responsibility is to harvest and periodically rocket back to Earth supplies of helium-3, the current clean and abundant fuel used on Earth. There is no direct communication link available between the lunar station and Earth, so his only direct real-time interaction is with GERTY, the intelligent computer whose function is to attend to his day to day needs. With such little human contact and all of it indirect, he feels that three years is far too long to be so isolated; he knows he is beginning to hallucinate as the end of his three years approaches. All he wants is to return to Earth to be with his wife Tess and their infant daughter Eve, who was born just prior to his leaving for this job. With two weeks to go, he gets into an accident at one of the mechanical harvesters and is rendered unconscious...
Written by Huggo
As part of the presentation of the movie at NASA, the director was asked about the sturdy, bunker-like design for the base. The director explained that he thought that astronauts would build the base using material dug out of the moon itself, instead of bringing a habitat with them and placing it on the surface. As it happened, one of the other audience members was working on "mooncrete", which as she explained to the director is a concrete-like material that could be made out of rocky "regolith" on the lunar surface.
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Goofs
Incorrectly regarded as goofs:
Helium is an inert gas and does not participate in chemical reactions. However, it can participate in nuclear fusion. The isotope helium-3 is particularly interesting to fusion researchers, and is more abundant on the Moon than Earth.
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Quotes
Talk Show Host:
You know what, he's one of two things. He's a whacko or an illegal immigrant. Either way, they need to lock him up. Line two! See more »
Crazy Credits
At the very end of the credits, the film copyright is credited to Lunar Industries Inc. Lunar Industries Inc. just happens to be the corporation featured in the film.
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