So I went and saw it today. Since we had so much snow lately the theater wasn't crowded, so I was nice and comfy.
I give the movie a B for effort when it comes to getting the technical stuff right. The Mercury-Atlas knockoff functions pretty much like the real one did, with a few notable exceptions, the main one being that the booster engines did not jettison but rode all the way to orbit, making this a true SSTO. Cinematic license, perhaps? Maybe the screenwriters were concerned about the people along the launch path getting struck with spent booster parts. The barn is in Texas, and the projected ground track is roughly north of east, making it reach the sea about somewhere over the Carolinas. Can I continue to nitpick? Sure I can! The LES tower doesn't jettison until after MECO. Minor. The "mission control" apparently can maintain contact with the spacecraft anywhere in its orbit. Since his ground station consists of his son in a converted Airstream camper trailer, it's unclear how he does this without a worldwide network. Hollywood. Also, there is an accident in the film that by all rights should have been far worse. Add to that all the things already noticed, like the difficulty of building such a thing, testing it, ground facilities, etc. So what. At least they got some physics right, and that's WAY more than you can ask of most moronic film makers these days.
In real life, someone who is not so strapped for cash will eventually launch a private spacecraft into orbit someday, so the basic premise of the story is semi-believable. The part that is not so believable is the fact that the government in this film is not believably ruthless enough. Time and again, the roadblocks the government throws in front of a backyard rocket launch are discussed by the characters, including the fact that building and fueling a modified ballistic missile before obtaining the proper paperwork is a good way to get sent to jail, but the federal agents in the film seem to be too lazy to stop this from happening. They threaten him with shooting him down or shutting him down, but he calls their bluff and gets away with it. That is the least believable part of the film for me. His barn would've been raided, his property seized, and he might have been shipped off to some prison somewhere as an "enemy combatant" and never heard from again. Charlie Farmer (yes, Farmer is his name, not his occupation) fights city hall and wins. Hard to swallow.
The FAA, on the other hand, is the main instigator of government road-blocking, and this is also a bit hard to buy. Perhaps NASA might not like being shown up by a Texas cowboy doing it on the cheap, but the FAA is not known for this nonsense. They write rules for flying and issue airworthiness certificates, but they usually encourage private citizens to advance the development of flight, rather than retard it. Yes, they would have objections about launching over populated areas, and for good reasons, but in this film they object not on safety grounds but because they think only government agencies should be allowed to fly in space.
Still, this would be a good film to watch while, say, on a long distance jetliner flight, and it keeps the insults to your intelligence to a lesser degree than I expected.
I give the movie a B for effort when it comes to getting the technical stuff right. The Mercury-Atlas knockoff functions pretty much like the real one did, with a few notable exceptions, the main one being that the booster engines did not jettison but rode all the way to orbit, making this a true SSTO. Cinematic license, perhaps? Maybe the screenwriters were concerned about the people along the launch path getting struck with spent booster parts. The barn is in Texas, and the projected ground track is roughly north of east, making it reach the sea about somewhere over the Carolinas. Can I continue to nitpick? Sure I can! The LES tower doesn't jettison until after MECO. Minor. The "mission control" apparently can maintain contact with the spacecraft anywhere in its orbit. Since his ground station consists of his son in a converted Airstream camper trailer, it's unclear how he does this without a worldwide network. Hollywood. Also, there is an accident in the film that by all rights should have been far worse. Add to that all the things already noticed, like the difficulty of building such a thing, testing it, ground facilities, etc. So what. At least they got some physics right, and that's WAY more than you can ask of most moronic film makers these days.
In real life, someone who is not so strapped for cash will eventually launch a private spacecraft into orbit someday, so the basic premise of the story is semi-believable. The part that is not so believable is the fact that the government in this film is not believably ruthless enough. Time and again, the roadblocks the government throws in front of a backyard rocket launch are discussed by the characters, including the fact that building and fueling a modified ballistic missile before obtaining the proper paperwork is a good way to get sent to jail, but the federal agents in the film seem to be too lazy to stop this from happening. They threaten him with shooting him down or shutting him down, but he calls their bluff and gets away with it. That is the least believable part of the film for me. His barn would've been raided, his property seized, and he might have been shipped off to some prison somewhere as an "enemy combatant" and never heard from again. Charlie Farmer (yes, Farmer is his name, not his occupation) fights city hall and wins. Hard to swallow.
The FAA, on the other hand, is the main instigator of government road-blocking, and this is also a bit hard to buy. Perhaps NASA might not like being shown up by a Texas cowboy doing it on the cheap, but the FAA is not known for this nonsense. They write rules for flying and issue airworthiness certificates, but they usually encourage private citizens to advance the development of flight, rather than retard it. Yes, they would have objections about launching over populated areas, and for good reasons, but in this film they object not on safety grounds but because they think only government agencies should be allowed to fly in space.
Still, this would be a good film to watch while, say, on a long distance jetliner flight, and it keeps the insults to your intelligence to a lesser degree than I expected.