When did we stop dreaming about outer space?

As this film played out, I was fascinated by the scores of kids of all ages who were wildly excited to be at Space Camp. Every character – no matter how cool or uncool they are supposed to be – acts as though getting to go to Space Camp is akin to winning the lottery. As they come together they all have very little in common, but they all share a desire to go further into the final frontier than humankind has gone.

And oddly, that thread which stitches them all together is what dates this film the most.

Fifty years ago, our imagination was clearly focused on the skies. The question wasn’t whether or not a human would get to the moon, but which human would get there first…and which human it would be. Once we got there, we began dreaming of how much further we could go, specifically wondering how long it would take to land a mission on Mars. Interestingly, while all of this was happening in real life, books and films were being created that suggested that by the year 2001 we would be able to send manned missions to Jupiter.

And yet here we are:

2011.
No Mars, no Jupiter.
Less and less boys and girls who dream of going into space.

It saddens me to think that kids like Kevin Donaldson (Tate Donovan) or Kathryn Fairly (Lea Thompson) could have grown into the sort of adults that see NASA as a waste of taxpayers’ dollars, or that their children could be hard pressed to name a single crew member on the last space mission. After all, we’re talking about astronauts here – people who were once spoken about with the same sort of reverence as rock stars. At one time it was the thrill of a lifetime to shake an astronaut’s hand; now it’d likely be met with a “Hey, cool”.

Perhaps that’s what makes this film feel “So 80’s”. Not Kelly Preston’s perm, nor the fact that teenagers once had Mark Knopfler and Eric Clapton blaring from their car stereos. It’s the way it reminds me of a mindset before Challenger killed astronauts on the way up, and Discovery killed more on the way down. It’s a movie that was made at the end of an era where lots of kids dreamed of exploring the universe, instead of the gifted few who show great aptitude for math and science. A big part of me has to see that as a bit of a bummer…as though an entire generation of kids just gave up.

Hopefully as more time passes I’ll be proven wrong. Hopefully we are now just in a lull, rather than at the end of a long slow fade out from trying to push the limits of what’s possible.

If that’s to be the case though, I truly hope the men and women who make that possible aren’t subjected to this movie. It’s terrible, and unbefitting of their passion for the galaxy.

…Oh and by the way, this movie was terrible.