“Space Cadet” is a charming new space-based comedy on Prime Video that offers up the fantasy-like tale of how one brash and ebullient Cocoa Beach bartender with hopes of living her dream cons her way into NASA‘s astronaut candidate program by submitting a false application that greatly exaggerated her limited credentials.
Directed by Liz W. Garcia, “Space Cadet” stars Emma Roberts (“American Horror Story”) as Tiffany ‘Rex’ Simpson, the college dropout aspiring to accomplish something greater in her life and winds up picked to participate in an elimination process to choose the next four astronaut trainees. It’s all spun out of a heightened reality where NASA apparently does no background checking except for a couple phone calls, but it’s delivered in such good fun you might not even care.
In order to maintain some semblance of scientific authenticity, even in the midst of the screenplay’s far-fetched premise, former NASA astronaut Nicole Stott was brought in as a consultant by the producers to provide some expert guidance.
Stott is an seasoned astronaut, aquanaut, engineer, artist, and author of “Back to Earth: What Life In Space Taught Me About Our Home Planet – And Our Mission To Protect It.” She conducted two spaceflights and spent 104 days in orbit as a crewmember on the International Space Station and the space shuttle. Among her many accomplishments, Stott was the 10th woman to ever perform a spacewalk, the first to operate the ISS robotic arm to capture a free-flying cargo vehicle, and even created the first watercolor painting in space.
“My buddy Bert Ulrich as NASA headquarters let me know they were looking for somebody to help with advice, or whatever that means, and so I was happy to be introduced to it,” Stott tells Space.com regarding how she got the gig. “My favorite space movies are ‘Rocketman’ (not the Elton John one) and ‘Galaxy Quest.’ Neither of those films are true to the science of space exploration, but what I love about them is that they pull out more of the human story, and these interactions between humans that are doing human spaceflight.
“And I think that’s attractive to people, to get a sense of who these people might be, even if you’re doing it in a goofy silly way.”
The refreshing tone of “Space Cadet’s” script was an element Stott loved and attracted her to this good-natured Hollywood project in her field of knowledge.
“Everything about it in some way was showing the best of how you behave as a crewmate, and you don’t see that all the time, even in the films that are trying to be true to the science, you don’t see that side of what astronauts are really all about.”
Working with Liz W. Garcia and the production team, Stott discussed the movie’s goals to achieve some credibility while still keeping the tone light and inspirational.
“That was the way she presented it,” Stott recalls. “The story of this unexpected group of people and unexpected things happening, with a non-traditional cast flying in space, and I like that. Having the opportunity to read the script, as a person who’s had some experience in space, it’s really difficult not to say, ‘Okay, but we’d have our tethers on here.’ So you have to allow some of the creative license even though in your gut you’re watching something like the ‘Gravity’ film and you think, ‘She wouldn’t be able to do that!’ You have to balance it with what is really at the heart of the story, which was what’s going on with these people, not the technical details.”
There was an instance where she suggested a change in the script and how the rescue scene employing the ISS’s robotic arm was handled, which was appropriate since Stott was the first astronaut to utilize it to grab drifting equipment.
“I think on that arm scene they were going to go the full way, just crawling and jumping. So I was really happy to see that the tether was used. I just breathed a sigh of relief. I don’t really think there was anything that I felt like I needed to put my foot down on. You think about getting the call to be an astronaut and then showing up and what you would wear. But that was what Rex was all about and it was a way to bring out who she was and the personality of it.”
“Space Cadet” was filmed at the Space Camp and the Visitor Complex area at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, locations very familiar to Stott during her days with NASA. Conversations with the director ranged across several topics all in keeping with the romantic comedy’s spirited storyline.
“They wanted to make sure they represented what we do in training throughout the film and how we behave with each other,” she notes. “As far as the training stuff goes, some of that was exaggerated. We don’t get in the multi-axis spinning chair. They show that in pretty much every astronaut movie. But what it represents is that we do do disorienting things, so while they’re not in the exact same equipment we use in the exact same training facilities, the idea of it is good.
“Astronauts go through things that don’t have you in normal configurations and you’re going to be stressed in different ways, fly in jets, and all of these things that are represented in the film. It’s not the way we do it but that’s okay too, it’s not like a documentary. It was fun working on it and I’ve watched it multiple times. And I really love how it wraps up, with them having this inspirational interaction with kids doing a Space Camp kind of thing themselves, just to continue to lift others up, which is what I felt like was happening throughout the entire film.”
