NASA Adds Their ‘Touch’ To Transformers 3

http://www.dearastronomer.com/

With the summer blockbuster season in full swing, one heavily anticipated movie is “Transformers: Dark of the Moon“. Many children of the 80′s grew up with NASA’s Space Shuttle Program, as well as the Transformersfranchise.

In the latest installment of the Transformers movies, we get to see some of NASA’s historic missions and technology play a not-insignificant part in the movie, as shown by the “alternate” Apollo 11 mission as shown in recent trailers for “Transformers: Dark of the Moon“.

According to a NASA press release, Director Michael Bay and his production team practically moved in to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a week in October 2010. The production had casting calls, costuming and catering tents, and of course all the vehicles you’d expect in a Transformers movie. A special “sneak preview” of the movie was held on June 28th at Kennedy Space Center’s IMAX theater.

“I thought they did a great job,” said Mike Cianelli, a NASA Test Director (NTD) at Kennedy who appears in the movie. “It was fun to see the production and then to see the end product.“

The cast and crew filmed at Launch Pad 39A where Discovery was prepped for its STS-133 mission, inside the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), an orbiter processing facility and at the Space Station Processing Facility.

Starring Shia LaBeouf, Rosie Huntington-Whitely and Josh Duhamel, Transformers: Dark of the Moon is the third installment of the Transformers franchise, covering the life-and-death battles of a species of robots that bring their war to Earth. The movies are based on the 1980′s cartoon series and comics.

Michael Bay adds this poignant quote: “The highest grossing films of all time are science fiction movies and things that are in space. I think it’s something we still have to discover.”

If you’d like to read more about NASA’s involvement in Transformers 3, which as an aside apepars to be better than their involvement with another Bay movie, Amageddon, you can read the full NASA/KSC press release at: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/news/transformerspremiere.html

Source:NASA/Kennedy Space Center Press Release

Ray Sanders is a Sci-Fi geek, astronomer and blogger. Currently researching variable stars at Arizona State University, he writes for Universe Today, The Planetary Society blog, and his own blog, Dear Astronomer