Review: Space Junk 3D
... A new short film, Space Junk 3D, takes advantage of the state of the art in cinema technology to better communicate the threat and potential ways of dealing with it.
Space Junk 3D, currently screening in a handful of theaters that are primarily associated with museums, is intended to bring the issue of orbital debris to the verybig screen. Designed for IMAX 3D theaters, the film offers plenty of dramatic visuals, both real and animated, to describe the threat of orbital debris. While narrated by British actor Tom Wilkinson, the central figure in the 40-minute film is Don Kessler, the former NASA scientist who led some of the early studies of the subject, long before it appeared on the public’s radar. (Kessler is perhaps best known for promulgating the concept known as the Kessler Syndrome, where the density of debris in a particular orbit reaches the point where debris creates a self-sustaining cascade of impacts, effectively making that orbit unusable.) Kessler provides the expert voice describing the growth of debris and ways to address, and perhaps eventually resolve, this problem. ...
The film at times makes good use of its giant three-dimensional canvas, primarily in the form of computer animations that illustrate the growing population of debris and what the effects of debris collisions can be. The film also tries to be forward-looking, displaying at the end some of the concepts that researchers have proposed in recent years to capture debris or deorbit satellites at the end of their lifetimes. The film does look perhaps too far ahead, envisioning a fleet of orbital tugs—effectively space garbage trucks—gathering debris ...
Those issues aside, Space Junk 3D, does a good job illustrating the problem of orbital debris that can otherwise be difficult to visualize. In a discussion after a screening of the film at the Smithsonian’s Natural Museum of Natural History in Washington in mid-March, producer Kimberly Rowe said she was drawn to the topic precisely because of the lack of visuals. “It left you wanting to know more, and it’s also incredibly visual, yet there were no visuals to really see with this,” she said of the subject of orbital debris.
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