Weeks before Michael Bay started filming his 1998 blockbuster Armageddon, he apparently went to the props department and was dismayed at the space suits that he saw. “It looked like an Adidas jogging suit on a rack,” he complained. And “if you don’t have cool space suits, your entire movie is screwed.”

The film actually does use some realistic suits. The characters train in a dive tank at NASA, and they’re later seen in the Advanced Crew Escape Suit that real shuttle crews wore during launches. But the suits they wear on the asteroid are fictional “next-generation” designs. They look a bit complicated, and are designed specifically for ground missions, carrying thrusters to keep someone on the ground in a low gravity environment. Props for specific purposes there.

Incidentally, the same year’s other blow-up-the-asteroid-before-it-strikes-the-Earth movie — Deep Impact — also featured astronauts at work in space. But that production used some suits that looked quite a bit more like the ones that are really used by astronauts.

armageddon

Armageddon

The film actually does use some realistic suits. The characters train in a dive tank at NASA, and they’re later seen in the Advanced Crew Escape Suit that real shuttle crews wore during launches. But the suits they wear on the asteroid are fictional “next-generation” designs. They look a bit complicated, and are designed specifically for ground missions, carrying thrusters to keep someone on the ground in a low gravity environment. Props for specific purposes there.

 

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