This documentary, at only 1 hr.6 min. in length, focuses on the efforts of a myriad of astronomers, scientists, and engineers. in the United States, to locate and configure threat levels for asteroids, both large and small, that might come close to or directly hit the Earth.
Detection appears to begin at the summit of Mt. Lemmon, in the Santa Catalina Mts., in Arizona, where Eric Christensen, and his staff of 8, are constantly looking to the skies through their telescopes and checking systems for the first signs of asteroids. They will pass along any pertinent information to the Astronomer Minor Planet Center, in Cambridge, Mass., and from there it will pass down through the chain of command for possible orbit calculations and threat levels.
The director here, French filmmaker Nelly Ben Hayoun, often has the interviewees in the film try and recreate conversations and events that occurred years before. To be honest, this often came across to me as rather silly and awkward, but since Hayoun is also listed as an experience designer, I imagine this is the way she approaches such parts of the movie, but it's not really my "cup of tea".
The most interesting part of the documentary for me was the interview with NASA engineer Daniel D. Nazarek who prepared and recommended various options to be possibly utilized to thwart threatening asteroids. These would include gravitational tugs using so-called gravity tractors, laser usage, kinetic impact (such as crashing a spacecraft into the asteroid), and a last resort option of imploding a nuclear device inside of the threat. Of course, we've seen some of these options used in various disaster films over the years.
The film cites that the United Nations has apparently been assigned to coordinate a major impact threat from space. However, it seems at the bureaucratic snail's pace at which it's proceeding we could all be extinct by the time it reaches a decision.
All in all, despite the, at times, helter-skelter aspects of the movie and the awkward staging, I am quite interested in this topic, so the film to me was informative and interesting for the most part.
Detection appears to begin at the summit of Mt. Lemmon, in the Santa Catalina Mts., in Arizona, where Eric Christensen, and his staff of 8, are constantly looking to the skies through their telescopes and checking systems for the first signs of asteroids. They will pass along any pertinent information to the Astronomer Minor Planet Center, in Cambridge, Mass., and from there it will pass down through the chain of command for possible orbit calculations and threat levels.
The director here, French filmmaker Nelly Ben Hayoun, often has the interviewees in the film try and recreate conversations and events that occurred years before. To be honest, this often came across to me as rather silly and awkward, but since Hayoun is also listed as an experience designer, I imagine this is the way she approaches such parts of the movie, but it's not really my "cup of tea".
The most interesting part of the documentary for me was the interview with NASA engineer Daniel D. Nazarek who prepared and recommended various options to be possibly utilized to thwart threatening asteroids. These would include gravitational tugs using so-called gravity tractors, laser usage, kinetic impact (such as crashing a spacecraft into the asteroid), and a last resort option of imploding a nuclear device inside of the threat. Of course, we've seen some of these options used in various disaster films over the years.
The film cites that the United Nations has apparently been assigned to coordinate a major impact threat from space. However, it seems at the bureaucratic snail's pace at which it's proceeding we could all be extinct by the time it reaches a decision.
All in all, despite the, at times, helter-skelter aspects of the movie and the awkward staging, I am quite interested in this topic, so the film to me was informative and interesting for the most part.
