20 Things You Didn't Know About NASA

4. Armageddon Is Used As A Training Film

We doubt this will come as a surprise to anyone, but Michael Bay's 1998 blockbuster Armageddon - about an asteroid headed on a collision course to Earth which is destroyed by a group of plucky oil drillers sent up to burrow and detonate a nuclear bomb within the big lump of space rock - isn't 100% scientifically accurate. It might not even be 1% scientifically accurate. Star Ben Affleck even said to the director, upon being told the premise, "Wouldn't it be easier for NASA to train astronauts how to drill rather than training drillers to be astronauts?" Bay told Affleck to shut up. That's the level that Michael Bay was working on in Armageddon. On release, astronomers roundly criticised the film for its inaccuracies, whilst praising the suspiciously similar film Deep Impact - which came out the same weekend - for being pretty on-the-money. The totally unrealistic science mumbo jumbo and general disregard for reality that Armageddon (and, let's be honest, all Michael Bay films) boasts isn't just good for a laugh on behalf of boffins, however. No, NASA actually screens the film as part of their management training program, with potential recruits being tasked with spotting as many scientific inaccuracies as they can. So far they've picked out 168 distinct things that are impossible to do, which not only lets them test the managers on their suitability for the role, but also teaches them the difference between "impossible" and "improbable" acts in space - which would be important to know if an Armageddon-esque scenario ever happened for real. The asteroid, we mean, not the Ben Affleck/Liv Tyler romance. Affleck + Garner 4 ever IDFT.
 
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Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/