| Movie Review | The Journal of American History, 94.3

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| Movie Review | The Journal of American History, 94.3 | The History Cooperative

Movie Reviews

The Astronaut Farmer. Dir. by Michael Polish. Prod. by Paula Weinstein and Len Amato. Warner Brothers, 2006. 104 mins. (Warner Home Video, http://www.warnerbros.com/)
The Astronaut Farmer is a Capraesque, if somewhat clunky, tale of a family banding together to fulfill a father's dream of space flight. The title character, Charlie Farmer (Billy Bob Thornton), is a former military jet pilot who would have been an astronaut but for his father's untimely death. The movie (released on DVD in July 2007) follows Farmer's obsession with launching a homemade rocket into orbit. In telling the tale, The Astronaut Farmer reflects an ongoing cultural debate over the true heirs to the legacy of American space achievements.	1
In real life, private spacecraft designers such as Burt Rutan have challenged the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) exclusive claim to that history. In 2004, SpaceShipOne, designed by Rutan and funded by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, won the $10 million Ansari X Prize, designed to jump start the personal space-flight industry. Other companies also see themselves as the next generation of space innovators, reclaiming the spacefaring dream that they believe NASA has neglected.	2
Charlie Farmer would agree. As the movie opens, he has built a Mercury-Atlas launch vehicle in the barn of his family's Texas cattle ranch. (The film does not explain how, leaving the impression that rocket construction requires only detailed plans, accumulated parts, some Yankee ingenuity, and lots of elbow grease.) Spurred to drastic action by a threatened foreclosure and despite a failed first launch, Farmer eventually orbits the earth. He succeeds once his entire family rallies to the cause, including wife Audrey (Virginia Madsen), who contributes her inheritance.	. . .

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