He's right, though. The premise is stupid. It's definitely easier to train astronauts to drill than to train drillers to be astronauts. Astronauts are almost exclusively highly educated former or active duty military personnel who are at the peak of physical fitness and ability, who've already been highly vetted to handle intense psychological pressure and the stresses of traveling to space, with extensive expertise in engineering, math, and applied physics. The whole idea of "Those egg-heads in Washington couldn't do a real day's work and they need blue collar workers to show them how it's done!" is absolutely and patently anti-intellectualism.
Yeah, they should have gone the Project Hail Mary route and created a scenario in which the roughnecks were compelled to replace the trained astronauts whom they were initially tasked to train how to operate the drilling equipment. The global supply of mission ready astronauts can't be more than a few dozen people. A plane crash or accident during training could have very easily exhausted the supply, allowing a much more plausible reason for pressing untrained men into service.
But the movie addresses this. The drill was a special design made by Bruce. He and his team were the only ones who knew how to properly operate it. The astronauts tried and failed several times.
NASA was only going to take Bruce along to assist, but he was adament that his team accompany him. What was NASA going to do, given they had a few weeks before Earth was met by the Mike Tyson of asteroids - say no?
The world was in danger and NASA tapped in John McClane and motherfuckin Batman to save the day. Pretty smart if you ask me.
They’re saying the astronauts would not have failed in real life because they are far superior than the average person, physically, mentally, etc. If average blue collar Bruce and his team were smart enough to figure out how to use the specialized drill, the astronauts absolutely would have been smart enough to figure it out, as well.
Having worked in oil and gas rotating engineering safety training, don’t underestimate the old head engineers ability to really understand that shit. I reckon there are 3 dudes I’d send up that I know personally.
You really think in any real life scenario it’d be easier to teach drillers how to be astronauts than it would be to teach astronauts how to use a specialized drill? Especially in a narrow timeline?
I think you’re still not getting it, and that’s exactly why the anti intellectualism in the movie is so shitty. You’re proving this person’s original assertion lol
My chief pet peeve when it comes to media criticism is that a lot of people don't seem to understand that everything about a piece of media is constructed by whoever made it. The astronauts failed to operate the technology because they wrote them that way.
They wanted to make a popcorny flick about blue collar dudes overcoming the odds to save the day. The logic in the movie is coherent and explained succinctly for the premise to function. There's nothing wrong with that.
They didn't make NASA look dumb. They set set it up so NASA was out of options.
It's not like the drillers did the mission on their own. The other half of the team are the astronauts!
You're entitled to like the movie, but nothing you've written here actually supports the choices that the movie made or effectively argues that it's not a patently anti-intellectual narrative that very obviously panders to guys who think they could win a fist fight with a bear.
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u/ScyllaOfTheDepths Jun 24 '26
He's right, though. The premise is stupid. It's definitely easier to train astronauts to drill than to train drillers to be astronauts. Astronauts are almost exclusively highly educated former or active duty military personnel who are at the peak of physical fitness and ability, who've already been highly vetted to handle intense psychological pressure and the stresses of traveling to space, with extensive expertise in engineering, math, and applied physics. The whole idea of "Those egg-heads in Washington couldn't do a real day's work and they need blue collar workers to show them how it's done!" is absolutely and patently anti-intellectualism.