Space Camp

Space Camp is a 1986 movie which was based on a book written by Patrick Bailey and Larry B Williams and a screenplay by WW Wicket and Casey T Mitchell.

In the movie, four teenagers and a twelve year old boy go to a NASA space camp, to spend three weeks of their summer training as astronauts and learning about the space program in general. There, they will meet a female instructor who is frustrated at the fact she still hasn't gotten a chance to be up there, despite this being her life's dream.

But things start to unravel when the 12 year old boy, Max, saves the life of a robot named Jinx, and, to return the favor, Jinx decides to send Max into space after listening to Max say that he wished he could fly to space in a moment of frustration.

So Jinx secretly enters NASA's computer systems on the night before the morning the teens and the instructor were to be on a real space shuttle for the first time, and fixes all the programming so that the shuttle will be launched.

That morning, they all head into the shuttle and after sitting there and studying the flight panels, the engines start turning on to their surprise, and although the NASA controllers tried to stop the shuttle, it was decided that in order to evade a catastrophe, the shuttle had to take off, sending the teenagers and their instructor into space without any previous warning.

After much manuevering from their part, the teenagers and the instructor are able to return to Earth, but not without facing major problems.

Among the characters in this movie were:

• Kevin Donaldson, who thought highly of himself and didn't really want to be there, except his father had bought him a Jeep for signing into the camp. Donaldson wasn't supposed to be in this group, but he was interested in getting to know Kathryn so he took another kid's tag and joined this group.
• Kathryn Fairly, (played by Lea Thompson), to whom their instructor was a celebrity and who wanted to become a pilot. Kathryn already flew her own airplane and she arrived into the camp after flying it over from home.
• Rudy Tyler, who was generally known as the clumsy one in the group and wanted to become the fourth Black man in space.
• Tish Ambrose, who saw the three weeks of camp was a way to be away from her parents. Trish was the girl who liked to dress in typical 1980s pop culture fashions.
• Max Graham, 12 year old boy who saved Jinxs robot life and had been to Junior Camp two years in a row. Max wanted a taste of life in the camp for older kids so he squeaked into that camp.
• Andie Bergstrom , the female instructor who had dreamed of going to space since she was nine years old and was growing frustrated that her attempts to go up had failed so far.
• Jinx, the robot, Maxs friend.