RocketMan

RocketMan (also written as Rocket Man) is a 1997 American comic science fiction film directed by Stuart Gillard and starring Harland Williams, Jessica Lundy, William Sadler, and Jeffrey DeMunn. A partial remake of the 1967 film, The Reluctant Astronaut, it was produced by Walt Disney Pictures and Caravan Pictures, and was released on October 10, 1997. Plot NASA is training for the first human mission to Mars by the spacecraft Aries. Due to a supposed glitch in the computer navigation system, NASA looks for the original programmer of the software to understand why it seems to be broken. Fred Z. Randall, the eccentric programmer who wrote the software, meets Paul Wick, the flight director of the Mars mission; William "Wild Bill" Overbeck, the commander of the Mars mission; and astronaut Gary Hackman, the computer specialist. Fred looks at the software and discovers that the problem is actually stemming from a mathematical error made by Gary. After a display of hard-headed stubbornness, Gary is hit in the head by a model of the Pilgrim 1 Mars lander, resulting in a skull fracture. NASA decides to replace him instead of delaying the mission; Fred is brought to NASA to see if he has what it takes to be an astronaut. He goes through a series of exercises, which sees Fred do well, even going as far to break every record that Bill had set. In the end, Fred gets the job. While getting ready to board the Aries, Fred chickens out and refuses to go on the mission. Bud Nesbitt who Wick claims is the cause of the Apollo 13 accident though Bud later reveals that Wick was responsible, tells Fred about the three commemorative coins given to him by President Johnson. He gave one coin to Neil Armstrong, another to Jim Lovell, and finally shows Randall a gold coin reading "Bravery". "It hasn't done me much good," Bud says, "Maybe it'll mean something to you one day." Randall then quotes the Lion from The Wizard of Oz: "If I were king of the forest!" Fred, along with Commander Overbeck, geologist Julie Ford, and Ulysses, a trained chimpanzee, will look for fossils on Mars. While on a video call with the President, Fred inadvertently humiliates Overbeck by leading the global population in singing "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands." To save on resources, crew members are put into "hypersleep" for eight months while the ship floats towards Mars. Ulysses purposely takes Fred's "hypersleep chamber" for his own and Fred has to sleep in Ulysses' chimp-sized chamber.