Space shuttle in popular culture
Even before the first space shuttle was launched, science fiction filmmakers were featuring the craft in their productions. The laws of physics have traditionally been no impediment to creativity, as some of the following demonstrate:
On screen
The first major appearance of a space shuttle on the big screen was the Pan Am "Orion" shuttle that dazzled audiences with its ballet type flight maneuvers in Stanley Kubrick's epic space drama 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). In Kubrick's film, one of the first to attempt to portray space flight as realistically as possible, the Orion shuttle is used to transport scientist Heywood Floyd from the earth to a giant revolving space station. Reportedly, Kubrick went to great effort to portray the appearance of the shuttle (at that time in the early design phase at NASA) as accurately as possible, relying on expert technical advisors from NASA.
Another early fictional use of the space shuttle in a major motion picture was in the 1979 James Bond film Moonraker, in which a fleet of privately produced shuttles was used to ferry personnel to a space station operated by the evil Sir Hugo Drax. That film was actually intended to premiere concurrently with the first shuttle launch, which was ultimately delayed. One goof shows a shuttle, being carried atop a jetliner, being launched with the firing of its engines and destroying the jetliner; in reality, the shuttle would not have fuel in such a piggy-back arrangement. Also, six shuttles launch from the Amazon jungle, their fiery exhausts less than a quarter mile from the control room.
That same year, a new version of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century produced for television had the titular hero frozen in space for 500 years aboard Ranger 3, a deep-space probe that looked exactly like a traditional shuttle. However, Ranger 3 is shown landing under power; the real-world shuttle lands as a glider. Ranger 3 and the shuttle styled vehicle used extensively in the show's second season were much smaller than the real shuttles.
The shuttle used in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century appears to be a redress of the prop used in the two-part Battlestar Galactica episode, Greetings from Earth.
The low-budget 1980 film Hangar 18 features a shuttle crew that encounters an alien craft in orbit. The fourth Quatermass serial also included a sequence where the shuttle is used to attempt communication with an alien craft.
A version of the shuttle also appeared in the comedy film Airplane II: The Sequel in the early 1980s, in which it was used as a passenger liner between Earth and the Moon and experiences a traditional "airline disaster film" scenario en route.
After the shuttle's launch, the craft played a role in a number of NASA-themed films such as SpaceCamp (in which a group of teenagers are launched aboard a shuttle into orbit after a goofy robot fakes a "thermal curtain failure") and a late-1990s series titled The Cape that followed the lives of a group of fictional shuttle astronauts. The 1999 science fiction series Farscape featured footage of an actual shuttle launch in its first episode, although the name of the craft shown was digitally altered to a fictional one. The 1983 TV movie Starflight One also uses actual shuttle launch footage when Columbia is used to rescue an experimental plane that gets trapped in low Earth orbit.
In the 1985 horror movie Lifeforce, a highly modified shuttle is sent on a mission to Halley's Comet, and Columbia is later launched to rendevouz with the returning shuttle in orbit.
In the 1989 movie Moontrap, a Shuttle equipped with a laser weapon does battle with an alien spacecraft.
Columbia was seen in episode 19 ("Wild Horses") of the 1998 anime series Cowboy Bebop. In the episode, the disabled space fighter of main character Spike Spiegel docks inside the payload bay. This episode was temporarily pulled from the rotation on Cartoon Network after the real shuttle was lost.
Another modified version of the shuttle which was named Aries, was featured in the Walt Disney Pictures movie Rocketman that carried the lander Pilgrim 1 to the red planet of Mars. The 1998 film Armageddon features two spacecraft resembling shuttles, called Freedom and Independence, which are used to carry a crew of astronauts and oil drillers to an asteroid where they plant a nuclear device. Independence is destroyed but Freedom carries the survivors back to Earth after the successful completion of the mission. Digitally modified footage of actual shuttle launches is used in the launch scene. At the beginning of the film, the shuttle Atlantis is destroyed in orbit by comet debris. Armageddon producer Jerry Bruckheimer revisited the shuttle theme later that year with the TV movie Max Q. The similarly themed movie Deep Impact, released that same year, also featured shuttle Atlantis which carried a crew to the spaceship Messiah (which itself is a shuttle-derived vehicle in design).
In 2000, the movie Space Cowboys featured a shuttle mission to repair a failing Soviet satellite. Among other things, it features a damaged shuttle re-entry and a complete power loss on landing, with results markedly different from what happened two years later to Columbia. The space shuttle's name in this film was Daedalus.
In the same year, Space Shuttles were used to transport passengers from the earth to the moon in the comedy 2001: A Space Travesty.
The 2002 disaster movie The Core featured a shuttle (Space Shuttle Endeavour) having to make an emergency landing in the Los Angeles River. After the Columbia accident, references to this in the film's trailer were removed.
The series Star Trek: Enterprise paid tribute to Columbia in a 2004 episode by giving Starfleet's second Warp 5 starship that name. Since the first ship of the NX class was named Enterprise, it is believed by many that all ships of the NX Class will be named coinciding with the space shuttles. For example, the NX-03 will be named Challenger, the NX-04 will be named Discovery. However it should be noted that in Star Trek canon, the NX prefix is reserved for prototype craft.
In the toy and cartoon franchise The Transformers, three robots transform into space shuttles: Decepticon Triple Changer Astrotrain, Combaticon Blast-Off, and Autobot Sky Lynx. There have been even more space shuttle Transformers in the Transformers toyline but they have not appeared in the cartoon.
Another toy and cartoon franchise, G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero where the G.I. Joe Team have their own space shuttle to carry on orbital missions, the space shuttle complex Defiant.
The series The West Wing featured Columbia in its season 1 final episode ("What Kind of Day Has It Been", 2000). The shuttle was trapped in space, first because one of its payload bay doors failed to close, then due to a failure in its Orbital Maneuvering System when the door was closed manually. Atlantis was also mentioned in the episode as potentially mounting a rescue mission, but apparently this was unnecessary and Columbia landed safely. Late in the show's sixth season, a super-secret military space shuttle was mentioned, which could theoretically be used for long-range and undetectable bombing from space.
A shuttle (vehicle name unknown) also made a brief appearance in episode "The Shock Will Kill You" of the 1980s TV series The Greatest American Hero. The main character discovered an alien aboard that super-electrified him, and killed all crew aboard.
In the TV movie "I Dream of Jeannie: 15 Years Later", Tony Nelson agrees, over Jeannie's objections, to make one more space flight before retiring, and it is aboard the shuttle. However, something goes wrong, and the shuttle is on collision course with a meteoroid (that seems to be in orbit of Earth). It miraculously survives when Jeannie gets special dispensation to save Tony's life, and for some reason, right after the meteoroid explodes, the shuttle's OMS engines are functional again and it can brake to return to Earth.
In the short-lived Showtime television series Odyssey 5, the crew of the space shuttle Odyssey are the only survivors of the human race after witnessing the destruction of the planet. They are later rescued by a man called the Seeker, who sends them five years back in time to stop the destruction of Earth.
In the second season premier of the Showtime/Scifi Channel show Stargate SG-1, three members of the SG-1 team and one of their Jaffa allies, Bra'tac, were rescued by the shuttle Endeavour along with two Death Gliders.
In the short CG-animation 2001: A Space Oddity, created by the South African company Atomic-vfx, one of the Space Shuttles (Atlantis) makes an emergency landing in Cape Town.
In the anime Magical Project S, villain Pixy Misa steals the shuttle Endeavour and uses it to chase after Pretty Sammy.
In the recent movie Superman Returns, a new version of the space shuttle (name unknown) is launched from the back of a Boeing 777. The launch goes wrong, and Superman comes to the rescue, lifting the shuttle to space, and then bringing the plane to a halt in the middle of a baseball field.
In the 1992 anime OAV series All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku, a fictional space shuttle owned by "Mishima Heavy Industries" (a fictional weapons manufacturing company owned by one of the main characters) appears in the 6th and final episode, on a mission to disable an orbiting weaponized satellite. During the course of the mission, the shuttle is flung away by the satellite and ends up re-entering the Earth's atmosphere, landing in the ocean where it is seen partly-submerged with two of the show's characters sitting on it.
The fourth season of Lexx featured several shuttles with odd names, most of which were destroyed. Controls were similar to automobiles with steering wheels, accelerator pedal, and PRNDL shifter.
In the Fairly Oddparents episode "Cool Jobs," Timmy's Dad gets a job as an astronaut and is sent on a fourteen-year mission to Uranus aboard a space shuttle. This would be highly impossible, since space shuttles only stay in Low Earth orbit.
Homer Simpson rode a space shuttle (named Corvair) when he was chosen as an astronaut in Deep Space Homer. Although in the initial episode, the shuttle in question looks like an entirely new type of spaceplane, a flashback in a later episode, accompanying Homer's comments about sabotaging Mir, looks like a standard space shuttle.
In the 1990 horror movie The Dark Side Of The Moon, the crew of the Space Core One rendezvous with a space shuttle that has been lost in the bermuda triangle a few decades earlier.
A Space Shuttle Brings Back A Space Rock And The Alien Symbiat In The 1990's Spiderman Animated Series
In games
In the video games Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow for the Game Boy the space shuttle Columbia can be found in the space museum in Pewter City, though following the disaster, new edited versions of the game have removed the Columbia and replaced it with the Discovery.
Also Space shuttle orbiters can be found in the video game for Nintendo NES "Space Shuttle Project." The orbiters include; Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour.
In print
In Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's alien invasion book Footfall, all the shuttles except Enterprise (Endeavour did not exist at the time of writing) are used as spacefighters launched from a carrier spacecraft derived from Project Orion to attack the alien mothership. The shuttles used External Tanks as microwave and laser shields.
In Uncanny X-Men, superheroine Jean Grey piloted the fictional shuttle StarCore within which parts of her personality merged with a cosmic force to become the all-powerful Phoenix.
In David Brin's novel Earth, a shuttle that had made an emergency landing on an island years earlier, and was abandoned in place because it was impractical to retrieve it from there, eventually winds up back in orbit under highly exotic circumstances.
In Stephen Baxter's novel Titan, the shuttle Discovery is reconfigured using Apollo capsules and International Space Station modules to make the trip to Saturn's largest moon Titan.
In Homer Hickam's novel Back To The Moon, the shuttle Columbia is hijacked by former astronaut Jack Medaris who takes it on an unscheduled trip to the moon. At one point, NASA decides to send up Endeavour to try and capture the crew of Columbia.
In Jerry Ahern's The Survivalist series, an emergency program to guarantee the survival of the human race uses space shuttles to send a few hundred people in cryonic suspension into a long-term orbit which will bring them back to Earth centuries after a nuclear war.
In David R. Palmer's post-apocalyptic novel Emergence, a stripped-down space shuttle is launched on a one-way suicide mission to disable an orbiting Soviet 'doomsday bomb'.
In Shuttle Down by Lee Corey, the space shuttle Atlantis is forced to make an emergency landing following a failed launch attempt. Since it's a polar orbit launch, they have to land on Easter Island.
The 1982 novel The Descent of Anansi by Steven Barnes and Larry Niven features a fictional space shuttle named Anansi.
In War Day by Whitley Strieber the space shuttle Enterprise was destroyed by a Soviet anti-satellite weapon during the deployment of an anti-missile system.
In the Amusement Industry
Six Flags Great America currently operates a motion simulator ride named Space Shuttle America, which features a life-sized mock up of a real space shuttle sitting outside the ride's building. The shuttle is so accuratly replicated that it even uses real fireproof "tiles" used on the space shuttle to protect it from the heat of atmospheric reentery.
America is just a hollow fiberglass shell and would never be capable of space flight.