The previous disaster basically ruined the career of the mission director, Kim Jae-guk, but nobody knows the rocket better, so he reluctantly agrees to return to help manage the new crisis. It is particularly awkward for Kim, because Hwang’s father took the blame for the rocket’s explosion with his very public suicide. Now, Kim feels duty bound to save his late colleague’s son.
It will be hard to do so without the help of NASA’s orbiting space station, but the nasty bureaucrats in charge of the agency will not risk the station during an inopportune meteor shower. He only has one potential ally in NASA, the space station mission director, Moon Young, who also happens to be his ex-wife. Obviously, Moon is important, since the film is maybe titled in her honor.
Apparently, Kim Yong-hwa hates NASA more than my college astronomy professor. Frustratingly, that institutional resentment blossoms into an anti-American bile that infects the entire film. (For what its worth, the Korean science minister is also a complete tool.) Regardless, the film inaccurately reflects the current realities of space travel. Sadly, Russia still controls most of the passenger traffic, which is why the success of private enterprises like SpaceX are in the world’s best interest.
Still, Kim manages to devise one convincingly crushing setback after another to the rescue effort. The scenes set in space and on the Moon look surprisingly credible. It is just hard to buy into anything that happens on Earth, which should have been the easier parts.
