HOUSTON -- In previews for the 20th Century Fox movie "The Martian," actor Matt Damon always seems to get a laugh from theater audiences when he announces -- having been marooned on the surface of Mars -- that he will have to "science the sh** out of this" to survive.
Tuesday at Johnson Space Center, actors from the movie met the real scientists who do "science the sh**" out of space every day in the real-life pursuit of putting humans on the surface of the red planet.
"First of all, I want to say I'm really excited to be here," said actor Sebastian Stan who plays an astronaut in the movie. He and actor MacKenzie Davis began the day speaking to a packed JSC auditorium alongside Johnson Center Director Ellen Ochoa and the actors' real-life counterparts who have similar roles within NASA.
"When I looked out at that vacuum of space, I mean, I was, 'Holy cow! What am I doing here?!'" admitted astronaut and International Space Station veteran Michael Hopkins when asked by the actors how he handled his rigorous days in space.
"That's going through your head. But then the training kicks in," Hopkins said.
"You really do define the idea of a superhero in a sense," Stan said. "Because if there is really a ranking system in the world, I'm not sure how much higher than an astronaut you can get."
That's high praise from an actor who played a superhero in one of his last movies. Stan was the Captain America Winter Soldier.
Johnson Space Center hosted this melding of Hollywood and real-life high tech to thank the movie for the impact it has had even before its release. Director Ridley Scott's take on a famous novel was made with NASA input and jumps ahead a few decades to what NASA engineers are really working on now, like the Orion spacecraft that will eventually carry astronauts into deep space.
"For me, I think it helps the public feel the excitement that we feel," said astronaut Rex Walheim. "I mean, for two hours they get to sit in a movie theater and see the excitement of space flight. But this is something we get to live."
Actors Stan and Davis got a private tour of the Johnson Space Center, rode in a Mars prototype surface vehicle, posted for photographs with a long line of excited engineers, got a chance to talk live to astronaut Scott Kelly from Mission Control at the halfway point of his one-year stay on the International Space Station, toured the Orion Capsule Mock-up facility, and signed their names to an ISS training door in the JSC training facility inside Building No. 9.
But ask a NASA intern about the experience, and she will tell you they did much more than that.
"It gets everyone excited that this isn't just fiction and the movie, but it's actually reality right now and orbiting above us every 90 minutes in the International Space Station," said Kirsi Kuutti, an electrical engineering major. "Hopefully this movie will inspire people to get more into space exploration and the future."
"They see what we're doing and they're as amazed by it as we are," added mechanical engineering student James Shaw. "They are inspiring us."
"I think that it's so exciting, and like Sebastian, I'm overwhelmed to be here," Davis said.
It is excitement and passion to keep NASA moving forward until that day, not too far away, when Hollywood fiction becomes the real thing.
The actors and astronauts did find common ground on one more thing. Stan and Hopkins agreed that whether a NASA spacesuit or a Hollywood designed spacesuit, going to the bathroom is always a difficult maneuver.
"The Martian" release date is set for Oct. 2.
