This is a must see for any 1980's movie nostalgia fan. It has everything you want in your trip down memory lane -- the soundtrack, a valley girl, a cool robot, _Star Wars_ references, and Tom Skerritt who appeared in 94% of the movies from the decade(I may have made that up). The best part of this movie is the strong young cast in some of their earliest roles. You have 22-year old Tate Donovan playing a spoiled high schooler Kevin who barters with his father to receive a new Jeep for going to camp. Lea Thompson who lives and breathes for camp yet somehow gets wooed by Kevin in to sneaking out past curfew. Kelly Preston as the combo Valley Girl/perfect SAT's here in a minor role. The surprise for me was Joaquin Pheonix(credited as Leaf) in his firt major film role. I didn't even recognize him until someone pointed it out then it's perfectly obvious. He does very well here as the robot lovin', Star Wars quotin' 12 year old who ends up saving the mission with his brave space walk. Lastly, we have 25 year old "high schooler" Larry B. Scott as Rudy the mission specialist. He is better know as Lamar from the _Revenge of the Nerds_ franchise. Shockingly the special effects were actually decent. For 1986 the shuttle scenes and even the action sequences trying to retrieve the oxygen from space station _Daedalus_ were well done. There was a little bit of the people speak slower in space stuff but just a minor thing. Overall, this is an enjoyable trip down memory road for the Gen X crowd.

The timing of the release of SpaceCamp was inauspicious, coming five months after the Challenger disaster. If the film was a masterpiece, I would have released it later but this is not a masterpiece. It's a ho-hum children's adventure film with some questionable acting and dated special effects. On a recent rewatch I did like the start. There was some energy displayed on the screen about the space program. I got thrown off with the mixture of real elements (the shuttle Atlantis) and the fiction (Tom Skerrit's character was not one of the original 12 Apollo astronauts that walked on the moon). In my mind, I conflated Jinx with Number 5 from Short Circuit, so I was really confused when I saw the robot that would set the stage for the main conflict. When I was a child, the central conflict was amazing. Imagine being a participant of SpaceCamp and then getting launched into space. You have only so much time to figure out problem after problem and get home. Now as an adult, my main complaint is that it seemed too easy to solve the problems. If you look at a film like The Martian, it handles those space problems more successfully. SpaceCamp just feels lazy in that regard. The tension or the excitement by the kid astronauts or ground control felt subdued. SpaceCamp is an ok film. I've now seen it multiple times and probably don't see a need to watch it again for a long while. On a side note, last year I went to the Kennedy Space Center for the first time and saw the retired Atlantis. The reveal at the exhibit is phenomenal. I've yet to see Endeavor, but the Atlantis presentation is so much better than Enterprise and Discovery.

As a Mission Commander for NASA, I was impressed with the attention to details that really made this film feel so accurate to what Space Camp is really like.

Despite its undeniably silly and implausible premise, Space Camp remains a fun little adventure film perfectly suited for kiddies. It's a charming 80s relic that, while not striving for realism, delivers enough excitement and inspiration to spark the imaginations of young aspiring astronauts.

Despite its undeniably silly and implausible premise, Space Camp remains a fun little adventure film perfectly suited for kiddies. It's a charming 80s relic that, while not striving for realism, delivers enough excitement and inspiration to spark the imaginations of young aspiring astronauts.