Iwent up to the International Space Station the other day. It was an awe-inspiring trip, even if I never actually left the ground.
A few small steps inside the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts’s Cohen Pavilion was all it took to make a giant leap 250 miles above Earth, where I spent 45 minutes hanging out with astronauts inside and outside the space station.
The special virtual reality headset I wore helped, too.
“Space Explorers: The Infinite” landed in West Palm Beach earlier this month for a summer long Kravis Center run that ends Sept. 2. Billed as “the world’s most captivating immersive space experience,’’ the one-of-a-kind production delivers exactly as advertised.
Using never-before-seen 360-degree video, this self-guided tour is theclosest the vast majority of us will ever come to experiencing the sensation of being in space.
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“It is the most immersive experience of life in space ever made. You feel like you are there,’’ said the man who helped make it all possible, FelixLajeunesse, chief creative officer of Felix & Paul Studios.
The beauty and fragility of Earth as seen from space
“You will be able to step outside the walls of the ISS and experience floating above the earth and seeing planet Earth and experiencing what astronauts refer to as the ‘overview effect’ — this feeling of seeing planet Earth as a whole and feeling the extraordinary beauty but also the fragility of it and how humans occupy just a small tiny place on that enormous planet. That emotion is really central to the show.’’
The most surreal part: That visceral ‘overview effect’ is experienced simply by wandering around the Kravis Center’s 9,000-square-foot Gimelstob Ballroom, the setting in the weeks before The Infinite of mundane earthly events like a Palm Beach County League of Cities banquet.
To see the magic of space unfold, you have to wear aVR Oculus headset, with special eye glasses and audio. These special headsets collect information from a series of sensors spread across the ballroom floor as green dots. Those sensors help transmit breathtaking 360-degree video into your field of vision.
“When you put your VR glasses on, you don't see any walls. You just see the Space Station in outer space,’’Lajeunesse told me. “You can step outside of the ISS and you can look around and see the solar panels, radiators, the enormouse truss that connects all the modules of the space station. And if you look down you will see planet Earth. So you don't have a feeling you are in a relatively tight space. You have a feeling of being in an infinite space.’’
How the Kravis was transformed into outer space
I’d never worn a VR headset before. With assistance from Kravis staffers in “Mission Specialist” shirts, I strapped it on my head and flipped down the audio earmuffs. Suddenly, my wife and four others in our group appeared asethereal stardustavatars. Seeing those avatars helped us avoid walking into other virtual space station visitors.
We entered a pitch-black portal that gave way to an expansive view of the massive space station over Earth. Floating around us at arm’s length were dozens of luminous orbs.
I reached out and tapped one, activating a 360-degree video of a short scene filmed inside a space station module where astronauts just a few feet from me were performing experiments. Suddenly I heard a voice behind me. I turned around, and there was European Space Station astronaut Luca Parmitano staring into my eyes, describing in English accented with his native Italian the wonders of zero-gravity.
Another orb. Tap. And I’m inside NASA astronaut Jessica Mier’s cabin, where she’s dressed in red-striped pajamas reading a book by the portal window. The setting is so intimate, I felt sort of awkward, as if I’d unknowingly barged into a stranger’s bedroom.
Tap. And I’m watching two astronauts preparing to strap into spacesuits for a spacewalk. In their excitement, still wearing T-shirts, they bend their elbows and slap hands — the slap so clear it sounds like it came from exactly the distance they are from me, about three feet.
When one scene ended, a glove from a space suit floated in microgravity in front of me. I tried to grab it, and it bounced off my fingers, making a crinkly sound, as if I was poking a bag of potato chips.
After each video ends, words appear across your field of vision directing you to the next area where more floating orbs are waiting to be tapped.
There are some 60 orbs in all. You’ll only see a fraction in your visit. And chances are others in your group won’t tap the same orbs you did, meaning they will have an experience different from yours.
But everyone experiences the same breathtaking grand finale. About 35 minutes into my journey, I am directed to sit down in a chair. Suddenly, I'm sitting on a robotic arm outside the ISS watching astronauts take a spacewalk.
I look up and see massive panels rising into the dark universe above the space station. I look down and see the unmistakable boot of Italy and the island of Sicily, framed in clouds against deep blue. Without the headsets, I’d be looking at a ballroom chandelier and black floor dotted with those green sensors.
Capturing the reality of space took three custom-made cameras
How in the name of Buzz Lightyear is this all possible?
Lajeunesse was only too happy to share with me some behind-the-scenes details on how the production was made.
In partnership with NASA, the production is a joint venture between Felix & Paul Studios and PHI Studio, two Montreal-based pioneers in the so-called XR industry. XR is the acronym for Extended Reality, an umbrella term for technologies combining virtual, augmented and mixed realities — with the shared goal of producing immersive experiences.
In association with TIME Studios, the two companies worked with NASA, the ISS U.S. National Lab and the Canadian Space Agency during six space station missions over three years.
Three custom-made cameras were taken on each mission. Astronauts installed the cameras at various points in the space station and recorded short scenes of life in space. They were directed in real time by Lajeunesse and his colleagues back on Earth, in places like their offices in Montreal, at Johnson Space Center in Houston or at the MarshallSpace Flight Center in Alabama.
“These eight astronauts you see were the protagonists of the story and also the entire production crew up there in space. The astronauts would be installing the camera and we would provide feedback so they placed the cameras exactly as we wanted them,’’Lajeunesse said.
“Every orb you encounter in your exploration is at a place where the camera was. Everything is precisely geo-localized. Let's say you walk inside the U.S. lab and there are six spheres there. Those are all the places the cameras were placed, exactly at that vantage point, so there's a perfect alignment between the virtual world and the cinematic world.’’
Each camera is made up of nine different camera lenses to capture imagery in three-dimensional stereoscopic 360. For viewers, the result is a sense of full presence. To accomplish that, the astronauts received unique instructions on how to use the cameras.
Teaching astronauts to regard the camera as another crew member
“We told the astronauts in space, ‘Think of this camera as a person. When you place that camera inside of a scene, we would always always ask you to place it where a human being would stand,’’’ he said.
“The other thing we told them, ‘When you talk to these cameras, you are talking to a fellow crew member. You're not talking to a camera. You’re talking to a colleague.’ They really embraced that idea.’’
For the spacewalk video, astronauts installed a special extravehicular camera, built to withstand the hostile environment of outer space, ontoCanadArm2, the nearly 60-foot long robotic arm built by the Canadian Space Agency for the ISS.
When the spacewalk was filmed, the robotic arm was slowly moving around the space station. That’s why, even though I was sitting in a chair, I felt the sensation of moving around in space.
“It’s not the kind of project where you wonder, ‘What's a good shot?' It’s more about ‘where does it make sense to place a person inside of a scene?’’’Lajeunesse said.
“If you have astronauts together around a table, then we placed a camera at the same height as the astronauts at the table. It would occupy the place of a person. So when you are in the VR experience, you look left and right and you're just there with them. You feel as present with them in the moment as they feel.’’
My wife and I loved it, as did the others in our group who were sorry it ended so soon, in just under an hour.
“People come back two and three times because they want to see more,’’Lajeunesse said.
Is it really quiet in space?
My only complaint: Even with the headphones of my headset covering my ears, I could hear real-time ambient noise that was not part of the space station experience, noise similar to a crowded shopping mall. It was the voices of other participants, and I couldn’t blame them: They were so excited and awed by the show, they couldn’t help talking out loud to people in their group about what they were seeing.
Admission is $50 for adults, $40 students and $30 children 8 to 12. (Children under 8 will not be admitted, including little ones in baby carriers.) That’s pocket change compared to the cost of actually flying into space – $250,000 to $60 million, according to commercialspace tourismopportunities.
West Palm Beach is the seventh city to host the production, which opened in 2021 in Montreal before runs in Houston, San Francisco, Seattle, Denver and Vancouver. It’s scheduled for Charlotte in September.
The real heroes of the production are the astronauts, whose photos and bios are displayed on posters along the entrance to the room where you get your VR headsets.
“There have been a lot of films made about the ISS, one of them in iMax a couple years ago. But this was the first time someone attempted to do a fully immersive virtual reality experience captured in space. So it was really new for the astronauts," Lajeunesse said. "I think they really saw the promise at the beginning, that it would be possible to capture their experience, to be able to share it with people, not as a film that you watch but as an experience you live, with your buddy, with your heart, with your soul, being there in a full state of presence. They supported that vision from the beginning. Otherwise this project would not have been made.’’
If you go to: The Infinite
What: The Infinite is a 45-minute immersive experience (35 minutes in Virtual Reality goggles) for visitors ages 8 and older.
Where: The Cohen Pavilion at the Raymond F. Kravis Center for the Performing Arts
When: The exhibit is lifting off daily through Sept. 2, 2024
Hours: Tuesday – Thursday: 4 – 9pm; Fridays: 2 – 9pm; Saturdays: 10am – 9pm; Sundays: 10am – 8pm
Tickets: $45-50 for adults. $35-40 for students. $25-30 for children ages 8-12.
For more information: kravis.org/events or call 561-832-7469
