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All about the abandoned Apollo capsule in 'The Last of Us' (Season 2, Episode 6)

All about the abandoned Apollo capsule in 'The Last of Us' (Season 2, Episode 6)

Yahoo19-05-2025
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Whether you are a fan of space exploration history or of the game on which the series is based, "The Last of Us" has just delivered a real blast from the past.
In the penultimate episode of the second season, which premiered Sunday night (May 18) on HBO Max, the story briefly visits the Wyoming Museum of Science and History.
Warning: If you have not yet watched Season 2, Episode 6 of "The Last of Us," you may want to stop reading here, as there are minor spoilers ahead. If you have never seen the series or played the game, for the purposes of this article you only need to know that it is about Joel (Pedro Pascal), a hardened survivor of a global pandemic that has destroyed civilization, and Ellie (Bella Ramsey), a teenage girl who Joel has taken charge of and who may be humanity's last hope.
As part of the episode, Joel is shown surprising Ellie with a visit to the museum. Inside, they enter the space and astronomy hall to Ellie's delight (her interest in flight and what it represents — escape and being able to control her own destiny — is a recurring theme in both the game and the television adaptation).
The two find a working, floor-to-ceiling solar system orrery, historic spacesuits on display and, at the center of the main hall, an Apollo command module.
"Is it real?" asks Ellie, almost in a whisper.
"It is real," replies Joel. "That one went up and back, Apollo 15 in 1971."
After picking out a helmet to wear (the type worn by Gemini astronauts), Ellie climbs into the capsule, followed by Joel, who closes the hatch behind him. Ellie immediately starts flicking switches, making sound effects and calling out commands to accompany each click. Joel then surprises her with a tape cassette.
"Happy birthday, kiddo," he says. "This is something that took a mighty effort to find. Play it."
Ellie inserts the cassette into her Walkman and, following Joel's suggestion, closes her eyes as the audio begins to play.
"Thirty seconds and counting," says a man's voice. "The astronauts report it feels good. T-minus 25 seconds..."What Ellie (and those watching the episode) are listening to is the actual audio of NASA public affairs officer Jack King counting down to the launch of Apollo 11, the first mission to land humans on the moon, on July 16, 1969.
As King continues to narrate, the sounds of the spacecraft come alive and the lights grow dim. At nine seconds and "ignition sequence start," Ellie starts to rattle side to side in her seat. The light from the engines igniting pours through the window, lighting up her face as she begins to shake more rapidly. "Liftoff, we have a liftoff, 32 minutes past the hour..."
The sound and motion of the launch are soon replaced by the serenity of what Ellie imagines it is like being in space. The light from the sun dances across her face until she slips back into reality with a wide smile.
End scene.
The real Apollo 15 command module, which its crew named "Endeavour," is on display today at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, and, unlike the spacecraft in the show, it is exhibited without its interior control panels and equipment.
It also does not have vines growing all over it. Otherwise, the two might be twins. Well, almost.
"Interestingly, it was 110% of the real thing. We bumped it up just slightly [in size] for all sorts of reasons," said Don Macaulay, the production designer for this season of "The Last of Us," in an interview with collectSPACE.com. "We tried to stick pretty true to the game in terms of how we shot that and how it was lit. That is so much easier to do in a digital set than on a real set."
The scene in the series was directly inspired by a segment in "The Last of Us Part II," a game released for Sony's PlayStation 4 in 2020.
To achieve the desired look, Macaulay and his team began with a softball-sized, 3D-printed model of the command module that they used to work out what pieces they needed to be removable so they could insert cameras and lighting. They then advanced to a full-scale foam version, so they could test the lighting and views.
"And then, yeah, we built a complete interior and exterior," said Macaulay. "We shot them separately, but it was all one set. We took the module to a separate stage to shoot the interior, and then we brought it back to the museum to shoot the exterior of it, but it was all one set."
In addition to having the game, Macaulay also referenced the drawings and diagrams of the command module that NASA has posted online. He took the same care when recreating the orrery from the game, which worked just as shown. (He admitted, though, that he had to look up the word "orrery" when he first found out he had to build one; Macaulay has led the production for a number of science fiction projects ["Tomorrowland", "Star Trek Beyond"], but this was his first to be based on real space exploration and astronomy.)
The spacesuits were rented from a prop house. Macaulay wanted to mach the look of the game, so he also arranged for a full-scale lunar rover, a display of scale rockets and built a model of the moon, although only the latter made the final cut.
"It's one of those things where we provided a ton and then, just based on how it's shot and edited, some of it doesn't make it on screen. In fact, we built and shot an entire dinosaur exhibit [inside the museum] and it didn't make it into the show," he told collectSPACE.
The television series often veers far from what was seen in the game, which is why, Macaulay said, sets like the space museum were so important to get right.
"It's so iconic in the game that we do try to be fairly true to it. I mean, we can never take the [virtual] models they used in the game and just build from them. Their sets are usually way over scaled, and we build sets specifically for the action required. So getting the essence of the set is more important in this case," he said.
"There was the iconic image of [Joel and Ellie[ standing in front of the capsule, so, that was something — and the capsule itself — we tried to replicate as best we could," said Macaulay.
Related stories:
— The Apollo Program: How NASA sent astronauts to the moon
— The best sci-fi TV shows of all time
— Apollo 15: The moon buggy debuts
So that leads up to an obvious question: After all of that attention to detail and care to get the look just right, what becomes of a command module that was abandoned in the context of the show's (and game's) plot, and now is no longer needed in terms of the production of the show?
"We still have it," said Macaulay. "I don't know if there's a lot of demand, but someone could want it for their prop house, or maybe HBO Max will keep it for use on some other show down the line."
Follow collectSPACE.com on Facebook and on X at @collectSPACE. Copyright 2025 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved.
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James Gunn says Superman's most shocking death was originally even darker: "Lex looks down and sees the blood is about to get on his shoes"
James Gunn says Superman's most shocking death was originally even darker: "Lex looks down and sees the blood is about to get on his shoes"

Yahoo

time22 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

James Gunn says Superman's most shocking death was originally even darker: "Lex looks down and sees the blood is about to get on his shoes"

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Nicholas Hoult's Lex Luthor does some pretty villainous stuff in James Gunn's Superman, from starting a global smear campaign against the Man of Steel and kidnapping Krypto to holing every person who's ever crossed him up in a pocket universe prison. Seriously, what a jerk! Now, though, writer-director James Gunn has revealed that the scene that sees Luthor kill Metropolis citizen Malik after Kal-El fails to answers his questions was originally even darker -- and featured a bunch more blood. "So, Lex shoots a guy in the head. That was always done in an extreme wide [shot], so it's not too graphic," Gunn explained on Josh Horowitz's Happy Sad Confused podcast. "But the guy fell on the ground, and blood is pouring out onto the platform. Lex looks down and he sees that the blood is about to get on his shoe and he's like, 'Oh my god!' He's like me, I'm very OCD. He's like, 'Ghurkos, get down on the ground and soak up the blood!' "And Ghurkos goes, 'What? No!' and Nick's delivery is great because he just looks at him straight and he's like, 'No?' Then Ghurkos just, sheepishly, trudges forward and lays down on his back and starts soaking up the blood. And Nick looks over to Superman and says, 'See you tomorrow'. That was a scene that we shot, but we cut it early so I don't even think it made it to a test screening." Dropping us right in the middle of the action, Superman picks up with David Corenswet's Big Blue three years after he's publicly announced himself as the titular world saver. Despite priding himself on his do-gooder deeds, Supes' reputation is in tatters, having inserted himself into the politically delicate Boravia/Jarhanpur conflict. When dark details from his past comes to light, Superman has to forge his own path; figuring out what being a hero really means as he flirts with Lois Lane and bests bad guys. Superman is in theaters now. For more, check out our guide to the most exciting upcoming superhero movies heading our way.

All 43 of Billy Joel's Hot 100 hits, ranked from worst to best
All 43 of Billy Joel's Hot 100 hits, ranked from worst to best

Los Angeles Times

time2 hours ago

  • Los Angeles Times

All 43 of Billy Joel's Hot 100 hits, ranked from worst to best

If a musician's legacy can be judged by which of his peers are willing to show up and sing his praises in a documentary about him, consider Billy Joel's in good standing: Among the A-listers in HBO's new two-part 'And So It Goes' are Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Garth Brooks, Pink, Sting, Jackson Browne and Nas. Directed by Susan Lacy and Jessica Levin, the doc goes over Joel's life and career at a moment when he's received just about every award a pop musician can receive, including the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, the Kennedy Center Honors, induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame and five Grammy Awards on 23 nominations. Less happily, it also comes as Joel has been forced from the concert stage after being diagnosed this year with a brain disorder called normal pressure hydrocephalus. Yet the 76-year-old singer and songwriter remains a much-talked-about pop-culture fixture, not least on TikTok, where his oldie 'Zanzibar' never seems far from cropping up on one's scroll. Ahead of Friday's premiere of the HBO documentary's second installment, I've ranked all 43 of Joel's singles that have charted on Billboard's Hot 100, starting with the worst and ending with the best. (Due to Joel's choices and/or Billboard's methodology, that means that some of his best-known tunes aren't here: 'Scenes From an Italian Restaurant,' for instance, and 'New York State of Mind.') Feel free as you read to open a bottle of white, a bottle of red — or, perhaps, a bottle of rosé instead. In the middle of the night … I'm still haunted by this mawkish pileup of gospel signifiers. This widely interpreted ballad about a lover's steadfast devotion only works when it's sung extremely well (as in the case of Adele) or when it's sung extremely terribly (as with Bob Dylan, who wrote it). Joel's take lands somewhere in between, which means he just sounds like somebody's drunk uncle. For decades after 1993's 'River of Dreams' — still his most recent pop album — Joel insisted he'd run out of things to say as a songwriter. 'You need inspiration to create good new music,' he told me in 2023, 'and if you don't have it, don't bother.' Inexplicably, he found a spark in an unfinished tune presented to him by a younger musician named Freddy Wexler; together, the two completed this would-be OneRepublic song, which Joel premiered live at the Grammy Awards last year. 'Turn the Lights Back On' spent a single week on the Hot 100 before dropping off the chart — the shortest stay of any of Joel's hits. No surprise that a guy long characterized as a mere imitation artist would nail Elvis Presley's vocal delivery in a cover recorded for the soundtrack of 'Honeymoon in Vegas.' Turgid midtempo rock with a lyric that defines soul rather pitifully as 'knowing what someone is feeling.' Features backing vocals by the sex-you-uppers of Color Me Badd. Six months after 'Piano Man' put him on the map, Joel was already straining against the brutal market economics of pop stardom: 'If I go cold, I won't get sold / I'll get put in the back in the discount rack, like another can of beans.' Yet his kvetching about the creative constraints of the pop song are pretty rich coming from a master of the form. Perhaps his most strained vocal performance. In the watery pantheon of rock songs about boats, this maudlin fisherman's lament ranks well behind 'Sailing' and 'Southern Cross' (to say nothing of 'Proud Mary' and 'Sloop John B'). The right idea; the wrong execution. From the weirdly stacked soundtrack of 'Ruthless People,' which also featured Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen and Luther Vandross. Very stiff singing atop a very funky groove. Are those steel drums I hear? 'It's almost like a dying man singing to his child,' Joel told his biographer Fred Schruers, which may or may not have been the approach his then-9-year-old daughter Alexa was hoping her dad would take. Still, the elegant harmonic movement demonstrates his lifelong devotion to classical music; seven years later, he'd make his debut as a composer with the solo-piano 'Fantasies & Delusions.' Among those who've sung 'Lullabye' since Joel introduced it: Celine Dion, Rufus Wainwright — and John Stamos. One surely gratifying endorsement for this banjo-driven country shuffle: In 1999, Dolly Parton cut a version of 'Travelin' Prayer' to open the first volume in her acclaimed trilogy of bluegrass albums. Having split with producer Phil Ramone after 1986's 'The Bridge' LP, Joel hired Mick Jones of Foreigner to oversee his next album, 'Storm Front,' which opened with this delightfully trashy ode to a woman with little interest in mink coats or satin sheets. (Call it 'Downtown Girl.') Jones' production, with its stabbing synths and boxy drums, echoes the steroidal rock of Robert Palmer's 'Addicted to Love.' Wrote Robert Christgau of Joel in the Village Voice: 'Even in arena mode he's a force of nature and bad taste.' An OK song ranked this high only because it so strongly evokes a perfect one (in this case, 'Wedding Bell Blues' by the 5th Dimension). Consider that this jittery New Wave rocker about the pros and cons of phone sex arrived on an album ('Glass Houses') that also featured 'I Don't Want to Be Alone' and 'Sleeping With the Television On.' Imagine if he'd had Tinder. Possibly the purest distillation of Joel's romantic pessimism — 'Some love is just a lie of the soul / A constant battle for the ultimate state of control' — with the twist that he's assuring a lover that everything that always happens won't happen to them. (It happened to them.) A slow-rolling R&B ditty where the object of the dude's affection isn't a woman but a piano (except it's actually Ray Charles, who shows up to duet with his eager admirer). One of two new tracks added as consumer bait to Joel's 23-times-platinum 'Greatest Hits — Volume I & Volume II,' this deeply spooked synth-rock joint might be the strangest entry on this list: horny-frustrated lyrics, no real melody, just straight burnt-to-a-crisp Willy Loman vibes for 5½ meandering minutes. It's great! (It's also, as of this writing, the second-least-streamed of these 43 tracks on Spotify, with fewer than 2 million plays.) The peppiest single Joel ever made might get even closer to Motown's classic Holland-Dozier-Holland sound than Phil Collins did a year earlier in his punctilious remake of the Supremes' 'You Can't Hurry Love.' Yet 'Tell Her About It' has no fan in its creator, who said in Schruers' biography that the song is 'a little too bubblegum' — one reason Joel appears not to have played it in concert since the early 1990s. For this nearly a cappella doo-wop number, Joel sang every vocal part himself when a group he and Ramone had brought into the studio couldn't stay in tune. Four years after 'The Longest Time' charted, Bobby McFerrin topped the Hot 100 with the instrument-less 'Don't Worry, Be Happy'; three years after that, Boyz II Men got to No. 2 with the a cappella 'It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday.' Billy at his breeziest. With half a dozen Top 30 singles, including this homage to the Drifters, 'An Innocent Man' became Joel's fourth consecutive LP to be nominated for album of the year at the Grammys. (He lost, reasonably, to 'Thriller.') The title track is a showcase of vocal flexibility as he moves nimbly from a croon to a belt to a falsetto. Rooted, as he told Schruers, in 'the realization that Elle Macpherson and I were not meant for the ages,' this tense and brooding song is Joel's finest contribution to the soulful-white-guy rock of the mid-1980s; it belongs up there with Don Henley's 'The Boys of Summer' and Steve Winwood's 'Higher Love,' thanks in no small part to a spidery guitar solo by David Brown (who died last year). When Joel played 'This Is the Time' at New York's Shea Stadium just before the Mets' home was demolished in 2008, he brought out John Mayer to do the solo — an experience you can bet Mayer channeled as he cut 2021's soulful-white-guy 'Sob Rock.' Picture Huey Lewis doing Natalie Cole's 'This Will Be.' A decade after he released the studio version, Joel charted with a concert recording of the lead single from his 1971 debut — the LP notoriously mastered at the wrong speed so that his voice sounded higher and squeakier than it really was. Here, onstage at the Paradise club in Boston, his singing has a courtly charm that makes 'She's Got a Way' feel like Joel's version of Paul McCartney's 'Maybe I'm Amazed.' Joel's most Dylanesque lyric, meanwhile, comes across as his version of 'Just Like a Woman.' An unsparing ballad about how nobody tells the truth anymore, 'Honesty' earned a song of the year nod at the Grammys but lost to the Doobie Brothers' 'What a Fool Believes,' which is narrated by a guy who can't accept the truth he's being told. Covered later — and quite convincingly — by Beyoncé. Written as Joel returned to New York following his early-'70s sojourn in Los Angeles, this Ronettes-inspired confection first appeared on the 'Turnstiles' LP in 1976. But 'Say Goodbye to Hollywood' didn't blow up until five years later, when he put a slightly rowdier live rendition on 1981's 'Songs in the Attic' LP — by which time Ronnie Spector herself had taken a crack at the song with help from Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band. A febrile Cold War freak-out with a hideous, Cronenberg-lite music video. Joel told Schruers he could envision his survivors playing this very pretty ballad at his funeral, which is certainly one place for a song about the inevitability of pain. Was 'Glass Houses' truly Joel's punk album? Take it from no less an authority than the Chipmunks, who performed the LP's driving opener on 1980's 'Chipmunk Punk.' To my ears, 'You May Be Right' sits at the precise midpoint between the Beatles and the Rolling Stones — a testament to Joel's absorptive powers and his stylistic aim. 'You can speak your mind but not on my time' probably isn't the sickest burn in Joel's catalog. But enlisting Peter Cetera to trill sweetly behind him as he sneers is A+ record-making. Mr. New York's signature song documents the six months he spent entertaining the patrons — the real estate novelist, Davy in the Navy, the old man sipping tonic and gin — of L.A.'s long-shuttered Executive Room near the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue. (His handsome pay, as he told me in 2017: 'I got tips and made union scale.') Joel's first single to chart on the Hot 100, 'Piano Man' can be hard to hear today as a work of detailed storytelling; that's what half a century of sloppy sing-alongs will do to a narrative. But then, of course, Joel has no one to blame for that but himself. Tell me you're not a wimp without telling me you're not a wimp. 'I'm probably the most proud of that album as a sonic work of art,' Joel says in the HBO doc of 'The Nylon Curtain,' on which he and Ramone deployed the whoosh and crunch of a steel mill to juice the beat of this Rust Belt threnody. Yet 'Allentown' also poses a pretty sophisticated critique of the social and political forces converging on a generation of Americans promised prosperity only to find a flag thrown in their face. With its head on fire and its eyes too bloody to see, 'Big Shot' imagines a morning-after quarrel between Mick and Bianca Jagger, Joel told Howard Stern, amid the excesses of what he described with disgust in Schruers' book as the 'coked-out, disco-drenched New York club scene' of the Studio 54 era. 'I shouldn't put it down, because I don't really know much about it,' he added. OK, Bill. Joel's most-streamed song on Spotify (with more than 1.2 billion plays) is an ouroboros of simpler-times nostalgia: a pitch-perfect Four Seasons rip that looks back at the early '60s from the early '80s — then became the longed-for totem at the heart of Olivia Rodrigo's 'Deja Vu.' 'It's the only song where I wrote the words first,' Joel said in 2017, 'which it sounds like, because the music sucks.' Demonstrably untrue — those timbales! Even if he were right, though, the rapid-fire historical roll call of 'We Didn't Start the Fire' deserves our respect as a crucial artifact of a pre-internet America. Your Wikipedia could never. The guy's asking for a lot: do this, don't do that; amuse me but not too much; listen to what I say instead of what I do (although sometimes I'll forget to say it too). But then there's that gently insistent groove and that pillowy electric piano. And that singing! Showy but intimate, talky yet supple, it's murmuring assurances to rebut the very doubts he's raising. Joel's first No. 1 offered him early proof that sometimes haters win. Think about the way Joel starts this song: 'Come out, Virginia, don't let me wait / You Catholic girls start much too late / But sooner or later it comes down to fate / I might as well be the one.' Two opposing worldviews colliding in four little lines against music trembling with the shared sense of anticipation that unites both the narrator and Virginia. Pop gets no richer. What other Billy Joel song could top a list of Billy Joel songs? 'Movin' Out' wants us to believe that success is for suckers, which is somehow a credo he's continued to sell — and we've continued to buy — through his ascent to the uppermost reaches of pop culture. These days Joel isn't Anthony or Mama Leone or even Mr. Cacciatore — he's the big shot who owns the medical center, not to mention whatever else is available on Sullivan Street. Yet his glorious bridge-and-tunnel music — proud, wounded, defensive, ambitious — keeps asking: Is this all I get for my money?

Horoscope For Today, July 24: The 2 Signs Having The Best Day
Horoscope For Today, July 24: The 2 Signs Having The Best Day

Yahoo

time3 hours ago

  • Yahoo

Horoscope For Today, July 24: The 2 Signs Having The Best Day

Your July 24 horoscope is here. The new moon in Leo connects with Saturn and Neptune retrograde in Aries, igniting our visions and beliefs. We are leaving behind what doesn't make us happy and bringing in joy. The signs having the best days are Gemini and Sagittarius. Aries Your curiosity is activated now, making this day perfect for seeking new things to the best gossip! Taurus Today, you will find sweetness and solace in quiet spaces, where you can really hear what your heart is telling you. Gemini You are ready to let your lovely and tender side back out under the new moon, and not a moment too soon! Cancer Over the next 24 hours, you might lust after impulse purchases as you crave something new and stimulating. Leo Your social life is ramping up right now, making it a great time to get out and meet new friends. Virgo You have the potential to make great impressions on your superiors and colleagues if you want. Dress for the job you want! Libra This is an excellent time to try new things and learn from others. Studies or research projects will go better with a friend! Scorpio Right now, you may opt to deepen a business or romantic partnership. Explore your options with an open mind. Sagittarius Your relationships are full of fun and flirtation! Make the most of it by doing something sweet for your special someone. Capricorn This is the perfect day to establish loving and beneficial self-care habits. Treat your body like your best pal; it will love you right back. Aquarius Get ready, Aquarius, because a cosmic breeze is blowing through your creative life, awakening curiosity and romantic vibes. Pisces Your heart is on the home front, prompting you to beautify your surroundings and give your living space extra TLC. This article was originally published on Solve the daily Crossword

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