The best and worst space films (according to space scientists)

BBC Radio 5 live asked space scientists and engineers at Nasa and Boeing what their favorite space films are - and which ones didn't make the grade.

Regina Spellman is managing the complete refurbishment of launch pad B at Kennedy Space Center. She's a big fan of Hidden Figures, the film telling the story of three African-American women working at Nasa whose skills helped put astronaut John Glenn into orbit in 1962.

Regina said: “It got the story out. It shows the true power of women. We’ve always been there, we’ve always been a contributing factor to the success of the space industry."

Boeing space suit tester Kavya Manyapu loves Gravity, Intersteller, The Martian and Star Wars.

Subashini Iyer is a design engineering lead with Boeing. Her favourite space film is Guardians of the Galaxy.

It's a comical action adventure set in outer space featuring lots of weird and wonderful aliens.

Subashini said: "I just love the little plant."

The Martian, which stars Matt Damon as a botanist who gets left behind on Mars, was clearly a hit with scientists working in a very similar field at Nasa.

Gioia Massa is the VEGGIE Project Manager in the SSPF Lab at Kennedy: "We had a plant scientist as the main character, and not only that, but it was a plant scientist who didn't go insane and cause a lot of havoc".

And Allison McIntyre, chief of the SVMF at Johnson where astronauts are trained, said: "My favourite space film is The Martian, because that's where we're going and it really does show how hard it is."

OK, this isn't a film, but the hit TV series inspired quite a few of the space scientists and engineers at Nasa.

Tori Wells works in flight crew operations and test for Boeing's CST-100 Starliner Program. She said it gives her hope of where our world may get to eventually: "I really like that it shows a utopian view of the world and a utopian view of space."

Misty Snopkowski is launch site integrator for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. Her role involves working with Elon Musk's Space X, who like Boeing are aiming to send astronauts to the ISS.

She loved watching Star Trek: "I remember rushing home from school and watching that all the time. It was probably one of the biggest reasons that I wanted to come and work for the space industry."

Tom Hanks starred in 1995's Apollo 13 as astronaut Jim Lovell, who headed the crew of an ill-fated mission to the moon.

Flight director Emily Nelson said: "If it weren't for Apollo 13 it would be really hard for me to explain what my job is: everybody knows the guy in the white vest [waistcoat]."

And Nasa astronaut Karen Nyberg agrees: "My favourite space film is Apollo 13. It was done so well, and it just looked so real. It really is relevant to how we actually fly in space".

Flight Design Analyst Caley Burke, based at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, had a few more obscure picks.

She told us that Space Camp holds a really special place in her heart because it made her want to go into the space industry, but her favourite film is Europa Report: "There’s a lot of elements that feel very realistic. It’s a long journey to get there, the problems they deal with are real technical challenges rather than infighting or disagreements and they have emotional responses to those challenges.”

So what about the films the space scientists didn't rate?

Subashini Iyer isn't a fan: "I always fall asleep when I watch it."

Gioia Massa wasn't impressed with the science in Mission to Mars and Red Planet: "In one of them they got the names of DNA base pairs incorrect and the other they actually called some giant grasshopper-like creature a tiny worm! So it was biologically, quite bad."

Gravity, the 2013 film starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, might have won seven Oscars, but it didn't go down well with some of the experts at Nasa.

Boeing engineer Tori Wells said: "Everything that could go wrong, went terribly terribly wrong, and that's not exactly the feeling we want everybody to have about this industry."

Flight design analyst Caley Burke was particularly frustrated about how "Sandra Bullock could just move between orbits with really almost no issue".

And Allison McIntyre said "It wasn't exactly accurate, when she gets out of her spacesuit...she's in cute little underwear - where's the diaper?"

Click here to hear 5 live's Nasa special, presented by Anna Foster.