With one of the strongest Atlantic storms on record aimed straight at Cape Canaveral, die-hard film fans may be feeling a sense of having seen it all before.
The 1969 film "Marooned" featured a hurricane hitting Kennedy Space Center, hampering NASA efforts to save three astronauts (Richard Crenna, James Franciscus and Gene Hackman) trapped in a malfunctioning orbital lab.
Class 4 Hurricane Floyd, with winds exceeding 140 miles per hour (224 kilometers per hour), seems hell-bent on driving into the space center by midnight Tuesday. No storm of comparable power has hit Cape Canaveral during the space age.
By contrast, the storm in the film had relatively minor destructive effects, mostly serving the narrative function of making a rescue mission to the stranded astronauts more dangerous while impairing communications from ground control.
Although highly regarded at the time of its release, winning an Oscar for special effects and receiving a Hugo nomination for "best dramatic presentation" from science-fiction fans, "Marooned" was a box-office failure, and has not aged gracefully. It is today best known as a subject for mockery on the SF-parody television series Mystery Science Theater 3000, where it appeared in 1992 as "Space Travelers."
The film made extensive use of actual Cape locations for both the early scenes of business as usual at ground control and the climatic chaos that followed. Numerous local inhabitants appeared as extras in these scenes.
"Marooned" was adapted from the novel of the same name by SF writer Martin Caidin, who relied heavily on decades of NASA insider knowledge to help paint a detailed and sometimes harrowing picture of simultaneous catastrophe in space and on the ground.
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