Space and spacecraft and zero gravity and so forth are very difficult to render.

I would say that working with Ridley Scott makes the process of directing much more terrifying.

Real vectoring in space, real orbital mechanics, is very counterintuitive, very strange, and very hard to render. It's expensive, and there's a learning curve. Some of it is about raising audience literacy to the point where they understand that.

I try to keep up, and the scientific perspective is always part of my creative approach.

An X-wing fighter flies like an airplane. If you look at the physics, it's actually quite impossible.

Now with the international space station generating a bunch of video, and Space X and other companies pursuing private space flight, I think it's on all of our radars much more than it has been since the moonshots. The science of filmmaking is making these visions possible now.

A lot of screenwriters have a drawer of unsold scripts that they cut their teeth on. I don't have one. Everything I've written, after my first spec, I wrote on assignment. Everything I've written was work.