The movie “Ave Maria” and the Artemis 2 mission have unexpected similarities: Both space stories collide with the bureaucracy surrounding the flag. Furthermore, in one case, the problem had to be solved in space.
Astronauts Reed Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen hang U.S. and Canadian flags on the wall in preparation for the Orion telecast. Initially, the Canadian flag was placed to the left of the American flag, but later the crew swapped them because the American flag code required a certain order of placement relative to the other flags. It may seem like a small thing, but there’s room for such formalities even on flights to the moon.
In the movie, things get more complicated. For “Doomsday Plan”, the creators developed a patch based on the plot with an image of a spaceship and the flags of the 17 countries participating in the international expedition. However, each banner’s use requires a separate license, and some states also want to control the distance of their flags from other states.
As a result, approval of the design took several weeks. For the sales and promotional versions of this patch, the number of flags must be reduced by removing Russia, India, and China. Sadly, the entire diplomatic epic is buried in a tiny detail that viewers may not even have time to consider. Space is space, and bureaucracy is everywhere.
