In fact, a centrifuge is planned for the actual upcoming space station. To build the wheel, Verreaux worked closely with Garry Elmendorf, a third generation special effects coordinator who had worked with De Palma on "Snake Eyes" and most recently served on "The Sixth Sense." Elmendorf and his effects team, which consisted of 42 people in two different shops, had the structure and mechanism working in five weeks. The wheel was 36 feet in diameter with 67 pounds of rotating mass and its 1 00 horsepower hydraulic engine could make it spin 20 feet per second (at the circumference]. Elmendorf says, "It was a pretty impressive piece, especially when it was up and spinning. Hydraulic cylinders, hydraulic motor and other controls allowed us to control the speed within very minute changes—we could do it within a tenth of a foot per second. We could get it down to how many inches per second we wanted it to travel and adjust the reliability factor."
The reason such precision was required was that three of the films' stars—Gary Sinise, Connie Nielsen and Jerry O'Connell—were going to be strapped into it while it spun. Elmendorf previously worked with stunt coordinator Jeff Habberstad and together, they had to come up with clever ways to make it look like the actors weren't harnessed in. Sinise is seated for the duration of the scene, but Nielsen stands and O'Connell works out on the step master and they both walk away from their stations and climb the ladder that runs through the center of the rotating wheel.
"Technically, it was a mind bender," says Elmendorf, "freeing them up so they could walk and climb the ladders and go from gravity to Zero-G."
Very impressed by a cast that did a high percentage of their own stunt work, Habberstad says, "The hardest part was loading and unloading the actors. Gary took the longest to hook in, so we'd do him first. Then he'd have to hang upside down while we loaded the other actors. He made three complete revolutions during each shot, while Jerry made two."
Verreaux smiles as he recalls what Story Musgrave told him after viewing his sets. "He said, 'this is art.' Then, he spent a lot of time sitting in the cockpit, feeling the Gestalt of the thing. It felt real to him."
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