Rather than resorting to suspending the actors from wire, using camara tricks or any type of special effects, director Ron Howard decided to have his actors actually experience weightlessness for the movie.
The Apollo 13 actors were filmed riding NASA's Reduced Gravity Aircraft, or “Vomit Comet”, which is a plane used in training to simulate weightlessness for astronauts. The plane flies in a series of controled dives to provide short periods of weightlessness.
Howard went on the Vomit Comet with the actors, producer, and members of the film’s crew, to shoot every single scene that takes place on the Apollo 13 spacecraft.Each period of weightlessness only lasted 23 seconds, so they had to take multiple trips to record all of the footage needed to complete the movie.
