Note: This is just me having some fun with Claude. I gave it a plot idea and some background on the ISS deorbit, mostly picked up from Eric Berger's reporting and the spaceflight community on X. Any mistakes in that data are mine. Then I asked it to "produce a screenplay for a three-act action film, run time 110m. Concept art too." The result is total cheeseball, but I thought it was fun. 😊

DEORBIT BURN

A Henry Steele thriller. 110 min. Rated PG-13 for zero-g fistfights and aggressive patriotism.

Cast

  • Henry Steele – washed-out astronaut, now foreman of Ironworkers Local 516
  • Gideon Stryker – Boeing lifer, union darling, sleeper agent since 1987
  • Katya Sokolova – cosmonaut, left behind, has eyes for Henry
  • Dmitri – cosmonaut, hapless, just wants to go home
  • Big Sal, Dee, and "Rivet" – the crew
  • Arkady Volkov - President of Russia

Act One (0–28 min)

  • Cold open, East Berlin, 1987. A young Stryker takes an envelope. "Be patient, Gideon. Become someone they love."
  • Present day. The deorbit Dragon sits docked and fueled. Only two cosmonauts remain aboard.
  • Steele on a launch tower, welding. Stryker visits in a suit. "They made me management, Hank." "I'm sorry for your loss."
  • Houston. A flight dynamics officer finds the burn plan rewritten. The splashdown zone is now Kyiv. Ground control is locked out.
  • "It doesn't fly over Moscow." "Check St. Petersburg." "Sir. I checked."
  • No trained crew is available. Steele: "You need people who work at height, in the cold, on a deadline. I know four."
  • Launch.

Act Two (28–83 min)

  • Docking. Stryker and Volkov are already aboard, for some reason. Nobody ever explains it. Running gag.
  • The reveal. Stryker: "Management is just espionage with better parking."
  • Katya and Dmitri learn they were meant to ride it down. Katya switches sides.
  • Midpoint (55 min). First burn fires. The orbit drops.
  • Zero-g brawl through the Russian segment. Dee wins it with a torque wrench.
  • Katya: "In Russia we have a saying." "What is it?" "It does not translate. Mostly potatoes."
  • All is lost (80 min). Second burn completes. Three orbits to Kyiv. Big Sal is adrift on a frayed tether.

Act Three (83–110 min)

  • The speech, Harmony module. "Every bolt on this station was torqued by somebody with a lunch pail. You don't deorbit a union job."
  • The plan. Flip the whole station 180 degrees so the Dragon's engines push it up instead of down. The truss won't survive it, so the crew braces it by hand.
  • Katya flies the Dragon. Dmitri rescues Big Sal.
  • The punches. Volkov first: "You're on the American segment now." Then Stryker: "Clock out, Gideon."
  • The burn holds. The station climbs to a permanent orbit.
  • Epilogue. The ISS Orbital Museum, gift shop in Unity. Henry and Katya patrol the space lanes in a tug named Lunch Pail.
  • Post-credits. A phone buzzes in an empty Soyuz. Cyrillic text. Sequel bait.

 

Cold open

EXT. EAST BERLIN, S-BAHN UNDERPASS – NIGHT

SUPER: "East Berlin, 1987"

Rain. A Trabant idles at the curb. GIDEON STRYKER (22), American exchange student, Seattle windbreaker, waits under a dead streetlight.

COLONEL REZNIK (50s, wool coat, umbrella) steps out of the dark. She holds out an envelope. He doesn't take it yet.

GIDEON What do you want me to steal?

REZNIK Nothing.

GIDEON Then what am I for?

REZNIK Go home. Finish your degree. Take a job building airplanes. Join the union. Bring donuts. Remember birthdays.

GIDEON That's it?

REZNIK Be patient, Gideon. Become someone they love.

GIDEON That could take forty years.

REZNIK We are patient people.

He takes the envelope.

GIDEON And after forty years?

REZNIK One day something very large will be passing over a place we do not like. And you will be holding the keys.

A train SCREAMS overhead. Gideon looks down at the envelope.

MATCH CUT TO:

INT. EXECUTIVE OFFICE – DAY – PRESENT

The same hand, older, holding an ID badge. GIDEON STRYKER, CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER. On the desk: a box of donuts.

SMASH TO TITLE.

The Harmony speech

INT. ISS, HARMONY MODULE – CONTINUOUS

The crew floats in silence. Out the window, BIG SAL drifts on a frayed tether. A wall display reads: 3 ORBITS.

RIVET So that's it. We lost.

Steele pushes off the wall and catches a handrail in the middle of the module.

RIVET (CONT'D) Is this the speech?

DEE Let him do the speech.

STEELE You know what this thing weighs? Almost a million pounds. It took forty flights to get it up here. Every piece was built on the ground by somebody who clocked in, ate lunch out of a pail, and went home tired.

He slaps the bulkhead.

STEELE (CONT'D) Huntsville built this. Turin built that one. And that end down there? Moscow built it. Yeah, Dmitri. Your people too.

Dmitri nods, moved. He is also still zip-tied to a locker.

STEELE (CONT'D) Nobody on those crews asked what flag was on the next guy's shoulder. They asked one thing. Will the weld hold? And for thirty years it has.

He looks toward the hatch, where Stryker went.

STEELE (CONT'D) Now a man in a corner office wants to drop it on a city. He never turned a wrench up here. We have.

Beat.

STEELE (CONT'D) You don't deorbit a union job.

DEE So what do we do, Hank?

STEELE We're not taking it down. We're taking it up.

KATYA This is very stupid plan.

STEELE Is it?

KATYA(smiling) I like it.

STEELE Local 516. Three orbits. That's four and a half hours. I've seen you hang a girder in less with a hangover.

RIVET Somebody should go get Sal.

STEELE Somebody should go get Sal.

They scatter.