The timing of the release of SpaceCamp was inauspicious, coming five months after the Challenger disaster. If the film was a masterpiece, I would have released it later but this is not a masterpiece. It's a ho-hum children's adventure film with some questionable acting and dated special effects.

On a recent rewatch I did like the start. There was some energy displayed on the screen about the space program. I got thrown off with the mixture of real elements (the shuttle Atlantis) and the fiction (Tom Skerrit's character was not one of the original 12 Apollo astronauts that walked on the moon). In my mind, I conflated Jinx with Number 5 from Short Circuit, so I was really confused when I saw the robot that would set the stage for the main conflict.

When I was a child, the central conflict was amazing. Imagine being a participant of SpaceCamp and then getting launched into space. You have only so much time to figure out problem after problem and get home. Now as an adult, my main complaint is that it seemed too easy to solve the problems. If you look at a film like The Martian, it handles those space problems more successfully. SpaceCamp just feels lazy in that regard. The tension or the excitement by the kid astronauts or ground control felt subdued.

SpaceCamp is an ok film. I've now seen it multiple times and probably don't see a need to watch it again for a long while.

On a side note, last year I went to the Kennedy Space Center for the first time and saw the retired Atlantis. The reveal at the exhibit is phenomenal. I've yet to see Endeavor, but the Atlantis presentation is so much better than Enterprise and Discovery.