OMEGA X33 “LUCY IN THE SKY”

The Omega Speedmaster X-33 Skywalker: the third generation of the analog-digital titanium chronograph that General Tom Stafford conceived and steered through development for NASA beginning in the 1990s, flight-qualified by the European Space Agency and worn by astronauts on the International Space Station, worn by Natalie Portman as astronaut Lucy Cola throughout Noah Hawley’s Lucy in the Sky (2019), where a watch designed to keep time in orbit is placed on the wrist of a woman who can no longer function within it.

Noah Hawley’s Lucy in the Sky (2019) is a psychological drama loosely inspired by the real case of NASA astronaut Lisa Nowak, who was charged with attempted kidnapping in 2007 following events that her attorneys and subsequent commentators understood as symptoms of a severe psychological crisis triggered by her return from space. Hawley’s film, written with Brian C. Brown and Elliott DiGuiseppi, renames the character Lucy Cola and compresses and fictionalises the events, with Natalie Portman in the lead and Jon Hamm as the fellow astronaut with whom she becomes obsessively involved. Dan Stevens plays Lucy’s husband Drew. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 11, 2019, and opened in the United States on October 4.

The film’s premise is contained in a line Portman delivers in the trailer: “You go up there. You see everything, the whole universe. And then you splash down. And, what, you go to Applebee’s?” The experience that astronauts and psychologists call the Overview Effect, the cognitive shift that occurs when a person sees the Earth from space and recognises with sudden clarity how small and fragile it is within an indifferent universe, is here presented not as an enlightening transformation but as a destabilising one. Lucy Cola has seen something she cannot unsee, and the life she returns to, the suburban house, the NASA schedule, the marriage, has been made unbearably small by the comparison.

Natalie Portman, playing astronaut Lucy Cola, wears an Omega Speedmaster X-33 Skywalker throughout the film. A watch designed for measuring elapsed time in orbit, for tracking mission phases, for surviving the thermal and mechanical stresses of spaceflight, placed on the wrist of a woman who is no longer sure that the ground beneath her feet constitutes an adequate reality.

More on the film: imdb.com/title/tt4682804

From General Stafford to Jean-François Clervoy

The Omega Speedmaster X-33’s origin is in a specific institutional requirement. NASA insisted on using the original Speedmaster Professional despite new missions requiring a different type of watch, at which point Omega decided to start from scratch on a quest to create the ultimate tool watch for astronauts and pilots. The new watch was intended to update and supplement the original Speedmaster Professional in use by NASA since the Gemini program, which had been arguably outpaced by the potential of emerging quartz and digital technologies.

The X-33 was conceived and steered through development largely by General Tom Stafford, the former NASA Apollo X astronaut who sat on Omega’s corporate board at the time. Stafford’s résumé included commanding the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975, and his involvement brought the kind of operational specificity that a watch designed for actual astronaut use required: not the watch a marketing department imagined astronauts needed, but the watch astronauts themselves specified. Omega officially launched the Speedmaster Professional X-33 on March 28, 1998, at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

The first generation X-33 was flight-qualified by NASA and used on missions from 1998 through the early 2000s. A second generation followed with fully brushed surfaces, replacing the polished bezel and pushers of the original that had created unwanted glare for astronauts working in unfiltered sunlight. The second generation caseback carried the engraving “Flight-Qualified by NASA for Space Missions.”

The third generation, the Skywalker, arrived in 2014. The Skywalker is built upon the design of the original X-33, and was developed with the help of ESA astronaut Jean-François Clervoy. The Speedmaster Skywalker X-33 was the first Speedmaster to be tested and qualified by the European Space Agency. ESA engineers subjected it to the full qualification protocol at the European Space Research and Technology Centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, the same facility where ESA satellites are tested before launch. The movement powering the Skywalker is the Omega Calibre 5619, a multi-functional quartz chronograph with a thermo-compensated integrated circuit. The thermo-compensation is significant: standard quartz oscillators lose accuracy when their temperature changes, and the thermal environment of spaceflight produces exactly the kind of temperature variations that would compromise a standard quartz movement.

What the X-33 Actually Does

The X-33’s functional specification is the most direct argument for why it is the right watch for the character Lucy Cola, and not merely an accurate costume choice. Each iteration of the X-33 has adhered to a consistent principle of capability and operation with a similar set of features: multiple calendars and time zones, numerous chronograph and countdown functions, and a loud digital alarm, all with the combined aim of enabling an astronaut to stay safe and work more efficiently while in space.

The X-33 Skywalker streamlines many of these functions while adding in two key timekeeping functions: mission elapsed time, or MET, and phase elapsed time, or PET, calculations that have little use to anyone who’s not strapped to a rocket bound for orbit. Mission elapsed time counts forward from launch; phase elapsed time measures the duration of a specific mission phase, such as an EVA or a docking procedure. Together they give an astronaut a complete temporal picture of where they are in a mission’s structure at any given moment. The alarm produces 80 decibels of sound, sufficient to be heard through the background noise of a spacecraft.

The X-33 is not designed for extra-vehicular activity, as the LCD screen cannot handle extreme cold. It is designed for use inside the spacecraft and the space station: the watch of the working environment, not the extreme environment. The Speedmaster Professional Moonwatch handles EVA; the X-33 handles everything else.

The case is Grade 2 titanium, measuring 45mm, light enough to wear over a pressure suit without adding noticeable bulk. The Skywalker’s bezel is ceramic with a chromium nitride scale; the LCD display uses an electroluminescent backlight with grey segments on a black background. The 60-minute indicator on the bezel carries green Super-LumiNova for tracking movement in low light.

The Watch as the Film’s Central Problem

Lucy in the Sky uses Hawley’s characteristic technique of variable aspect ratio, shifting the film’s frame shape as Lucy’s psychological state shifts: the screen is constricted and letterboxed when she is earthbound, and opens to full widescreen in the brief sequence in space that opens the film. The Omega X-33 on her wrist throughout the earthbound sections is the watch that has counted mission time, phase time, and elapsed time in orbit; it is now on a wrist that has nothing to measure except the growing distance between the person wearing it and the person she thought she was before she left.

The Overview Effect is not a metaphor in this film. It is the mechanism of the plot. Lucy has seen the Earth from outside and cannot unsee it, which means she cannot treat any aspect of her earthbound life as if it were what it was before. The X-33 is the most precise instrument she owns for measuring time. What it cannot measure is whether time on Earth is the same kind of thing as the time it was designed to track.

More on the X-33 Skywalker: omegawatches.com/en-gb/specialities/speedmaster/speedmaster-skywalker-x-33 and on the watch’s NASA history: ablogtowatch.com/spending-time-terry-virts-astronaut-omega-speedmaster-x-33

Technical note: Omega Speedmaster X-33 Skywalker, ref. 318.90.45.79.01.001. Grade 2 titanium case, 45mm diameter. Ceramic bezel with chromium nitride scale and Super-LumiNova on 60-minute indicator. Analog hands with digital LCD display, electroluminescent backlight, grey segments on black background. Calibre 5619, multi-functional quartz chronograph with thermo-compensated integrated circuit. Functions: universal time, mission elapsed time (MET), phase elapsed time (PET), perpetual calendar, multiple time zones, countdown timer, chronograph, 80-decibel alarm. First Speedmaster tested and qualified by the European Space Agency. Movement developed in collaboration with ESA astronaut Jean-François Clervoy. Introduced 2014 as third generation of the X-33 line. Original X-33 introduced March 28, 1998, at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, developed with General Tom Stafford. Not rated for extra-vehicular activity due to LCD screen sensitivity to extreme cold. Worn by Natalie Portman as Lucy Cola in Lucy in the Sky (2019), directed by Noah Hawley. The film is loosely based on the case of NASA astronaut Lisa Nowak, charged with attempted kidnapping in 2007.