Summary: The Russians have had a space station orbiting the Earth for more than a decade, during which the cosmonauts have hosted many other astronauts from different countries as guests onboard.

This IMAX documentary (playing at the Museum of Science and Industry in Tampa) begins in Star City, a town in Russia that is somewhat like an Air Force base. Here, all the cosmonauts and visiting astronauts train together to prepare for their stay on Mir (which means "peace" in Russian.) The U.S. astronauts do all of their training in Russian so they will better understand the language while in space.

Star City contains the only life-size model of the real station and is the only place to capably train these space explorers. While in space, the cosmonauts and astronauts perform many tests on themselves to see what effect long periods of time in zero gravity have on the human body. That must be some experience!

My view: Mission to Mir wasn't as great as I thought it would be. It was good, but some of the video was kind of fuzzy, and it wasn't very exciting. I liked it, but for an IMAX movie, it could have been better. (The fuzziness could have been because the astronauts themselves shot the video!)

Favorite part: I really thought it was cool when the space shuttle was docking with Mir. I could almost feel the astronauts' tension as they awaited the hookup.

Least favorite part: I was just surprised that this movie didn't meet my expectations, because IMAX movies usually do. Every time I had been to an IMAX film before this one, I absolutely loved it. When you view a movie in that format, the sound is usually so amazing, and the video is almost always spectacular. That just wasn't the case in Mission to Mir. I guess that partly was due to the fact that the Mir space station is so small and confining, not giving much room for making the movie. Almost everything in there is the same color, and the combination of tight spaces and the same color everywhere didn't really excite me. Maybe I'm just claustrophobic! The launches and the scenes outside the space station were a lot more thrilling to watch on that huge screen with that awesome sound system!

Recommendations: If you're at MOSI anyway, you should check it out, but don't make a special trip.

Grade: C

-- Billy Norris, 12, is in the seventh grade at Seminole Middle School and is a former member of the Times X-Team.

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