Okay, I understand Tommy was the hot-shot pilot and Clint designed the thing they were sent to fix, but I was lost about what purpose Jerry O'Neill (Donald Sutherland) and Tank Sullivan (James Garner) served aboard the space shuttle. All O'Neill did was operate a calculator, and Tank the arm of the shuttle (something he would have had no prior experience with, by the way.) Other than sentiment, what point did they serve on the mission?
shareI don't remember what Garner did in the early days, but Sutherland's character was a structural engineer, and supposedly a really good one. As such, he would come in handy in this mission.
share"Tank" (Garner) was the team's navigator from the '50s.
sharePlus, I believe that Eastwood's character delivered an ultimatum during negotiations: either the whole old crew goes, or forget about it. He was the only one that had the knowledge they needed, and had them over a barrell.
shareFrank (Eastwood) felt so close to his old team that although he was the only one needed to save the Russian satellite, there was no way he'd cheat the rest of team out of their chance of going into space. NASA had to provide jobs for all of them.
shareCompanionship.
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