Well if Sinise is too close to the launch then all the wives, family members and media who are watching the launch are gonna get fried coz they are even closer than he is. Somehow i think u r wrong about the standing too close thing.
You have to be three miles away from a Saturn 5 on takeoff. It is a pretty big rocket - over 300 feet tall. Having seen a Space Shuttle (which is much smaller) from 3 miles, I would say that Gary Sinise is at a very safe distance.
The character Gary Sinise plays was actually in Houston TX during the launch. He was no where in Florida. I have a VCR tape of the actual lauching of Apollo 13.
On the DVD version of the film, where you get commentary by Jim Lovell, and the film's director, one of them mentions that Gary Sinise is far too close to the rocket, but they added the scene to the film purely because it looked good and showed Ken Mattingly to be isolated and alone.
A fully fuelled Saturn V has a launch mass of over 3000 tonnes, most of which is highly volatile propellant. If the rocket explodes at lift off, the resulting explosion is comparable to a small nuclear weapon!! Hence there is a three-mile exclusion zone during launch. It is possible that Sinise's character deliberately chose to invade the exclusion zone. However in reality this would be very irresponsible, as the Range Safety Officer would have been forced to abort the launch if Sinise's presence had been detected so close to the rocket.
Most documentaries will tell you that the safe zone is somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 miles from the launch. Putting him at 4 miles from the launch just to satisfy the nit-picky critics wouldn't have done the scene any justice. Lighten Up!
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