How The Big Bang Theory Filmed Howard Floating In Outer Space

Season 6 of "The Big Bang Theory" saw Howard Wolowitz explore the upper reaches of outer space — but the actor who played him, Simon Helberg, stayed firmly on the ground.

In the first four episodes of the CBS hit sitcom's sixth season, Howard realized his dream of going to space and serving as a crew member on the International Space Station, floating around in zero gravity. (He was said to be a part of the real-life Expedition 31, which ended its mission on the space station three months before the "Big Bang" episodes with Howard in space aired in 2012.) But CBS didn't actually send Helberg to space, of course. They filmed his space scenes on a soundstage at the Warner Brothers studio lot in Burbank, California.

The show's production designer John Shaffner rented a space station set, and set decorator Ann Shea was in charge of making it look like the real thing, she tells collectSPACE: "I collected things that looked like what was in the actual space station. I watched the video of the station probably 20 times, trying to pick out all these different things, and there were so many surprises in the stuff you saw attached to the walls with Velcro so they wouldn't float around."

But how did they make it look like Howard and his fellow crew members were floating around in zero gravity? No, they weren't actually floating, Shaffner reveals: "It was done by supporting the people from underneath. There was a very long, sort of skinny platform that a person could lie on, and it would almost look like they were swimming through in weightlessness." He also credits the actors for maintaining the illusion: "They studied and really did a remarkable job with acting the weightlessness."  

First, though, Howard had to get to the space station, so the Season 5 finale saw him board a Russian rocket along with a pair of astronauts. "Big Bang" production designer John Shaffner went looking for a replica of the rocket, but came up empty. So he and set decorator Ann Shea studied photos from NASA, visited a Kansas museum to take down the exact dimensions, and then found parts at an aerospace junkyard in Los Angeles to craft a realistic capsule. In a stroke of luck, while they were looking for the rocket, they found the space station set they eventually used.

"So when the call came... from the producers that we need the space station, I was able to immediately say, 'Well, guess what? No fear. Let me make sure we can put it on hold,' which I did immediately," Shaffner remembers.

They must have done a great job, too, because real-life astronaut Mike Massimino, who played himself on "Big Bang," was very impressed by how realistic the set looked. "His response was immediate and really positive," Shaffner says. "He was so blown away by [the set]. He said, 'Wow, you guys really did an amazing job! This really feels like it. This is really how big it is. It is not very big.'"

Massimino "was very, very appreciative, and I think in the end, that made everyone involved feel extra good about it," Shaffner recalls. "We had all pulled together to make this real for him, and he got a really big kick out of it."