Wiz Technology of O.C. Will Offer Cyber Astronauts a Trip to the Moon

Astronaut Jim (“Houston, we have a problem”) Lovell presumably took little pleasure in his troubled Apollo 13 mission to the moon. But an Orange County software company is betting that computer users would love to pilot a lunar space mission, provided the stakes aren’t quite so high.

Wiz Technology Inc., a San Juan Capistrano-based software distributor, plans to release a CD-ROM game called “Lunar Landing” this year. Hoping to make the virtual game seem realistic, the company is even trekking to the Johnson Space Center in Houston this week to film Mission Control and astronaut training scenes.

“I’m a NASA geek from way back,” said Allan Kuskowski, the 39-year-old head of Burbank-based AIM Software Ltd., a Wiz subsidiary producing Lunar Landing. “I used to launch toy rockets with mice in them in the early ‘70s.”

That was a heady time for the U.S. space program, and last year’s “Apollo 13” movie renewed interest in the era. So Kuskowski set out to create one last Apollo mission, a virtual trip to the moon to recover crucial equipment supposedly left on the lunar surface by Apollo 17.

To succeed, cyber astronauts must know how to manage battery life and fuel supplies, be able to communicate with Mission Control through a headset that comes with the game, and be expert at guiding the lunar module into soft landings.

“If you just boot this thing up and go for it, chances are you’re going to blow up on the pad,” Kuskowski said.

Training for the mission starts with flight instruction and a tour of Mission Control by a launch director. That tour is what is being filmed in Houston, with an actor walking through a Mission Control room that NASA recently replaced and plans to turn into a museum, Kuskowski said.

Persuading NASA to let him film in the room wasn’t as difficult as it might seem. After all, “the game is very pro-space,” Kuskowski said.

With an expected sale price between $40 and $50, the game should be on shelves by Christmas, said Kuskowski, who believes customers won’t be hard to find. “There are so many kids out there that go to NASA space camps and know about flash evaporators and gimbals angles,” Kuskowski said. “There’s a lot of interest for this.”