E.T. The Extra Terrestrial (1982), directed by Steven Spielberg, is without a single doubt one of the most influential and beloved science fiction films ever made. It brought together families and alien aficionados for an experience in the early 1980s that was one-of-a-kind. Renowned composer John Williams, Spielberg’s longtime creative partner, wrote the soundtrack for the film, which won him his fourth Oscar. However, despite his high regard for the film, according to a report from IndieWire, Williams was still skeptical about whether certain scenes were entirely scientifically accurate or not and actually consulted NASA to answer his most itching questions.

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Williams recently sat down with his friend Spielberg at an American Cinematheque event called “Spielberg/Williams: 50 Years of Music and Movies” to discuss the many highlights of their professional relationship on the movie set. Out of all the films they worked on together, Williams disclosed that E.T. was, in fact, his personal favorite of the bunch, with World War II epic Saving Private Ryan (1998) a close second.

For those who still haven’t sat and watched it, the premise of E.T. revolves around a young boy named Elliot who finds and befriends an extraterrestrial (later nicknamed “E.T.”) who is mysteriously left behind on Earth. Under threat from the government that wants to capture and “study” E.T. for their own purposes, Elliot and his friends work together to help E.T. find his way back home.

The movie produced at least one of film history’s most infamous one-liners (e.g., “E.T. phone home”) as well as one of the most memorable scenes. In fact, one scene became so iconic it was later used as the graphic background for Amblin Entertainment company’s logo. Amblin Entertainment was founded by Spielberg in 1980. However, said scene was actually the one disputed by Williams for its scientific improbability.

To finally get his answer, Williams took the opportunity when NASA awarded him the Exceptional Public Achievement Medal last year after a performance. He consulted the astronaut who presented him with the award for that scene.

“The speed of the bicycles that lift up over the moon… that’s always bothered me a little bit, especially when I’m conducting it. I’m always thinking to myself, what is the escape velocity? How fast do you have to be going to be able to lift it out of gravity? I never knew what that was, but it was on my mind.”

“The man presenting it to me was an astronaut, and in a quiet moment I said to him, ‘What is escape velocity?’ And he said, ‘It’s 17,500 miles an hour. What happens is you get on a spaceship, and it takes eight minutes to get from zero to 17,500 miles per hour.’…He said, ‘For eight minutes we’re in the cabin, we’re shaking like crazy, it’s deafening and disorienting. Then you finally get up, you reach 17.5, and suddenly everything stops and there’s no gravity and it’s completely quiet. He said we have a minute of silence before we start our procedures once we break from gravity. And we look at the Earth and we play ‘Star Wars.'"

The Everlasting Impact of E.T. on Movie Audiences

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E.T. was a blockbuster hit from the moment it hit theaters in 1982. It mesmerized both audiences and critics and quickly surpassed Star Wars, its main competition in the sci-fi genre, to be the highest-grossing film of all time for eleven years until Spielberg’s next film, Jurassic Park, overtook it in 1993. The film won four Oscars, including one for William’s soundtrack, and has since been re-released in theaters numerous times for various anniversary occasions. It also was inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress, a highly prestigious honor that deems a film “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

Despite the other shifts and turns that sci-fi has made in later years, some monumental and some questionable, E.T. has never faltered from its pedestal as a pinnacle of filmmaking and its timeless message of being ever-curious about the wonders among the stars and how the notion of an alien on Earth is not always a threat.