Did you want to be an astronaut when you grew up? We never did, and we’re actually surprised any kid could have such a dream given the way spacemen are portrayed in the movies. Sure, there are some heroes here and there, but generally filmmakers tend to show us astronauts who are lonely, depressed, confused, self-doubting, jealous, guilt-ridden or otherwise miserable (not to mention they often wind up dead).

Sam Rockwell plays the latest of these unhappy astronauts in Moon, fittingly directed by Duncan Jones, whose father, David Bowie, gave us a somewhat sad song about a man potentially lost in space (“Space Oddity”). As the sole (human) resident of a station on the dark side of the moon, able to communicate with his family only through taped video correspondence, it’s not surprising that Rockwell’s character isn’t a happy camper.

But his mood actually has less to do with his situation than it has to do with film tradition. As much as Moon is garnering rave reviews it is also being lightly criticized for being derivative. And the unhappy astronaut convention is one of the overly familiar elements Jones and screenwriter Nathan Parker employs. To illustrate some of the convention’s history, we’ve selected ten of the unhappiest astronauts ever put on the big screen.

“Victor Carroon” (Richard Wordsworth) in The Quatermass Xperiment (1955)

When Carroon crash lands back in England after visiting outer space, his two fellow astronauts have disappeared and he is the victim of an extraterrestrial infection. Now he inadvertently absorbs the life of people and animals and begins to transform into a hideous creature. Obviously being turned into a monster would make a person miserable, and certain moments in the film show that Carroon is, for awhile at least, conscious and remorseful of his unfortunate tragedy and the death he causes. Aside from spawning sequels, The Quatermass Xperiment gave way to similar astronaut-turned-monster films like First Man Into Space and The Astronaut’s Wife (starring Bill Edwards and Johnny Depp, respectively, as the unhappy astronauts).

“Roy Fleming” (Don Knotts) in The Reluctant Astronaut (1967)

After his father gets him a job at NASA, as a janitor, Fleming manages to cause havoc and is quickly fired. But the space program decides to send a layman into space and rehires Fleming for the gig. Only problem is the guy is terrified of heights, making him quite a nervous and unhappy astronaut (or astroKNOTT, as the trailer calls him). He’s also a bumbling idiot and manages to screw up his spacecraft with peanut butter and clumsiness, nearly marooning him in space. Thirty years later, Harland Williams played a similarly unqualified yet less unhappy spaceman in RocketMan.

“Freeman Lowell” (Bruce Dern) in Silent Running (1972)

A botanist aboard the freight ship Valley Forge, Lowell is in charge of the last remaining plant life from Earth, which only exists in geodesic domes attached to the spacecraft. Not only is it his job to cultivate the forests and farms located in these domes, it is his passion. In fact, he refuses to eat the synthetic astronaut food his fellow crewmembers eat, preferring the fruits and vegetables he grows on the ship. So, when orders come to destroy the domes, Lowell is very upset and does everything he can to save at least one of the giant greenhouses.

“Kris Kelvin” (Donatas Banionis) in Solaris (1972)

One of the more obvious influences on Jones’ Moon in terms of the astronaut’s cause of distress, Andrei Tarkovsky’s adaptation of Stanislav Lem’s classic sci-fi novel involves a widowed psychologist sent to a space station in peril, where he is eventually greeted by his dead wife (Natalya Bondarchuk) — or what appears to be she. After learning that the incarnation is the product of a nearby planet and Kelvin’s memories, the poor guy still has trouble not accepting the phantom for the real thing and therefore must agonizingly experience her suicide over and over again. The novel was adapted again by Steven Soderbergh with George Clooney starring in 2002 and was likely loosely the primary inspiration for Paul W.S. Anderson’s Event Horizon, which featured Sam Neill in a Kelvin-like role.

“Col. Charles Brubaker” (James Brolin) in Capricorn One (1978)

Brubaker is only one of the three unhappy astronauts in this underrated conspiracy thriller from Peter Hyams about a faked space mission to Mars. But considering both Willis (Sam Waterston) and Walker (O.J. Simpson) are initially okay to go along with the hoax, Brubaker is upset with the ruse from the start. He’s also, for whatever circumstances, the only one who will go up against the conspirators to the end. Also, though the other two characters seem sad enough with the situation, the scene where Brubaker stars crying while talking to his wife from the fake shuttle pushes his unhappiness above theirs.

“Capt. Billy Cutshaw” (Scott Wilson) in The Ninth Configuration (1980)

A former astronaut (who also appears in The Exorcist) who went mildly insane prior to a space launch, Cutshaw is now a patient at an insane asylum for military personnel. He’s tortured by his atheistic beliefs, which cause him to focus on all that’s horrible in the world, and ends up clashing with the new psychiatrist (Stacy Keach), who is more positive and devout. We must also acknowledge Robert Loggia as Lt. Bennish, for the scene where he dresses in an astronaut suit and stomps around the castle knocking easels over. We’re not sure if he’s unhappy so much as batty, but it’s a great scene, nonetheless.

“Andie Bergstrom” (Kate Capshaw) in SpaceCamp (1986)

Where most astronaut characters acquire unhappiness in outer space, Bergstrom’s problem is that she’s never been there, unlike her moonwalker husband (Tom Skerritt). Instead, she serves, quite bitterly, as a Space Camp instructor holding onto her dreams of one day going on a shuttle mission. She finally gets her opportunity when she and a group of unqualified campers are accidentally (kind of) launched into orbit. But due to the circumstances, coupled with an eventual injury that puts her mostly out of commission, Bergstrom is still, for the most part, a miserable lady even in space.

“Shirotsugh Lhadatt” (voiced by Leo Morimoto/Robert Mathews) in Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise (1987)

In a world where the space race is much less important than it was on Earth, Lhadatt is one of the many slackers who make up his nation’s space program. He becomes the first person motivated enough to go into space, thanks to a young woman, but eventually he grows frustrated with the public attention and celebrity his mission has gotten him. The level of his unhappiness is so great that he quits for a while, goes to stay with the young woman and attempts to rape her.

“Chip Pettengill” (Simon Baker) in Red Planet (2000)

Pettingill crashes onto Mars with four other members of his crew, and when all hope for survival is lost he and fellow astronaut Santen (Benjamin Bratt) wander off to take in the sights before they die. Santen gets knocked off first, accidentally (and literally), when he and Pettingill get into a fight and Santen falls over a cliff. From then on Pettingill is wracked with guilt over the incident, especially given that he tries passing Santen’s death off to the remainder of his crew (Val Kilmer, Tom Sizemore, Carrie-Anne Moss) as suicidal. Ultimately his struggle with his remorse, combined with selfish desperation, leads him to his own demise.

“Trey” (Benedict Wong) in Sunshine (2007)

Like Baker’s character in Red Planet, Trey’s unhappiness is brought on by guilt. Instead of killing a crew member, though, he believes he’s put his entire ship in harm’s way when he navigates incorrectly and causes damage to his spacecraft, Icarus II. He goes mad with self-blame and is put on suicide watch. Later, it seems that he is responsible for even more destruction (and death this time), but when the rest of the ship’s crew (including Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, Michell Yeoh and Cliff Curtis) decide to kill him for being a saboteur, they find him already dead, apparently having killed himself.