Via Starwars.com:

LEARN HOW THIS 1972 FILM IMPACTED STAR WARS IN TECHNIQUE, AND GAVE ONE KEY A NEW HOPE CREW MEMBER HIS START.

Douglas Trumbull is a special effects legend and he had a part in influencing Star Wars with two other films he worked on, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Blade Runner. His work in creating ships and models as well as doing composite effects advanced the field of special effects to a place where Star Wars was possible.

In Trumbull’s 1972 directorial debut, Silent Running, Earth had undergone an environmental catastrophe and became unable to support its own plant life. The United States sent the USS Valley Forge and a number of other ships into space with geodesic bio-domes where botanists like Freeman Lowell (Bruce Dern) were tasked with keeping the plant and animal life alive until Earth is safe enough for it to be transplanted back. When the government and the corporation that owns the ship decides the project is too expensive, they order the astronauts aboard to destroy the greenhouses and come home.

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