The Reluctant Astronaut

The Reluctant Astronaut 1967 is a Universal Pictures feature film produced and directed by Edward Montagne and starring Don Knotts in a story about a kiddieride operator who is hired as a janitor at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston and is eventually sent into space.

Roy Fleming Don Knotts is fairground operator of a kiddiespaceship ride in Sweetwater, Missouri. Despite beingyears old, he still lives with his parents and suffers from extreme acrophobia fear of heights. His father Arbuckle Arthur OConnell wants better things for his son, so he sends an application to NASA. Roy later learns from his mother Jeanette Nolan that NASA has accepted him as a WB1074.When Roy arrives at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, supervisor Donelli Jesse White places him in training as a janitor. Roy accepts the disappointment and unsuccessfully tries to explain things to his family back home, who believe that he is an astronaut. Meanwhile, he is befriended by veteran astronaut Major Fred Gifford Leslie Nielsen. One day, Roy is alarmed to discover that his father and his friends, Plank Frank McGrath and Rush Paul Hartman are paying him a surprise visit at work. Anxious to please his domineering father, he dons a space suit and pretends to be an astronaut. Arbuckle, a World War I veteran, tells his friends, he is proud Roy is now serving his nation. After wreaking general havoc on the simulators and other hardware, Roy is exposed as a janitor by Donelli and summarily fired in the presence of his father. ........

Source: Wikipedia