Although the series made use of a good amount of inexpensive stock footage from NASA, the construction of the command center set was subject to cost overruns, leading the episode to become the most expensive of the first season.
Col. Belt was the mission command of Gemini 8 which nearly ended in disaster and had to make an emergency landing in the Pacific Ocean. This mirrors the real Gemini 8 commanded by Neil Armstrong. After docking with the Agena the coupled vehicles began an increasing unordered/uncontrollable spin. Armstrong was forced to emergency separate from the Agena, in hopes that would stop the spin. When it did not, he then fired the retro rockets to arrest the spin which resulted in the mission being aborted.
Visual effects supervisor Mat Beck had only 4 days to create the special effects needed for the episode.
This was intended as a "bottle episode" to save money by being shot in a single location, but still went over budget.
When Mulder asks Michelle for access to her records, a starwars.doc is visible on the computer screen.