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Keith’s note: The new Netflix series “Away“” premiers on 4 September 2020. “Commander Emma Green leaves behind her husband and daughter to lead an international crew of astronauts on a perilous three-year mission to Mars.”
Biologist, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Biologist and Payload integrator, Editor of NASAWatch.com and Astrobiology.com, Lapsed climber, Explorer, Synaesthete, Former Challenger Center board member... More by Keith Cowing
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After viewing the trailer it seems that “As Mars Turns” may be a more
appropriate title.
I know that a narrative needs to have some kind of conflict driver but did it have to be the cliché ‘near LOM at Mars and the crew have to confront their own demons to survive’? The problems their families are having dealing with their loved ones being 3-14 light minutes away (and only when the DSN is pointed in the right direction) in times of need is enough, depending on how well it is written.
I haven’t looked at the trailer, but I have to say 3-14 minutes of light time delay doesn’t impress me. It wasn’t too long ago that people working on ships or in remote locations were lucky to have a brief, weekly radio/telephone patch to their families at home. Are we at the point where a quarter hour delay in getting a reply to emails or a text messages is credible source of drama?
It is for the people who have their faces glued to their smart phones.
Well, yes because of context. Near-instant availability in the event of an emergency no matter where you are on Earth is the norm now. It would be probably very hard for people to adapt to that not being the case.
That entry sure looks like Starship’s.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
If you are willing to accept not “too long ago” as 106 years, you might consider Shackleton’s _Endurance_ expedition. They and their families were without any contact at all (not just voice contact) for bit over two years. And most of that time was when the expedition was trapped in the Antarctic ice or on the ice after the ship was lost. At the time, that wasn’t even unprecedented (well, except for being trapped in polar ice, and even that wasn’t too unprecedented.) An explorer being completely and totally with his family for a few years was the norm, not the exception.
This strikes me as similar to remarks I’ve heard about the weather in Washington, D.C. and San Antonio, Texas. I’ve lived in both cities, and frequently heard people say those cities must have been uninhabitable before air conditioning was available. Washington was established in 1790 and San Antonio in 1718, and people were living in those areas for centuries before that. That definitely predates air conditioning… A week of daytime temperatures over 104 deg F (San Antonio) or a month of temperatures and humidities in the 90s (Washington) is definitely not fun. But it is survivable, and it’s clearly true that lots of people have done so for a long time.
I don’t see any dramas based on how hard it was to live without air conditioning in those cities. So I also don’t see why being out of real-time, verbal communications with your family should be a source of drama. It’s annoying, unpleasant, but not all that unprecedented or unsurvivable.
People back then led a slower paced life and did not live for instant gratification like many do today. Take away someones smart phone and watch the panic attack take hold.
We had 4 channels – one was UHF.
I wasn’t saying all drama has to be about life and death situations. I actually wish we had less of that in the movies and more about the characters. Nor was I making a dismissive argument “that earlier generation had it so much tougher.” I’m saying that a big dramatic crisis, which you’d base a movie, television show or book around, ought to involve something which _is_ tough, in a real sense. If living people remember something as being just an annoyance they had to live and deal with, then it doesn’t meet my standards of being tough in a real sense. What comes after the lack if instant texting as a hardship? Having to share a room with someone who snores? That’s fine for background and details of what life would be like on a Mars mission. But I just don’t see it as the anchor for the plot line.
It also gets at my objection for what some people consider “necessary” for real human spaceflight. I’ve seen estimates of the requirements for a human Mars mission which assumed everyone had to have completely clean clothes every day. With laundry water consumption factored into the life support requirements. As if the idea of wearing the same coveralls for a week, especially a week when you were in a climate controlled spacecraft and not all that physically active, is unthinkable. Astronauts do not and will not have “all the comforts of home”, at least not if we expect them to go anywhere or do anything useful. Many people seem to have the idea that they should have all those comforts, so I guess I dislike fiction based on the dire hardship of lacking all the comforts of home. It just reinforces an incorrect view of what exploration is like.