NASA Considers Involvement With Mission Control TV Series
CBS Picks Up Dana Klein/Mark Feuerstein Comedy, Andy Weir NASA Drama To Pilot, Deadine
“Written by Weir, Mission Control revolves around the next generation of NASA astronauts and scientists who juggle their personal and professional lives during a critical mission with no margin for error.”
Keith’s note: According to NASA PAO NASA has been approached by the show’s producers and they are waiting on a script for final consideration. At this point NASA has not committed to assist the producers, allow use of its logo, facilities, staff etc.
Great! (mostly sarchasm) Now space flight operations enters the fake drama entertainment spotlight. What is next, a reality TV show? House wives of the flight controllers. Maybe such extravaganza’s should be making money which could help rapidly further space exploration or maybe we can just cancel space exploration and all sit around binge watching TV. The younger generations don’t even believe we went to the moon, right? “That’s Entertainment!”
If they did an “Ice Road Truckers”/”Deadliest Catch” style show on actual ISS crews from pre-selection through training to actual mission activity and post return recovery, I’d watch the ass out of it.
(Provided PAO or whoever does existing NASA videos had nothing to do with it.)
well it could be an awful soap/reality show with all manner of personal and “technical” climaxes each one devolving from the previous until we’ve explored every possible disaster.
Or it could be well written with realistic technical problems and reasonable personal issues.
is it meant to be a drama or a comedy ? Hard to see the material suitable for a comedy …
of course if NASA doesn’t co-operate with them, they’ll write it as some shadow NASA, maybe United Space Agency ?
Boy…if the walls of Building 4 could talk…
Besides the MOCR, would there still be the Mission Evaluation Room (MER)? As described in Murray/Cox book “Apollo: Race to the Moon” where this room is filled with tables covered with blueprints and people representing the various systems. Have someone like Don “Mad Don” Arabian as the MER director (“we don’t need any fancy damn consoles!”)
The MER still exists in the real world. No idea about in the show.
There was a previous pilot called “Mission Control” that was centered on a female engineer at JSC in the 60s, who was assigned a “bad boy” macho astronaut to work with her team on Apollo. They did some recasting and then cancelled it before it appeared.
Well, I have doubts about this ending up as (un)reality television or a soap opera, but I also don’t like the “during a critical mission with no margin for error.” I’ve never done human spaceflight operations, but on the robotic side, that’s not how it happens. People make mistake fairly often, and they get caught and corrected before it causes a problem. Anyone flying a spacecraft with “no margin for error” doesn’t know what he’s doing. You always want margin, so when something goes wrong, it isn’t a disaster. I think this image of perfection NASA likes to project, and which the media seem to like as well, is harmful. It just makes everyone look worse when something serious does go wrong.
There’s error, and then there’s error…for instance you’ve got a crew orbiting the moon and you miss the TEI engine firing, going long and sending the boys into solar orbit and ending in a bad day at the office (yea, it’s computer-timed, but you get the picture).
Lots of similar and dramatic examples from this non-scientist come to mind, and even some that require a ‘willing suspension’.
Elevating NASA and lionizing controllers seems like a good thing to me.
I am skeptical, because the reality is often quite mundane and tedious. But who knows? Just about every occupation has become grist for the dramatist’s mill at one time or another.
Andy Weir has never worked inside NASA but he is a fan so when he writes about it, it tends to be fan fiction. But if he pulls it off, good on him.
Hopefully the critical mission will be fixing the ISS toilet. Gritty realism!