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Space Advocates Think A Movie Will Send Humans to Mars. If Only.

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
September 9, 2015
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Space Advocates Think A Movie Will Send Humans to Mars. If Only.

Mars, national infrastructure, and dispelling myths, OP Ed, Chris Carberry and Blake Ortner, The Hill
“In addition to inflated perceptions of cost, some believe that when budgets for space missions are proposed, this constitutes entirely new spending (on top of the current NASA budget projections). In reality, the majority of mission budgets come from funds already projected within the NASA budget – it’s mostly a decision of how we decide to use these NASA funds. This fall presents an ideal opportunity to engage the candidates. Mars exploration will be a hot topic as a result of the upcoming film adaption of Andrew Weir’s novel, The Martian, that will arrive in theaters and generate a lot of discussion on the real prospects of human missions to Mars. Later in October, NASA will be presenting a workshop to select ten potential landing sites for human missions to Mars. The workshop is an important milestone for advocates of human exploration of Mars and will help connect the science fiction film, The Martian, with a very real potential future.”
Keith’s note: Yawn, these space advocates still hope that a Hollywood movie will shift the political calculus when it comes to sending humans to Mars. I most fervently wish them good luck in this regard. I’d love to see it happen. Alas, over the course of the past half century of space exploration and space movies this has yet to happen.
They also repeat the perennial space advocate complaint that “the general public and many policymakers have a vastly inflated perspective of the cost of human space exploration.” OK Chris Carberry and Blake Ortner, can you tell us what your Humans to Mars Mission would cost – total amount and yearly run out? Can you also summarize the processes whereby the taxpaying public can be assured that cost overruns ala SLS, ISS, Shuttle, Mars Curiosity, will not occur? Oh yes – please show me where I can find details of the NASA budget increases that resulted from the blockbusters “Gravity” and “Interstellar”. You can post your details in the comments section. Sometimes the problem with the cost of sending humans to Mars is not a large scary number rather its that no one comes up with the same large scary number – nor the source of the money required for *any* humans to Mars scenario.
Space advocates never explain why the remaining 99.99999% of the people who will pay for the humans to Mars thing should want to do so – especially when there are things that people see as being more relevant/important to themselves and their families. As Alan Ladwig recently noted NSF NIH gets budget increases – more than NASA – but no one makes movies about them.
Space Movies Do Not Drive Space Policy, earlier post
Space Advocacy By Space Advocates Is A Failure, earlier post
Why Worry About Public Support For NASA If It Really Doesn’t Matter?, earlier post
Pioneering Space National Summit: So Far, Nothing But Crickets, earlier post
Hollow Promises From Stealthy Inept Space Advocacy Organizations, earlier post
Humans to Mars Summit: Wayne Hale Tells it Like it is, earlier post

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

13 responses to “Space Advocates Think A Movie Will Send Humans to Mars. If Only.”

  1. mfwright says:
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    Like NASA and everyone else (except Spudis and Wingo), Hollywood is obsessed with Mars. Why not the Moon? Maybe a movie of industrialists competing with each other over mining territories on the lunar surface and the courts.

  2. TheBrett says:
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    I keep telling people that if you want to get a big funding increase for NASA, you probably need to do it by broadening the scope – try and get it on one of the candidate’s policy platforms as part of a greater funding increase to the science agencies. “Investing in America’s future” and all that.

    You’re not going to do it with the ephemeral appeal of a movie that will barely scrape past its production and advertising costs at the box office.

  3. cb450sc says:
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    That op-ed is so far out I can only conclude the political naivete is deliberate. It’s true, in principle we could task the whole agency’s budget to a manned Mars flight and do it relatively quickly. But that has a snowball’s chance in hell of happening! And it also shows a tendency among the msf Mars folks (or substitute your favorite parochialism: moon, whatever) to basically dismiss all the other work as somehow meaningless. Retask the whole budget? I guess SMD does nothing useful – let’s toss the 100 or so birds currently in the air across the agency in the trash, and ruin all that work and all those lives! Who needs all that earth observing stuff in the midst of climate chaos?

    Yes, I read the book. It was entertaining but in serious need of an editor. And while it got some things right, it was tone deaf in other places. E.g. I have never heard a manager or director at any NASA facility I have worked at refer to the engineers and other specialists as “nerds”. The author really lost me there, when he was doing so well.

  4. DTARS says:
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    Well I think that movies could help a good bit if they had the right message.
    We haven’t had one that shows people what is POSSIBLE AND PRACTICAL and shows space settlement in a positive light lately.

    GRAVITY Blowing ISS all to hell! Negative.

    INTERSTELLAR Some flying around a black hole in the near future with LOVE being some magic force.
    Unreal fantasy to me.
    Negative

    THE MARTIAN will likely show how hostile Mars is, And how expensive the NASA Model to get to Mars is.

    Seems to me these movies only show reasons why we shouldn’t go Space.
    They just show space settle, and exploration as impossible, and a bad idea.

  5. DTARS says:
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    What is the magic in the trailer?

    https://youtu.be/ej3ioOneTy8

    It is the we can survive in Space by growing food.
    We should be growing food sooner not later

    Space Food Project market

    ISS
    Commercial stations
    Lunar orbit, lunar base industrialization of the moon
    Mission to Mars
    Mars

    • DTARS says:
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      The hope for space settlement.

      Sustainability was put in the trailer to get people interested?

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        It’s been a few months since I read the book, but I recall him planting potatoes- isn’t that right? Those are some mighty funny looking potatoes. Maybe it’s the low gravity, but I doubt it. Potato is a vine. Those are upright woody plants.

  6. Bill Housley says:
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    Congress will, maybe, pay to put boots on the ground on Mars if…
    A) Someone starts a war there.
    B) Someone justifies adequate (i.e. at least eleven digits) pork distributed amoung a majority of states.

    If we’d left the Internet up to Congress to build, we’d still be using 2400 baud modems and they’d cost the tax payer $1000 each.

    This movie will inspire the upcoming generation to do something about Mars themselves. Forget about Government doing it because the cost has to come down in order to make it worth going and Government only knows how to spend more money…never less.

  7. buzzlighting says:
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    Interstellar way better movie than The Martians it about the plan to save the human race from extinction. When the Earth dying increase of nitrogen and decrease of Oxygen in the atmosphere cause the blight or fungus kill most of the plant except corn.

    PLAN A: Locate the most habitable planet and transmit findings to Earth. Establish a small base on the planet. If the Endurance possesses sufficient fuel, return to Earth to join a worldwide colonization effort. Prof. John Brand
    was confident to have solved the gravity equations by the time they
    return (“years” after launch). Solving the equation would enable mankind
    to harness gravity and evacuate every person off Earth.

    PLAN B: In the event the gravity equation could not be solved, or solved too late, use the full resources of Endurance
    to establish a permanent colony. Using a gene bank of fertilized human
    eggs aboard the ship, begin developing and raising incipient humans upon
    the planet in order to prevent the extinction of mankind.
    Mission travel threw wormhole another galaxy unexplored solar system with several planet. They visited 2 planets Water planet and Ice Planet both hostile to human life. I like Saturn planet scene a lot before wormhole and after exist tesseract structure. I like Ranger spacecraft docking Endurance interstellar space exploration vehicle at Earth orbit ,Millers planet and when Mann stole Ranger try docking blows himself up destroyed 1 module and severely damaged Endurance. Cooper did impossible docking of Lander 1 supply ship to the Endurance save it from burning up into planet then fired the rockets out of orbit into Gargantua black hole. Use Gargantua sling shot to Edmund planet sacrifice TARS in Lander1 ejected+Cooper Ranger 2 into black hole allow Brand reach Edmund planet to complete colonization mission. When Cooper entered extra-dimensional “tesseract” able radio TARS transmit quantum data to convert binary code sent it back 64 year back in time on earth to his daughter Murphy Cooper by a watch gave her before he left he moved second hand to communicate gravity equation to her. She create Murphy Gravity generator lifted whole humanity off the Earth save them. Cooper+TARS exit tesseract rescued by 22century rangers to Cooper station reunited with her family as she became close to death, including her long lost father. Cooper steal Ranger take off into wormhole travel to Edmund planet reunited with Amelia Brand as see sun rise shine new colony base THE END.

  8. Bernardo de la Paz says:
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    Mars obsession of all varieties, Hollywood or otherwise, is nothing more than a distraction from real space colonization efforts. The L5 folks had it right more than a generation ago – forget about Mars.

    Ironic that T.A. Heppenheimer passed away the day this thread was posted:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wi

    Sad that no mention has been made of the passing of the author of probably the best layman’s publication on the practical potential of human space flight ever written:
    http://www.amazon.co.uk/Col

    Especially sad given how narrow the collective public imagination of the future of space flight has become compared to what was once envisioned.