This week we continue our journey across the solar system and visit what will definitely be one of the top tourist destinations in the distant future: Saturn. This gas giant may not hold as many records as its giant neighbor Jupiter, but the dazzling ring system that the planet is known for make it a fan favorite. And today, we get to visit!
Even before telescopes could reveal the beauty of its rings, ancient observers held the yellowish light in the sky in high esteem. Ancient Babylonians recorded its movements meticulously, and in ancient Greece the planet was known by the name Phainon, later to be called the “star of Saturn” by the Romans. Saturn was the Roman god of agriculture and wealth, appropriate given the planet’s tendency to grow and fade in brightness over the years – much like fortune can. This cycle of gradual brightening and darkening is caused by Saturn’s rings. As the planet appears to rotate in relation to Earth, the axial tilt of the planet causes the rings to be seen more from above, below or from the side, at which point they’re almost invisible. That reflects different amounts of light, altering the planet’s appearance in the sky.
The astrological symbol used for Saturn is a stylized sickle representing the god’s agricultural association, and everyone’s favorite day of the week – Saturday – still bears the Roman name for the planet assigned around the 2nd century AD.
To the Hindu astrologers, the planet was known as “Shani,” the judge of everyone based on their behavior and deeds in life. Ancient Hebrews called Saturn “Shabbathai,” attributed to the angel Cassiel and governed by the beneficial spirit Agyal and darker spirit Zazl.
Detailed observation of the planet couldn’t take place without the aid of a telescope and while Galileo’s were powerful enough to see Jupiter’s moons, he mistakenly believed that Saturn’s rings were actually moons alongside the planet. It was Dutch polymath Christiaan Huygens and his improved telescope who first recognized and recorded the rings in 1659.
Over the next several centuries the moons began to be uncovered which we’ll get into more detail during the next episode, and the first low-resolution images were obtained at a distance of only 20,000 kilometers by Pioneer 11 as it flew by. Pioneer also studied the rings more closely, identifying an additional thin ring as well as making note that many of the “gaps” noticed earlier were not quite empty after all.
In 1980 Voyager 1 completed a flyby as it passed through, accomplishing the first high-resolution photography of the planetary features as well as images of many of the moons. Scientists in charge of the mission decided to sacrifice part of Voyager 1’s mission in order to alter course for a closer look at the moon Titan. They learned that Titan’s thick atmosphere is impenetrable to visible wavelengths of light and were unfortunately unable to obtain images of the landscape through the quick clouds, and as a result of the mission modification Voyager 1 was unable to visit Uranus, Neptune or Pluto.
The following year in 1981 Voyager 2 passed by Saturn to obtain more high-resolution images of the rings to track any changes since Voyager 1’s visit, and it also scanned the atmosphere of the planet with radar to measure temperature and density. Voyager 2’s innovative spinning module was unfortunately stuck for part of the flyby and was unable to take more planned photos, and as it passed by the spacecraft was able to use Saturn’s gravity to swing onward to Uranus.
Altogether the two spacecraft were able to identify several new satellites interacting with the ring system and observed previously unknown gaps within the rings.
In 2004, NASA spacecraft Cassini-Huygens entered orbit around Saturn for an extended mission to study the moons and rings of Saturn. This was an ambitious plan to extensively study the moons and atmosphere of Saturn, and featured a detachable probe named for Huygens that would fall into the atmosphere of Titan to collect valuable data.
Photographs from the orbital Cassini module captured a previously undiscovered ring, and fascinating images of the atmosphere in unprecedented detail. As a final maneuver, Cassini accomplished a series of impressive passes through the gaps between Saturn and its ring system before completing the mission by entering the atmosphere.
The accumulation of telescopic images over the centuries as well as more recent sensory readings and photographs from these spacecraft have provided us a wealth of information about the planet. Many of its most interesting features were complete surprises to learn, and there are still many mysteries left to solve. Let’s dive in.
The second largest planet behind Jupiter, Saturn orbits the sun about nine times the distance that Earth does. Even clipping through the solar system at 9.7 km/s, it takes Saturn about 29 ½ years to complete one full trip around the Sun. As with most Gas Giants, it’s difficult to assign a length of day for Saturn, as the swirling atmosphere travels at different rotational speeds depending on where you look.
Saturn’s atmosphere primarily consists of hydrogen and helium, the same main components as the Sun and Jupiter, suggesting it formed along with the others in the early solar system from the same nebular dust before settling into its current orbit. Interestingly, Saturn’s density is less than that of normal water: if you had a big enough bathtub, Saturn would literally float in it!
Despite being around the same size as Jupiter, Saturn is much less dense with only about a third the mass of its larger neighbor. Together Jupiter and Saturn account for over 90% of the total planetary mass in the solar system, and as a result have likely done much over the 4 or 5 billion years they’ve been around to stabilize and maintain the orbits of the other planets where they are.
A particular orbital oddity about Saturn is that it does not appear to have any trojan asteroids at all. As we learned last week, Jupiter – admittedly much more massive – shepherds an estimated two million small asteroids along its orbit path ahead and behind it as it travels around the Sun. Mars, Neptune and even Earth have been found with small trojan asteroids, but somehow Saturn has none to be found. Fortunately for travelers on approach like us, fewer asteroids to dodge is pretty much always a positive.
Approaching from inside Saturn’s orbit, we’ll enjoy a full-lit front view of the gas giant as we get closer. The rich yellow-beige of the atmosphere shines brightly, and from here the icy rings twinkle brilliantly.
The ring system is impressive, and hugs the planet closely, well within the orbits of most of the larger moons. Striking banding patterns make it look as though there are dozens of individual rings nestled tightly together – which there are – but for classification purposes the bands have been grouped into fourteen rings. On today’s trip we’ll focus only on the inner rings named alphabetically A through F – that is, the rings that are commonly shown as visible bands around the planet. There are some larger rings farther out, but we’ll explore those in more depth in next week’s episode. We’ll imagine a close approach above these rings for a great view as we get closer.
Passing below us first we’ll see the faint F ring, outermost of the discrete rings and discovered first in 1979 by the Pioneer 11 mission. While relatively thin at only a few hundred kilometers wide compared to the other inner rings, the one has a very interesting visual feature – there’s actually a wispy spiral strand coiled around the main ring. This ring was likely formed when the moons Prometheus and Pandora collided sometime in the past. Now the two moons march just alongside the ring, Prometheus inside and Pandora outside. As Prometheus passes by, you might notice a “ripple” effect trailing it within the ring. These ripples are waves caused by the gravity of the moon when it gets near, pulling the smaller coil of material closer and closer to it.
Leaving the F ring behind, we’ll move across what might seem like a 2,600 kilometer band of empty space at first but there is actually a sheet of dust spanning the gap. This region is called the “Roche Division” after French physicist Édouard Roche and it separates the F and A rings. This shouldn’t be confused with the “Roche Limit” which is a term for the distance at which a large object becomes too close to a planet and will be torn apart by tidal gravitation forces. It just so happens that the Roche Division is coincidentally near to the Roche limit of Saturn, which is why these inner rings have not coalesced into a new moon.
The A ring will appear next for us, a comparably massive 14,600 kilometer wide ring. The boundaries of the ring are very sharp, and the ring is about 10 to 30 meters thick. Before we get far we’ll encounter the Keeler Gap, discovered by Voyager. The gap is only 42-kilometers wide and carved out by the small moon Daphnis. As we pass above the moon we’ll see great waves rising from the ring to a height of about 1.5 kilometers.
We’ll witness more of the A ring pass before we reach the next landmark (or… ring-mark?), the Enke Gap. Much larger than the Keeler, the Enke gap spans 325 kilometers and forms a path for the moon Pan. We can see three small intertwined ringlets within the gap from here, and spiral density waves within the ring on either side of the gap due to Pan’s gravitation and that of some small moons outside of the rings.
As the remaining A ring passes below us, you might notice small propeller-shaped wave patterns in the ring. These are caused by small moonlets passing near the ring, and it’s estimated that there could be thousands of them in the A ring.
The boundary between the A and B rings are a darker portion called the Cassini Division after their discoverer Giovanni Cassini in 1675. He can be forgiven for believing the space is empty, but Voyager revealed that the 4,800-kilometer-wide band is actually filled with many small ringlets of darker material similar to that found in the C ring.
The largest and brightest ring, B ring, now shines ahead of us, only 5 to 15 meters thick but more densely packed with particles from the size of dust up to the size of a house. The optical depth is greater than 5 in some parts of the ring, meaning up to 90% of the light shone from the Sun is blocked. The outer edge of the ring contains strange structures, they look like great plumes or ridges jutting out perpendicular to the ring, sometimes as high as 2.5 kilometers from the ring itself. These structures are mysterious, but likely caused by unseen moonlets.
Continuing inward, we reach the interface between B and C rings, called the Colombo Gap. The gap contains a small ring called the Titan ringlet named for the moon, which is actually located far out beyond the rings. It’s named for Titan due to an orbital resonance with the planet, which has slightly elongated the ring into an elliptical shape, rather than circular. The shape of the ring moves with the moon, so that the longer part of the ringlet always points toward the moon.
The C ring is composed of darker material, which is also sparser than the material in the B ring, resulting in a transparent, dimmer ring than the brilliant one we just passed. It’s also much thinner than the B ring at only 17,500 kilometers.
Marking the boundary of the C ring is another gap, called the Maxwell Gap which also contains a single ringlet by the same name. There is a wave-like structure in this ringlet hinting at the influence of a moon, but as of today no small moon has yet been discovered to explain the waves.
Now we arrive at the innermost ring, D ring. There are wave patterns observed within D ring as well, but scientists noticed there is no identifiable cause, and the waves appear to be dissipating over time. This suggests that the waves were caused by disruptions from passing debris falling to the planet. Similar patters observed in Jupiter’s ring caused by material from comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 in 1994 support this theory. In 1980 Voyager 1 identified three ringlets within ring D, and by the time Cassini arrived 25 years later the innermost had actually moved 200 kilometers closer to the planet. It’s an example of the dynamic nature of the ring system, and a reminder that as material is lost either to ejection or falling into Saturn, the rings aren’t permanent.
The origin and fate of the ring system are still open questions. Some scientists believe the rings are very young, pointing to the fact that the ice particles still appear relatively fresh when it is known they should darken over time as more dust and debris accumulate. The theory proposed by Édouard Roche in the 1800’s is that the rings were once part of a moon named Veritas. This moon would have been destroyed, either torn apart by tidal forces at the – you guessed it – Roche Limit, or obliterated by a collision with another large object. The debris then eventually migrated into the current arrangement.
Cassini spacecraft data support this theory that they are younger, between 10 and 100 million years old, and by measuring and extrapolating depletion rates within these theoretical parameters it is thought the rings could completely disappear within the next 300 million years.
A competing theory is that the debris are actually remnants of a small planet that was torn apart by Saturn much earlier in its history, while still surrounded by a gaseous nebula. The planet’s heavier core would have been devoured by Saturn, leaving the stripped outer layers which could explain why there is so little rocky material currently in the rings.
There’s also a theory that the rings are accumulated from micrometeoroids over time, which would need a much longer timeframe to accumulate – more like a billion years.
The other mystery is how much longer the rings will last. One method scientists have tried to estimate this is by estimating the rate at which material is measured to be falling into Saturn. Charged ice material can be pulled along magnetic field lines by gravity in a process called “ring rain,” which the Keck Observatory in Hawaii calculated to occur at between 432 to 2,870 kilograms of matter per second. Added to good ol’ fashioned gravity pulling charge-neutral material to the planet, which the Cassini mission measured to be between 4,800 to 44,000 kilograms per second, scientists believe the rings will be completely gone in less than 300 million years, maybe as little as 100 million years.
So as you can see, there’s a lot to still find out when it comes to the rings – but we still have a journey to complete. Looming ahead of us, filling our view is the massive atmosphere of Saturn. Before we dive in, we’ll take a loop around for a look at the poles.
Heading north first, we’ll notice the aurora as we approach, a product of the magnetic field surrounding the planet. Slightly weaker than Earth’s – despite being more than 90 times as massive – the magnetosphere deflects solar wind particles from the sun and extends a modest one million kilometers behind the planet.
The north pole is consumed by a massive vortex with a curious hexagonal shape first observed by Voyager. Each side of the hexagon is longer than Earth at about 14,500 kilometers long and rotates once about every 10 hours and 40 minutes, apparently the same rate of rotation for the interior of the planet. The hexagonal pattern is an unsolved mystery, but most scientists believe it is caused by a standing wave pattern, supported by other polygonal shape patterns achievable in rotating fluids within a laboratory setting.
Zipping on around to the south pole (a trip which would have taken the Cassini spacecraft over three days to complete, by the way – aren’t virtual explorations great?) we find another vortex spinning, curiously this time in a circular shape.
The massive hurricane-like storm observed by the Cassini craft sits right at the pole, the size of Earth with a clearly defined eyewall and winds churning at 550 kilometers per hour. Eyewalls have not yet been observed in any storms outside of Earth – not even Jupiter’s Great Red Spot – which makes this a unique find.
Returning to the equatorial region, we can see banding patterns similar to Jupiter, although more faintly defined. They’re named according to similar classifications as Jupiter as well, but don’t let their faint blending fool you – the winds on Saturn are much faster than Jupiter. Large, persistent storms similar to the Great Red Spot of Jupiter are possible on Saturn, but even the standard winds are faster, blasting up to 1,800 kilometers per hour at the equator.
So buckle up as we head down.
First we’ll encounter the upper cloud layers which are mostly made up of ammonia ice, starting our descent at a temperature as low as 100 Kelvin or negative 280 degrees Fahrenheit. The pressure here is roughly comparable to what we experience on the surface of Earth.
As we descend and pressure begins to build, the clouds become water ice, transitioning to a band of ammonium hydrosulfide ice where temperatures rise to about 200 K or negative 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Eventually we reach an aqueous layer of water droplets with ammonia. Here pressure can reach about twenty times what we experience on Earth, with temperatures up to 330 Kelvin or 134 degrees Fahrenheit.
We’ll continue our fall until we reach the base of the atmosphere which begins to transition into a layer of liquid helium-saturated molecular hydrogen and eventually a metallic hydrogen inner layer. The interior of Saturn is hot – hotter than scientists expected to find. The planet radiates two and a half times more energy than it receives from the Sun. Scientists theorize the heat is generated by “raining out” of helium droplets into the less dense hydrogen liquid which causes warming friction and leaves the outer layers depleted of helium. Whatever the cause is determined to be, temperatures here in the interior can reach up to almost 12,000 K or 21,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Finally we reach Saturn’s core, which unlike Jupiter’s is theorized to be completely solid. Scientists have estimated the core to be about 25,000 kilometers wide with as much as 9 to 22 times as much mass as planet Earth crunched in there. And here concludes our journey. It would be nice to think we might find the remnants of the Cassini orbiter, but would have certainly been vaporized long before reaching the core.
We’ve come a long way on our journey today. We witnessed the dancing and rippling waves of the rings of Saturn before taking a dive into the turbulent and hostile gas giant, and we learned more about the important and inspiring work of the scientists who have made today’s journey possible. In the next episode we’ll tour the many moons of Saturn and learn what lessons they teach us about our solar system and the universe at large – and about what mysteries they still hold for future scientists to discover.
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Thank you all for listening, and as always, happy terraforming.
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Today we’ll be visiting Jupiter – one of the most historically significant, enigmatic, and downright dangerous locations in the Solar System. As you probably already know, Jupiter belongs to a class of planets called the “Gas Giants” which share unique characteristics that complicate visitation by humans. Currently the technology simply doesn’t exist to keep humans safe while visiting the planet, but with the aid of thousands of years of human observation from afar and remotely, we can do our best to imagine the conditions we might experience if we were to explore the planet in person. Before taking our imaginary dive into the clouds and storms of Jupiter, we’ll illustrate the planet and its characteristics from the perspective of the scientific observers, satellites and probes that contribute to our modern understanding of the giant planet. That being said, you may notice that conspicuously absent from today’s discussion is an in-depth look at the staggeringly diverse array of moons around Jupiter – we’ll be devoting an entire episode to those later.
Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system, but simply saying that doesn’t quite convey the – well, gravity – of the fact. Jupiter is huge. If you combined the mass of all the other planets in the solar system, and then doubled it, you still wouldn’t come close to the mass of Jupiter. It is so massive that rather than directly orbiting the Sun, both objects actually orbit around a shared gravitational fulcrum just outside the surface of the Sun. Much like your body would lean back as you swing a heavy bucket of water around you, the Sun leans to accommodate the large mass of Jupiter. By measuring that lean, astronomers could actually approximate the mass of Jupiter without even having to visit the planet – but that hasn’t stopped us from constantly striving for a closer look anyway.
To the unaided eye, Jupiter appears in the Earth sky as a bright star, not quite as bright as Venus but still easily viewable. Of course, as a planet it follows a regular path across the sky against the backdrop of stationary stars, which made it an object of interest and importance for many early observers.
Among the earliest recorded observations of the planet are those of the ancient Babylonians, dating back to the 7th or 8th century BC, and a recent analysis published in 2016 claims that detailed calculations on Jupiter’s velocity were conducted in Babylon around 50 BC. The Babylonians recorded the nearly 12-year cycle of Jupiter across the sky and used it as the foundation of their zodiac calendar, associating the planet with the Mesopotamian god Marduk, patron god of Babylon. It is thought that the ancient Chinese also used Jupiter’s 12-year cycle as the basis for their own zodiac, surviving in the observance of the twelve animal years. Elsewhere in Asia, Hindu astrologers revered the planet by naming it Brihaspati, the teacher of the gods. They would refer to it as the “Guru” which appropriately translates literally as “Heavy One”.
The name Jupiter used today comes from the Romans who associated the planet with the chief god of the Roman pantheon and translates as “Father Sky-God”. Jupiter corresponds to the ancient Greek god Zeus, the name is literally a transformation of “Zeus Pater” or “Father Zeus.” But the Greeks knew the planet as Phaethon which translates to “shining one” or “blazing star”. So we can see that many ancient cultures observed and tracked the planet’s movements, but it wasn’t until the advent of optic technologies like lenses and mirrors gave rise to telescopes that astronomers really got a good look at the unique features of the planet.
The biggest name discussed today in relation to Jupiter’s early scientific observations is easily Galileo Galilei. Galileo was born in 1564 in Pisa, Italy and is often praised as the father of modern science and the scientific method. He meticulously studied physics under the patronage of wealthy and powerful Italian rulers, and his defense of the theory called heliocentrism, that objects in the solar system orbit the Sun as opposed to the Earth, famously ran him afoul of the Catholic church – earning him much ridicule and even legal prosecution until his death under house arrest in 1642.
But during his life he vastly advanced the understanding of speed, velocity, and inertia, all foundational principles in our understanding of the physical world and astronomy. While commonly credited as the inventor of the telescope, Galileo actually based his designs on a hazy description of the device that Dutch astronomer Hans Lippershey attempted to patent in 1605, without ever having seen one in person. These first telescopes were simple cylinders with a convex lens on one end and a concave eyepiece on the other and could manage a magnification of about 20 times.
Galileo’s early telescopes were intended for terrestrial use, to observe weather or distant armies on land or sea – but someone as curious as Galileo was bound to point it skyward eventually. And a good thing he did! Galileo is credited as the first person to describe the topography of the moon, which until then had been believed to be a perfect sphere, as well as the rings of Saturn, sunspots, and in 1610 he first viewed the four largest of Jupiter’s moons which still bear his name today as the “Galilean moons”.
It was the observation of these moons and their regular cycles around Jupiter that solidified Galileo’s conviction in Copernican heliocentrism which directly contradicted the prevailing belief that all heavenly bodies circled the Earth. He was eventually forced to recant his conclusions and lived the rest of his life a prisoner of the Catholic Church in his own home.
Jupiter’s larger moons were easier to spot, but eventually telescopes became advanced enough to observe even more detail of the planet. In the 1660’s fellow Italian Giovanni Cassini described spots and colorful bands in the planet with enough detail to be able to estimate how quickly the planet was rotating. English astronomer Robert Hooke was in competition with Cassini over who may have been the first to see Jupiter’s famous great red spot, but the earliest known drawing is attributed to the German astronomer and pharmacist Heirich Schwabe in 1831. Thanks to the careful notes of many of these early observers between the 18th and 20th centuries, we have seen that the great red spot has undergone periods of growth and fading over the years. But it wouldn’t be until the advent of space flight that humans would get their first up-close view of the atmosphere.
In 1973 the first flyby of Jupiter was completed by the Pioneer 10 probe. Along with Pioneer 11 which passed Jupiter in 1974, they were not equipped with photographic cameras, but contained a collection of sensors and detectors for magnetism and radiation. The data they provided helped confirm many unobservable details from the size of the magnetosphere around the planet, interaction of the planet with the solar wind, and chemical composition of the atmosphere. Anticipating the potential hazards for a spacecraft in crossing the asteroid belt, they were outfitted with twelve special meteoroid detector panels that could report on any small impacts encountered along the journey. The Pioneer probes were actually conceived as test flights for later launches that would take advantage of a rare alignment of the planets to visit Jupiter and Saturn, which would eventually be known as the Voyager missions.
Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 both reached Jupiter in 1979 and provided most of the rich color images that many of us are familiar with from our childhood textbooks. In addition to the photographic cameras used to generate these images, the Voyagers were also equipped with their own arrays of sensitive magnetometers, spectrometers and detectors to collect similar readings to the Pioneers. Building on experience from these earlier missions, scientists were also able to utilize the probe’s telecommunications radio to measure physical characteristics of the planets and their moons like density, gravitation, mass and atmospheric composition.
Not all of the equipment on the Pioneer and Voyager probes was scientific, however. Each of the four spacecraft also carried a cultural message. The Pioneer spacecraft each carry a special plaque designed by Carl Sagan and Frank Drake and illustrated by Carl Sagan’s wife, Linda Salzman Sagan. Etched in gold-anodized aluminum, the plaque is designed to visually demonstrate humanity’s current understanding of science and convey some information about who we are. It includes a representation of the hyperfine transition of hydrogen, a universal constant measurement of length and time and establishes it as a basis for other measurements throughout the drawing.
Prominent in the image is a drawing of a man and woman whose height is provided in units of the hydrogen transition frequency, as well as a radial burst pattern of fifteen lines with their own distances recorded in the same units. These fifteen lines show the distances of various pulsars from the sun and their orientation in relation to the sun as well as the frequency period of their pulses for identification, allowing an advanced civilization to pinpoint the exact source of the message, the location of Earth. Finally, each includes a map depicting the path of the probes through the solar system and out into wider space and a silhouette of the spacecraft itself. Encoded within these measurements are depictions of various other measurements and characteristics intended both to demonstrate humanity’s understanding of the physical world as well as share information about ourselves and where we’re from. It was a hugely important message that we sent out into the stars, but the scientists behind the Voyager missions decided to provide even more information.
Affixed to the side of both Voyager probes is a copy of a gold-plated audio-visual disk, known as the “Golden Record” – just in case some alien civilization should ever intercept them. These disks are a sort of time capsule of human civilization and life on Earth, including music compositions, whale songs, and a baby crying as well as greetings in more than 50 languages. Each disk also contains an etching of some of the pictographs from the Pioneer plaques in addition to special instructions for how to read the contents of the disks.
All of these efforts are an interesting glimpse into a difficult question to answer: what is the most important information we could send to other advanced civilizations, and how can it be conveyed in a way that can be universally understood? It’s a question that didn’t have to be considered too seriously, but as these four spacecraft were the first ever that would exit our solar system, their status as potential interstellar messengers bearing a permanent record of humanity continues to draw interest and spark the imagination.
But before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s get back to Jupiter – there’s still plenty of exploration to do there.
Never content with a simple fly-by mission, scientists conducted an extensive orbital mission for long-term observation in 1995 with the Galileo spacecraft to study Jupiter and its moons. Galileo was a special achievement of it’s time, utilizing a new design that featured a fixed portion for radiometric and spectrophotometric readings, with a separate spinning module to stabilize the craft and collect measurements from all directions. The Galileo satellite also included an entry probe which would offer the first-ever measurements from inside the atmosphere, including temperature, composition, cloud composition and radio signals.
The insights gained from the Galileo satellite were tremendous. In addition to confirming Jupiter’s 90% Hydrogen composition, wind speeds of over 400 miles per hour and temperatures reaching 570 degrees Fahrenheit before the entry probes were vaporized, the spacecraft also enjoyed a once-in-a-lifetime show: the massive impact of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. The comet had already been torn to pieces by tidal forces from a previous close call with Jupiter, so a bombardment of 21 impacts were observed as the fragments each collided with the planet. The largest of these is estimated to have released the equivalent of 6 million megatons of TNT, more than 600 times the power of the entire world’s nuclear arsenal combined. The result was a fireball visible from telescopes here on Earth, and a gaping dark spot in the cloud layer over 7,500 miles across.
The Galileo mission was definitely a big technological leap from the real Galileo’s quaint little telescope less than four hundred years prior, but one I’d like to think he would be proud to bear his name.
Following the Galileo mission is the ongoing Juno mission, which arrived at Jupiter in 2016 and continues valuable data collection even now, well past the budgeted mission end in 2018. The spacecraft managed to capture the first images of Jupiter’s north pole in 2016 and will manage a few more flybys of the planet and several of its moons before entering a controlled descent into the atmosphere in 2025. And in case you don’t think scientists have a sense of humor: Jupiter’s moons are named for Jupiter’s many lovers in Roman mythology, and the Juno mission to study those moons was named after Jupiter’s unhappy wife.
Now, the amount of data provided by these flyby and orbit missions is incredible, and will take years to completely analyze. But what kind of picture do they paint of Jupiter? What do the mountains of data show?
What we have learned is that Jupiter is very likely much older than the other planets in our solar system. Current models suggest that in the early solar system when the Sun was young, a solid core of water and other volatiles would have formed first, accumulating a gaseous atmosphere from the solar nebula before it dispersed.
Jupiter is mostly composed of hydrogen, so it’s a lot less dense than the rocky planets. To illustrate this fact, we can observe that while Jupiter’s mass is about equal to 318 Earths, its volume (the amount of space it takes up) is equal to more than 1,300 Earths. Interestingly, it is believed that Jupiter is about as large as a planet of its mass and age could possibly be – if it had any more mass the volume would actually shrink and become more dense due to the added gravity.
Gas giants like Jupiter are usually composed of hydrogen and helium, with an outer cloud layer made up of molecular hydrogen gas that gradually transitions to a liquid or supercritical fluid gas-liquid hybrid as pressure builds deeper beneath the clouds. It is believed that many gas giants contain a small solid core at the center of the planet, but from the Juno mission in 2016 scientists observed that Jupiter’s core is more dispersed, possibly as the result of a massive planet-sized impact early after formation.
The stunning photographs provided by the spacecraft visits have revealed a fascinatingly dynamic atmosphere. Because Jupiter does boast the deepest atmosphere in the solar system, it would be easy (and incorrect) to imagine that Jupiter is mostly made of wispy clouds. In fact, the atmosphere doesn’t actually account for much of the total radius. Of a mean planetary radius over 43,000 miles, the atmosphere only accounts for about the first 3,000 miles or so, near 7% of the total radius. Still very impressive as atmospheres go, but not quite a ball of air.
That thick atmosphere is divided into colorful bands we can easily see in the photographs. The lighter areas are called “zones” and the darker bands are called “belts,” and they’re fast-moving currents moving in opposite directions from each other. The color and intensity of these zones can vary over time, but most are stable enough that scientists have named them. The varying colors are caused by compounds called chromophores, probably consisting of phosphorus, sulfur or hydrocarbons being stirred up from deeper in the atmosphere and changing colors as they interact with the sunlight. Wind speeds can reach over 220 miles per hour in these streams, and where the bands meet intense turbulence and storms can occur.
The most notable of these storms is the Great Red Spot, possibly observed as early as the 1660’s by Hooke or Cassini as we discussed earlier, but definitely described in 1831 and closely tracked ever since. It has been shrinking over the last century, with small pieces observed in 2019 actually fracturing off into smaller storms that dissipate over time.
Currently the storm is still quite formidable, especially by Earth standards. It towers over five miles taller than surrounding clouds and stretches over 10,000 miles wide, or just a bit larger than the Earth. Similar to hurricanes on Earth, the center of the storm is relatively stagnant while the edges of the storm blast at a staggering 268 miles per hour. With no solid objects to break the storm’s momentum it has continued to churn for centuries, but some scientists believe it may dissipate within the next 20 years.
The Galileo mission provided evidence for lightning within Jupiter’s stormy clouds, which hint at the presence of water clouds perhaps below the outer layer of ammonia. These lightning blasts are a sight to behold, hundreds of times more powerful than any lightning on Earth and capable of producing dazzling shows high into the upper atmosphere.
And speaking of light shows, the north and south poles of Jupiter provide year-round entertainment. Here the powerful magnetosphere guides particles from the charged solar wind into dazzling interaction with the upper atmosphere, causing brilliant aurorae as we sometimes see on Earth.
If we dive deeper in the atmosphere, Jupiter becomes less familiar and difficult to imagine for humans accustomed to life on Earth. By about 700 miles below the surface of the clouds, you would notice funny things happening to the hydrogen surrounding you. Here the pressure and heat begin to build to such levels that the hydrogen behaves more and more like a liquid the further down you go. There is no distinct boundary between the states, but before long you would find yourself submerged in a transparent atmosphere of liquid hydrogen. As you dive deeper between 10,000 and 15,000 miles below the clouds the hydrogen molecular fluid begins to form metallic fluid. I would generally advise against opening the window of any vehicle which might survive such conditions, but if you’re strapped for cash it might be worth a try to strike it rich here. It’s been theorized that rainfall could be a regular occurrence here, but instead of water it would shower diamonds. Any conventional material protecting you would have vaporized long ago, but if you somehow had a working thermometer it would read almost 9,000 degrees Fahrenheit here.
If that sounds hot, just wait. As you approach the diffuse core, temperatures rise to over 35,000 degrees Fahrenheit, with an estimated pressure of 4,500 gigapascals – over 44 million times more air pressure than we experience here on the surface of Earth. If ears could exist down there, ours would definitely be popping.
This core is the source of some of the most awe-inspiring power in the solar system. Electric currents within generate the magnetosphere that causes the dazzling polar aurorae, the most extensive magnetic field we’ve encountered so far outside of the Sun itself. The field reaches all the way to Saturn, swallowing all of Jupiter’s moons and capturing and accelerating solar particles into bands of dangerously powerful radiation.
These radiation bands are extremely hazardous for both manned and unmanned spacecraft – much of the data and images collected by the visiting missions have been corrupted by their surprising strength. Human travelers would need to be incredibly well protected to venture anywhere Jupiter or it’s moons as the radiation fields enveloping them can be several thousand times more powerful than the belts surrounding Earth.
When it comes to space flight, there are plenty of reasons to be cautious. We have it pretty good here on Earth, and anywhere else we go will generally be pretty dangerous to visit – but Jupiter is in a class of its own in that regard. In 2022 and 2024 Europe and NASA will each launch missions to visit some of Jupiter’s moons, with more missions from NASA and China in the planning stages for possible launch later in the decade.
It may be generations before the technology exists to sufficiently protect human visitors, but in the meantime we’ll continue to send robots to quench our thirst for exploration.
We hope you’ve enjoyed our exploration of Jupiter today and hearing about some of the scientific leaps that have made our current understanding possible. We’re not done with Jupiter yet, though. In our next episode we’ll be taking a closer look at the diverse and fascinating network of moons and other satellites in orbit around this giant, and the interesting implications for human exploration and the continuing search for life outside of Earth.
In the meantime, be sure to subscribe if you haven’t already. Settle the Stars is available on pretty much every podcasting platform, and we’re also mirroring our episodes on YouTube at YouTube.com/EdgeworksEntertainment (and be sure to ring that bell so you know when there’s a new episode). We also have a patreon page at Patreon.com/EdgeworksEntertainment, where you can get early episodes and tons of other great rewards. The support of listeners like you is what makes this show possible, and I am so grateful to the people who have already joined!
Thank you all for listening, and as always, happy terraforming.
Settle the Stars is a proud member of the Edgeworks Nebula, a collection of intriguing and informative podcasts from Edgeworks Entertainment.
Today’s episode is special, we’ll be taking a break from our planet-by-planet exploration of the solar system and instead embarking on a whirlwind tour of the complex and dynamic system of moons orbiting Jupiter. These worlds range from rocky to icy, and from planet-sized spheres to small lopsided mounds, with a variety of compositions and characteristics that have scientists scratching their heads to this day. There are tantalizing hints of rich resources and potentially life-supporting regions that bode well for possible human exploration, and we’ll be taking a close look at many of the major objects in anticipation of what those first explorers might encounter. Much of the information we’ll discuss today is the result of the extensive Pioneer, Voyager, Galileo and Juno missions undertaken within the last century – we discussed these missions more in depth in the last episode about Jupiter, so if you haven’t checked that out, you might want to now for some context.
All done? Ok, welcome back. Let’s talk about the moons of Jupiter!
Viewed as a whole, there is a lot of ground to cover. There are currently 79 known moons in orbit around Jupiter, belonging to several groupings. The first is the regular satellites, which all have prograde orbits – that means they move in a counter-clockwise direction when viewed from above the north pole of Jupiter. That’s the same direction that most things in the solar system are moving. Innermost are the Amalthea group with four members which help maintain Jupiter’s small ring systems. Farther out are the Main Group of four large Galilean moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.
The other broad grouping is the irregular satellites. These are much smaller and orbit much farther away, often on retrograde eccentric or non-circular orbits. There are some sub-families within this group that share similar orbital patterns and provide hints of a shared origin.
Most of these satellites have only recently been discovered, either by closer observation of one of the visiting spacecraft sent from Earth, or more commonly by advanced telescopes here at home. The four largest are known as the Galilean moons, named after their discoverer Galileo Galilei in 1609 or 1610. His discovery marked the first observation of a large body in orbit around an object not the Sun or Earth, which directly contradicted the prevailing Ptolemaic geocentric world system and earned him the scorn of the Catholic church. A close second-place prize for discovery of these four moons is enjoyed by Simon Marius who observed the same four objects only one day after Galileo. (He and Galileo also had some hilariously vicious animosity, with Galileo describing him as “an old adversary,” a “poisonous reptile,” and “the enemy of all mankind.” Then as now, science is a full-contact bloodsport.)
Any mythology buffs out there will recognize the names of the Galilean moons as Zeus’ beautiful favorites and recipients of the Greek god’s interest and sometimes questionable affection. This convention has continued as newer moons are discovered, but even Zeus’ notorious exploits have a limit; since 2004 the names have included his descendants as well. Additionally, all satellites named since Euporie that end in “a” or “o” are prograde irregular satellites, and names that end in “e” are retrograde irregulars. Any little hint to help us as we navigate all these moons today will be welcome, I’m sure.
Before we start moon hopping, let’s set the stage a little bit – after all, it’s not as though the early explorers will be able to just zip straight over. There are many challenges in even getting to Jupiter that are worth considering.
First is the distance. From Earth, a flight to Jupiter is no puddle jump. NASA scientists have some experience in sending objects to Jupiter by now, and current technology places the journey somewhere around six years to complete. Six years, just to get there at all. The current record for continuous spaceflight by a human is held by Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov with a total of 437.7 continuous days. That’s about 1,752 shy of a trip to Jupiter, to say nothing of the mission and the trip back, so the lucky explorers selected for the first Jupiter visit will almost certainly be test subjects for long-term spaceflight in their own right.
Spaceflight boredom is far from the only challenge, however. There’s also the matter of the asteroid belt, a massive area of asteroids orbiting the Sun in a wide belt between Mars and Jupiter. Though the asteroids within are much smaller – the entire belt’s mass combined is equal to about 4% of Earth’s moon – and the belt is much more sparsely populated than science fiction would have you believe, even small objects can cause serious damage to a passing craft. Even a pebble or a grain of sand is enough to do serious damage when you hit it going 35,000 miles an hour!
And while we’re dodging objects, there are others we’ll have to be sure to avoid as we approach Jupiter: the Trojans. By that, I don’t mean the popular brand of condoms or the most excellent USC football team. No, the Trojans are asteroids that orbit with a planet’s orbital path, sheltered in gravitationally stable locations either just ahead or behind the planet as it circles the Sun. You can think of them like debris caught in the planet’s wake as it travels around the sun. Other planets have them, too – there are Neptune trojans, Mars trojans, even a recently discovered Earth trojan. But Jupiter has by far the most – possibly more than two million that are larger than a kilometer across, which is way more firepower than you’d need to end a spaceflight mission.
As spacecraft move between planetary orbits, they often transition between them by “merging” into them from outside the orbit, a bit like entering a highway from an on-ramp. The difference in this case is that the highway we’re merging into is jam-packed with traffic – so a little extra care will be required to make sure we arrive at Jupiter outside of rush hour, so to speak.
But by far the greatest danger on the journey to Jupiter will be radiation. Radiation is always a concern on flights in open space, since leaving the protective shield of Earth’s magnetic field leaves spacecraft vulnerable to charged particles from the Sun and outside our solar system. The good news is, our destination Jupiter has a nice large magnetosphere of its own, like Earth’s but supercharged. The bad news is that the planet generates its own radiation fields that are very large and very powerful, enveloping many of the closer moons and complicating human exploration.
But, once we arrive in the Jovian system for our virtual journey, thankfully without any holes from tiny asteroids or damaged DNA from harmful radiation, we can begin our exploration of the moons.
Starting closest to Jupiter and working our way outwards, we begin with a small group of four innermost moons. These moons are, in order, Metis, Adrastea, Amalthea and Thebe. They might not seem particularly notable as tourist destinations given their small size – Adrastea is smallest at about 16 km across, and Amalthea is largest at 167 km – but they have a special position as originators and maintainers of Jupiter’s faint ring system. Metis and Adrastea keep the inner ring replenished with dust and ice, while Amalthea and Thebe each keep their own faint outer ring. The really spectacular ring show will have to wait for our future episode on Saturn, but a flyby of these moons from behind Jupiter would allow the sun to illuminate them as faint halos stretching from one edge of the sky to the other.
As we head farther away from Jupiter we’ll encounter the first of the four Galilean moons, Io. In contrast to the glowing welcome of the ring systems, Io makes no effort to be inviting. It is one of the most hostile environments in our solar system for humans to visit, but… that almost makes it more exciting, right?
Io is named for a mythological priestess of Hera who became one of Zeus’ lovers. Until the Voyager missions revealed stunning details of the planet’s surface, very little was known about this world.
Io is slightly larger than Earth’s moon, and shines brightly with yellow, orange and brown hues pockmarked with craters and volcanoes. A moon of this size so close to Jupiter experiences intense tidal forces, being constantly crunched and twisted by the gravity of Jupiter and the other Galilean moons with every rotation. You can think of it a bit like playdough or gum: the planet is constantly being squeezed and worked and kneaded, which keeps the interior hot and fluid instead of letting it cool off and solidify. The result is a constantly churning and shifting interior creating the most geologically active object in the solar system.
Thousands of volcanoes eject gigantic plumes of sulfur and sulfur dioxide hundreds of miles above the surface, and intense uplifting events have produced massive mountain ranges taller than Mount Everest. Lava flows can reach over 300 miles long and spread across the surface which is composed mostly of silicate rock.
There is a thin atmosphere, but it offers little relief in the form of moisture or clouds – water simply doesn’t exist here. Io contains the least water by percent composition of any known object in the solar system, probably due to Jupiter’s heat during formation being great enough to drive water molecules away from the nearby moon. The ultra-thin atmosphere consists mostly of sulfur dioxide ejected from volcanoes, certainly nothing you want in your lungs.
We mentioned radiation earlier, and Io is definitely the moon to be most concerned about it while visiting. Io’s composition and location give it an interesting role to play in the magnetism and radiation around Jupiter. Scientists are still studying these complex interactions, but from what we have observed the dust and molecular compounds surrounding Io from its volcanic ejections interact with Jupiter’s magnetosphere to produce some interesting effects. One is a giant torus, or donut-shaped cloud of plasma surrounding Jupiter, consisting of ionized sulfur, oxygen sodium and chlorine from Io’s atmosphere. The second is what has been called the “Io flux tube,” an electric current surrounding the moon generated by the passage of Io (along with its cloud of dust) across Jupiter’s powerful magnetic field. This current is powerful enough to produce an aura in Io’s atmosphere as well as Jupiter’s polar region called the “Io footprint”. Scientists have also found during the Juno mission that the position of Io relative to Jupiter could have a powerful effect on the strength of radio transmissions from the spacecraft.
Before we head to the mountaintops to get a better view of the magnetic auroras, you should know: temperature works a little different than we’re used to here. On Earth, the atmosphere acts as a blanket, keeping lower altitudes more temperate while higher altitudes become colder. On Io, the opposite effect occurs. Extremely cold temperatures at ground level averaging around -260 degrees Fahrenheit keep the sulfur dioxide vapor cool enough to form frost, while higher in the atmosphere temperatures can scorch over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit due to warming from the plasma torus mentioned earlier.
While a fascinating study in magnetism, radiation and volcanology, Io isn’t very inspiring as a destination for future settlers given the difficulty in actually existing on the surface. I hope you packed your parka though, because on our next stop you’re gonna need it.
It’s hard to believe how much more different Europa could possibly be from Io – and while beautifully dangerous in its own ways, at least we can cool off a bit here.
While Europa is the smallest of the Galilean moons, it’s still almost as large as our own Moon. In photographs it appears like a frost-covered Mars, brownish-red with an icy white sheen and deep lines carved across the entire surface. A careful observer will notice on approach that despite the giant cracks lining the surface, there are relatively few craters. Relatively few of… anything, actually. Europa is the smoothest solid surface in the solar system, an interesting curiosity that hints at the possibility of large bodies of water capable of refreshing and smoothing the surface.
Like Io, Europa experiences intense tidal forces from Jupiter and her sister moons, which continuously warm and stir a vast internal ocean and move the surface ice similar to plate tectonics. Evidence for these kinds of activities have come from the Hubble Space Telescope and updated data from the Galileo probe which indicate huge plumes of ice and water vapor could be the result of gigantic cryogeysers. (And if anyone is looking for the coolest word in the English language, I would like to nominate “cryogeysers.”) These cryogeysers erupt as the result of pressure building deep within the icy surface like volcanic geysers here on Earth, which then release that pressure by ejecting materials high into the sky.
The few craters visible on the surface and data from previous missions tell us that the ice covering Europa is quite thick, averaging around 5-20 miles deep. Beneath that scientists believe there is a vast ocean of liquid water estimated to be about 60 miles deep, kept warm by those tidal forces we talked about. Even given Europa’s small size relative to Earth, that could mean the ocean of Europa holds two or three times as much liquid water as our planet. The implications for supporting human activity or even extraterrestrial life in an ocean of liquid water (even if it is encased in ice) make Europa a very attractive proposal for future exploration, and the evidence for geyser plumes could make finding a sample of that ocean easier than drilling miles deep into granite-hard ice.
As radiation is still a serious danger on Europa for humans – a lethal dose would be received within 24 hours – unmanned missions will have to do for now. NASA is currently developing a mission to study Europa more closely to investigate the potential for supporting life. It’s called the Europa Clipper and will conduct 45 low-altitude flybys utilizing radar to penetrate the thick ice sheet, spectrometers and a topographical imager.
We’ll leave the mysteries of the deep for future scientists for now as we make our way farther out from Jupiter to the next moon on our journey: Ganymede.
Named for a beautiful young man taken by Zeus to become the cupbearer of the gods, Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system. If it weren’t orbiting Jupiter, Ganymede would probably be considered a planet in its own right. With a diameter over 3,000 miles, it’s slightly larger than the planet Mercury, though only contains about half its mass. Its crust is composed of about equal parts silicate rock and ice, and its liquid iron core has earned it the distinction of being the only moon in the solar system with its own magnetic field. This field is completely buried within the massive field around Jupiter, however, so it would be more difficult to detect than that of a planet. There are some interesting eccentricities of the magnetic field that scientists are still trying to unravel, but the field does generate an auroral belt with brightening at the poles.
Although about one and a half times the size of the Earth’s Moon, Ganymede resembles it somewhat as a pockmarked grey sphere with lighter and darker regions scattered across the surface. Giant grooves thought be caused by tectonic forces crisscross the planet with many prominent craters. But it’s there that the similarities to our own Moon end.
With data from the Galileo spacecraft in the 1990s and confirmed from observations of the moon’s aurora from Hubble, scientists found evidence of a vast underground ocean covering the surface of Ganymede. The effect observed in the aurora suggests a conductive ocean, meaning the water is probably salty and could exist as several distinct layers of ice, slush and liquid. But by current estimates for a moon of Ganymede’s size, a water ocean that large would easily be the biggest in the solar system.
Like Europa, Ganymede’s sparse atmosphere consists of mostly oxygen. Though it would be easy to assume that the existence of molecular oxygen is an indicator of biological life (that’s where it comes from on Earth, after all), the presence of oxygen can be explained on these watery moons of Jupiter as part of a process whereby water molecules are split by radiation leaving the heavier oxygen atoms while lighter hydrogen is gradually blown away by the cosmic wind.
Human exploration or even habitation of Ganymede is a possibility entertained by some scientists, although even at this distance the radiation from Jupiter is still quite dangerous – a human could last about a month before receiving a deadly dose. But the next stop and last of the Galilean moons might provide some relief in that regard.
Callisto is named for a mythological nymph lover of Zeus’, and in the lineup of Galilean moons is a bit of a black sheep in several regards.
Callisto is very striking visually, and very different from any of the other moons we have visited so far. In stark contrast to Europa’s smooth surface, Callisto is completely covered in craters. Many of these shine bright white or grey against a dark brown or black background, making the moon almost look like a deep-field space image from Hubble.
About the size of Mercury, Callisto lies relatively far outside of the orbits of the other Galileans and is therefore free of much of the tidal forces and planetary interactions that drive so much activity on the other moons. As a result the moon is completely geologically inactive, showing no signs of any current tectonic or volcanic activity – or any evidence that any existed in the past, for that matter.
Instead, Callisto’s most striking visual feature is the sheer number of impact craters. Large, small, old, new, the entire surface is littered with them. In fact, the surface of Callisto is the oldest in the solar system, and is thought to have been formed entirely by impacts as opposed to accretion from the materials present in the early nebula. As a result, Callisto is almost entirely undifferentiated, meaning there aren’t distinct layers of specific compositions making it up. It is possible that the accumulation of mass over time by gradual impacts generate enough pressure within to maintain a subsurface ocean, which is music to a biologist’s ears – but more evidence will be required to confirm.
A tenuous atmosphere of carbon dioxide surrounds the planet, so fragile that scientists estimate it would only take about four days for it to be blown away by the solar wind. That suggests a continuous replenishing from the frozen carbon dioxide within the frozen crust, but the implication is that this is about as robust as Callisto’s atmosphere is going to get.
For all the hopeful moon tourists out there, Callisto is getting some real attention from visionary scientists here at home with regard to possible future habitation. Callisto’s relatively light radiation dosage, calm geology and resources make it capable of supporting fuel production facilities as a sort of gas station for travelers on their way farther out into the solar system, or as a home base for more extensive exploration of Jupiter’s more dangerous moons. An extensive conceptual study conducted by NASA in 2003 called Human Outer Planets Exploration (or HOPE) put Callisto on the map for more detailed planning toward these goals.
And speaking of maps, we have a ways to go on our tour – 71 more known moons are waiting out there for us! Not to worry though, the remaining moons are generally smaller so we won’t need as much time to explore.
With the Galilean moons behind us, we’re passing Themisto now, a sneaky little bugger – only 9 kilometers across, it was first discovered in 1975 before astronomers lost track of it entirely for almost 30 years, before finding it again in 2003.
After that we’ll come up on the Himalia Group, a family of seven prograde irregular satellites named for the largest among them. They vary in size from 3 to 140 kilometers across, and all share some common eccentricities of orbit, suggesting they all came from the same larger asteroid probably pulled from the actual asteroid belt after straying too close to Jupiter long ago.
Up next are a couple of moons with very interesting orbits, Carpo at 3 kilometers and Valetudo at 1 km. These two are not on similar orbits but share a high probability of collision with the Galilean moons sometime in the distant future or perhaps even ejection from the system if a near miss disrupts their orbit.
Most of the remaining satellites are small irregular retrograde moons, many of which haven’t been named yet. The vast majority of these were discovered from the year 2000 right up through 2018 by a team of scientists on Hawaii led by Scott Sheppard using a 3.6 meter optical/infrared telescope atop the summit of Mauna Kea.
One notable group within the remaining set is the Carme Group. These 12 retrograde satellites are grouped close together and share similar eccentricities of orbit like the Himalia Group, again suggesting a common origin. They range from relatively tiny 1 km diameter up to the 47-kilometer-wide moon Carme for which the group is named. They’re also all a similar red color to the Himalia group which could mean they originated from a shared fragment of that group or were pulled from a Jupiter trojan that strayed too close.
If you’re feeling dizzy after all these moons, just imagine how the poor astronomers feel after finding them all. But thanks to their dedication, we’ve learned a lot about how these objects move and interact with each other in space. From orbital collisions to merging magnetic fields and plasma torii, the science has sparked an intense interest in future exploration and observation with many more fascinating discoveries to be made.
I hope you’ve enjoyed zipping around among the moons of Jupiter with us today. Next time we’ll be looking at Jupiter’s stunning neighbor Saturn and finding out more about those mysterious rings. Stay tuned!
In the meantime, be sure to subscribe if you haven’t already. Settle the Stars is available on pretty much every podcasting platform, and we’re also mirroring our episodes on YouTube at YouTube.com/EdgeworksEntertainment (and be sure to ring that bell so you know when there’s a new episode). We also have a patreon page at Patreon.com/EdgeworksEntertainment, where you can get early episodes and tons of other great rewards. The support of listeners like you is what makes this show possible, and I am so grateful to the people who have already joined!
Thank you all for listening, and as always, happy terraforming.
Settle the Stars is a proud member of the Edgeworks Nebula, a collection of intriguing and informative podcasts from Edgeworks Entertainment.
Today we’re visiting one of the most popular destinations in our solar system: Mars. The Red Planet has been the subject of countless sci-fi adventures from the time that mankind realized it was a place we could visit. From the 1800’s when observers first believed they saw artificially created canals on the surface right up through today we have hoped to find life on another planet, and Mars has taken center stage in the search for aliens.
Our trip to Mars will take us face-to-face with some of the most massive geological features and mysterious eccentricities that exist in our solar system – and we’ll learn about what they are still teaching us about Mars, Earth and the rest of the solar system. Interspersed throughout the journey we’ll see examples of past observations and scientific theories have been challenged and shaped by continuous study and reflect on some of the cultural and historical impacts of the planet that we carry even today.
Today’s visit will be imaginary, but it might not be long before you can book your own ticket to Mars. There are several space agencies and private corporations currently racing to be the first to offer passage to the planet. The current front-runner is SpaceX, the venture headed by Elon Musk. So far several successful tests have been conducted with unmanned visits to Mars slated for around 2025. SpaceX hopes to begin large-scale commercial trips in the 2030’s, so intrepid explorers should begin saving now as a ticket could cost you up to half a million dollars.
Fortunately for us, today’s visit is free, safer, and thankfully… shorter.
The real deal will be a grueling seven-month swing through space in what’s known as a transfer orbit – instead of making a direct line from Point A to Point B, space travel requires a little more finesse. Planetary alignments are carefully calculated to anticipate future locations before the craft is lobbed like a shot-put from one planetary orbit to another. Dates and times are important here, and if you miss your launch window you could find yourself stranded (on Earth or on Mars) until the next favorable alignment.
Seven months is no time at all to an astronomer, but to a traveler it can seem an eternity once the novelty of life in zero gravity wears off. For most of the journey there won’t be much to see out the windows aside from the stunning starscape, but some exercise to prevent atrophy and a couple hundred in-flight movies should help pass the time.
As Mars approaches you will have a rare view at the inspiration for uncountable millions of humans who have gazed up at the planet from Earth. The deep orange-red color of abundant iron oxide represented blood and fire to many ancient stargazers – small wonder that the planet became associated with war, fire and destruction to many of them.
Many know Mars to be the Roman god of war, carried over from the Greek god Ares – in fact, in modern Greek the planet is still referred to as Ares. But such a prominent and unique object in the sky was the focus of interest for many other cultures, including the Chinese who named the planet the “fire star” which is an omen which also foretells the coming of war, bloodshed and destruction. In Sanskrit the planet is called Angaraka, after another deity of war. But not all cultures attributed the red color to calamity – the ancient Egyptians named the planet for the red god Horus in charge of kingship and the sky, and ancient Hebrews called it Ma’adim, or “the one who blushes”.
The symbol of the circle and projecting arrow that many recognize as the symbol of the male sex was first seen from manuscripts in the Middle Ages to represent the planet as well as the element of iron. The symbol is actually a pictograph depicting an ancient shield and spear, holdovers from the cultural association with war.
From the window of our ship, it is clear no wars are currently raging on Mars, in fact from here it appears still and quiet. Even though we’re close, the smaller size creates an illusion of distance as the curvature of the planet is much more pronounced than Earth would be at this altitude as Mars is only about half the diameter of Earth.
Depending on the timing, you may be able to see the two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos named after the Greek god Ares’ children. Evidence suggests that the moons are composed of materials normally found in asteroids, leading to one theory that they are actually foreign objects captured by the planet’s gravity – but there are also clues that support another theory that Phobos could have originated from materials ejected from Mars itself as the result of a massive impact event.
Invisible from our little window are our Earth visitor predecessors also circling in orbit around the planet. There are about a dozen man-made satellites currently circling Mars, some long dormant, some still busily collecting data. Beginning with the first successful flyby in 1965 by NASA’s Mariner 4 probe and first ever successful orbit achieved by Mariner 9, the constellation of spacecraft has only grown. Most of the satellites still in orbit today are too small to be viewed from our vantage point – if they were, they’d probably be a little too close for comfort.
Evidence of past calamities is clearly visible though, from massive scars still visible on the surface. The southern half of the planet is pockmarked by craters from ancient collisions. Large meteors have little difficulty reaching the surface through the thin atmosphere, visible from here as a thin band on the horizon.
By contrast, the northern part of the planet is relatively smooth. These are vast plains, flattened out by lava flows millions of years ago. One theory is that billions of years ago Mars was impacted by a massive object hundreds of miles across. That would make Mars the site of the largest known impact crater in the solar system, as large as Europe, Asia and Australia combined.
Shining bright white against the reddish-brown soil we can clearly see the polar ice caps, one of the most promising early discoveries about the planet. Finding frozen water on one area of the planet while being absent from other areas could suggest an intermediate zone where liquid water can exist. Such a zone would bode very well for the hope that Mars could be capable of supporting life – either Martian life in the past or visitors from Earth in the future.
As we descend for landing, some of the major geological features of the planet become more pronounced. Great mountains begin to rise up, with valleys, plains and even canyons carved throughout the landscape. One mountain in particular is unmistakable: Olympus Mons.
The gargantuan shield volcano is easily visible from space, and one of the largest volcanoes in the solar system. Towering two and a half times as high as Mount Everest, the shield volcano sprawls over an area roughly the size of France. We could visit it up close, but ironically it wouldn’t be all that impressive – the shield is so large that the curvature of the planet would prevent us from seeing the entire profile of the mountain. Even if you perched right on top, the bottom would be out of view.
Another unmistakable feature to point out on our way down is the massive system of canyons known as Valles Marineris. This sprawling network of canyons stretches over 2,500 miles across the face of the planet and gouges nearly 23,000 feet deep. If you were perched on the edge, the opposite canyon face would be up to 120 miles away – way too far to even see across.
The Valles Marineris and Olympus Mons appear to have formed around the same time as each other, along with a huge number of other massive volcanoes and lava plains on the planet during the violent Heperian Period of Mars’ geological history which ended about three billion years ago. During this cataclysmic transformation, Mars experienced planetwide volcanic activity and catastrophic flooding which carved massive canyons across the planet’s surface.
Now safely aground at our landing site, it would be hard to believe such a period of upheaval happened here. The ground is rocky and flat, and the sparse atmosphere whips up the dust to welcome us after our long journey.
One of the first stops as tourists has to be to visit an old friend. Not far from where we landed, a small metal rover waits for our welcome.
This particular one is called Sojourner, and it’s been waiting for us here since 1997. NASA lost contact 85 days into what was supposed to be a seven-day mission, and it’s been here accumulating dust and awaiting rescue. About the size of a dog with six wheels and a little solar panel, this experimental rover allowed NASA scientists to develop new methods for movement and control that would improve later designs. Slowly and carefully (as Sojourner’s top speed was about 1 centimeter per second) it managed to journey 330 feet from its home base. And now with us here, Sojourner can retire to a pampered life in Mars’ first museum.
Since the first successful rover Mars 3 achieved by the Soviets in 1971 there have been seven sent to the planet over the years, with two NASA rovers currently active on Mars right now (Curiosity and Perseverance), and the Chinese Tianwen-1 is en route to join them shortly. The seven rovers are spread out across the planet so we can’t visit them all on our trip today, but they have collected invaluable information about the atmosphere and geology of the planet that continue to make a human mission to Mars a reality.
One of the most daunting challenges faced by engineers designing these manned and unmanned missions is this dust – all this dust. It’s exceptionally fine, like talcum powder, and covers the planet so completely that no environment is spared. For mysterious reasons, it even kicks up into massive planet-wide dust storms every few years. The dust can cover camera lenses and solar panels, clog mechanical components and disrupt radio communications. It will be a major part of life for early Martian explorers, and has already been the bane of several rover missions so far.
The dust is carried on the wind of Mars, which can blow quite strongly considering how thin the atmosphere is. The air pressure is exceptionally low compared to Earth, less than 1% of what we’re used to. At that pressure, the air must move at a high velocity to mobilize dust, and wind speeds have been clocked at an average of 10 to 20 miles per hour, reaching as fast as 70 miles per hour in a dust storm.
Compared with the nitrogen and oxygen-rich air we breathe on Earth, the atmosphere on Mars is almost entirely composed of carbon dioxide. It is a heavily oxidizing atmosphere, which explains the rich orange-red color of the planet imparted by the iron oxide present in the dust and soil.
As we look around, the sky is colored a similar reddish orange, thanks to the dust particles, but as the sun sets we can look forward to a brilliant sunset of orange and gold that changes to a lavender and blue twilight against a curtain of high-altitude clouds. As night gradually falls (twilight lasts a bit longer with light scattering through the dust in the air) we would see the stars shine. The dust dims them about a magnitude of brightness, but that’s still better than you’ll get in most suburbs on Earth due to light pollution. And here on Mars they don’t seem to shimmer and twinkle – the atmosphere is too dim for that.
Nighttime also gives us a better sense of the movement of the planet we’re standing on. A day on Mars is remarkably close to a day on Earth – only 39 minutes and 35 seconds longer than we’re used to. If you’re curious how adjusting to the new sleep schedule is, just ask the NASA engineers responsible for keeping Curiosity and Perseverance busy all day. They keep a Martian schedule for their work, though the payroll department probably finds it less entertaining.
Not that we’re bothered thinking about pay while looking at the Martian night sky. In the east we can watch Phobos rise from the western horizon and march across the sky quickly, setting again in the east after taking only 11 hours to cross the sky. It appears to us as only a third of the size of the moon, but the pale color would make it stand out like a bright pebble.
Deimos, on the other hand, rises from the east and sets in the west – not because it moves in the opposite direction, but because its orbit is much slower than Mars rotates on its axis. It is larger than Phobos but much farther away, so to us on Mars it would appear more like a very bright star.
If we had visited in 2014, we would have had a spectacular show indeed. The comet Siding Spring made a close pass of Mars – so close, in fact, that the entire planet may have been engulfed in the tail-like coma for a brief time.
As for other light shows we might enjoy, you might have heard of an aurora phenomenon detected on Mars back in 2016. Unfortunately, we wouldn’t be able to view the sky lights ourselves, as the light show is only visible in the ultraviolet spectrum during the day. But our electronic sensors can sure enjoy the spectacle, and they’ve taught us a lot more about Mars.
On Earth the aurora is caused by the collision of charged particles from the sun with molecules in our upper atmosphere. They only occur near the poles because these charged particles slide off the planet’s magnetosphere like water across a giant balloon, circling around to the poles where the magnetic field originates and sparking the light show.
Mars has only vestiges of a magnetosphere left. The magnetic field collapsed about four billion years ago, theoretically after taking several large hits from asteroids. Without the planetary shielding, the Martian atmosphere has gradually been stripped away by the solar wind. NASA’s MAVEN orbiter studies the upper atmosphere of Mars, and according to the data collected it appears the planet was once surrounded by a more robust, humid layer of air before it was lost to the sun’s energy.
After a night of stargazing, a new Martian day means more exploration for us here on the surface. One of the most important places for us to visit has been impenetrable for our orbiters and landers so far, and the most promising for well-preserved evidence of life-supporting conditions: caves.
A series of cave entrances has been spotted by one of NASA’s satellites along the face of Arsia Mons, a large volcano in the Tharsis Basin southeast of Olympus Mons. Likely formed as part of the volcanic process, these caves are well protected from meteoroid impacts, erosion and damaging radiation from the sun. Obviously, they’re impossible for a wheeled, solar-powered rover to explore, but for humans a little off-world spelunking is Space Exploration 101 so we can get a close first look ourselves.
Inside we might find evidence of liquid water, either in molecular traces, water-requiring mineral deposits or flow erosion. All these clues have been spotted elsewhere on the planet, usually in the basins of craters or up against sheltering cliffs and mountains. In 2018 and 2020, large salty lakes of liquid water were detected by the European satellite Mars Express. As hypothesized, these lakes only exist underground as far as we know, where the sun’s radiation can’t reach them.
It is a testament to the power of the long-term forces of transformation at work at the planetary scale, to find so much evidence of flowing rivers, torrential floods and even oceans all around us – but not a drop to be found on the surface today.
Even if hidden underground or locked in icy stasis at the poles, the presence of water bodes well for the ability of any planet to sustain life. On Earth we have learned that life has a way of surviving in even the most unimaginable conditions, but one condition is essential: water. Water dissolves life-giving substances and allows necessary chemical reactions to take place. It can also act as an insulator, stabilizing temperatures to make it easier for fledgling life to gain a foothold. Life as we would recognize it is simply impossible without water.
Alongside H20, there is one other essential chemical component generally understood as essential for life: carbon. The multi-tool of the periodic table, carbon’s unique expertise as a molecular brick-and-mortar building block makes it the go-to backbone of essential molecules from sugars to proteins and everything in-between. Fortunately, with an atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide, Mars has carbon in spades.
So, we have spent time searching for the requirements life needs to survive, but what about the outputs it generates? Can we detect evidence of life by looking for byproducts of living processes? As it turns out, we’ve been looking there, too.
A common metabolic product of living organisms is a simple molecule called methane. Methane doesn’t last long in the wild, especially in a radiation-rich atmosphere of Mars, so it’s presence would mean an active source. As it turns out, satellites around Mars have detected large plumes of methane on the planet which suggest localized points of origination somewhere near the surface or deep underground. Scientists and E.T. enthusiasts should keep their excitement in check however, as there are several geological processes that could produce similar plumes. But it is a very promising sign that will require further confirmation.
Even if life does not currently exist on Mars, it is possible it once could have in the past. And these possibilities are encouraging to some who believe that what was once possible could be possible again. While still far outside the realm of scientific reality, the theoretical possibility of terraforming Mars – that is, enacting global changes for the purpose of making it more able to sustain life similar to Earth – is an enchanting goal.
Just how to go about such an enormous feat is still in question. Some hypothesize that by introducing bacteria or other microorganisms capable of surviving in the harsh environment the composition of the atmosphere could be gradually changed until larger and more human-friendly organisms like plants could be supported, in turn paving the way for insects or small animals.
Another possibility involves using massive mirror arrays in space or geothermal outlets on the surface to gradually warm the temperature of Mars to unlock greater quantities of life-giving water from the polar caps.
Regardless of the path chosen, even after researched and prototyped to perfection these processes would require investments of money, time and materials on a scale unfathomable to us today. And there are still currently insurmountable challenges that could threaten the entire effort before it even begins: without a magnetosphere, what’s the point of enriching an atmosphere that the sun will only continue to blow away? Is it worth terraforming a planet to support life on a world without any active mineral-recycling tectonic activity as we know it?
As early explorers, our job is to continue the hard work of the satellites and rovers (and the scientists and engineers who control them) to find the answers to these questions. And even if we don’t get right to terraforming the planet, there is still plenty for us to do in preparation for future visitors.
So now with our sightseeing complete, the hard work begins. The exploration of Mars means more to humankind than the opportunity to learn more about planetary formation and evolution. It provides space and a safe (relatively speaking) environment for building our first habitats away from Earth.
Mars sits on the edge of the massive and dangerous asteroid belt. Assuming humankind’s exploration of the solar system is only beginning, Mars could provide an important space for repairs and refuel for spacecraft heading farther out into the unknown. Colonies – or entire cities, eventually – could be supported by mining, low-gravity manufacturing, and even tourism industries as the foundations we lay now continue to grow. Just imagine the competitive sports scene on a world with 39% of the gravity of Earth!
Today’s episode has been an interesting view into the history and future of space exploration focused on Mars and the important place it holds for humankind. We hope you’ve enjoyed our journey and look forward to continuing the adventure in our next episode!
In this episode we’ll be visiting Venus, our nearest neighbor and one of the most-watched objects in our sky throughout the ages. In our journey we’ll learn about some of the strangest and fiercest conditions our Solar System has to offer: scorching heat, crushing pressure, dueling hurricanes and acid rain. We’ll find out the latest in the search for alien life in this hellscape and learn about the pivotal role Venus has played in some of the most important discoveries in history and the important lessons she continues to teach us about our own home on Earth.
To us here on Earth, Venus is not some faraway, unknown world. When we think about it, we don’t need some special mnemonic device as we would to remember the moons of Saturn or a special code designation like we use for the many comets buzzing around the Sun. It’s right there in the sky, a familiar bright star clearly visible from just about everywhere on Earth. In fact, before you even knew what a planet was, you might have even wished upon it with the popular poem: “Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight…” As the brightest object in the sky after the Sun and Moon, it’s no wonder at all that Venus has captured our attention the way it has.
Throughout history Venus has been a subject of interest and inspiration for us here on Earth. Because Venus is closer to the Sun than us, it never strays far from it in the sky – which explains why it is visible in the morning or evening when the Sun is just below the horizon. It also follows a synodic cycle in which the planet becomes invisible as it gets near the Sun, and then appears again on the opposite horizon on the other side of the Sun. During this cycle, the planet can be observed quite high in the sky, but never quite reaches the apex. These interesting features stirred the imaginations of early stargazers, who told stories about the gods and goddesses they attributed to Venus as a way to illustrate and explain these observations.
The disappearing act Venus plays, visible for a time in the morning and then switching to the evening as the planet passes Earth in its orbit, was of intense interest to many ancient cultures. Many interpreted the phenomenon as an illustration of a god with two balanced aspects or explained the temporary disappearance (which lasted about three days) as a divine journey to the underworld.
The ancient Mesopotamians who lived where Iraq is today named the planet Inanna after the goddess of love and war – balanced aspects of life and death. They recorded stories of Inanna’s journey into the underworld, her death and rebirth, to explain the disappearance of the planet from the sky. In fact, many details of Inanna’s saga, from her journey to Kur, or the mountains of the West, to a heavenly search for her enemy can be linked to the movements of Venus in the sky.
Across the globe in Vietnam, ancient stargazers believed the morning star and evening star were two separate entities. Folklore tells the story of two separated lover stars, sao Mai and sao Hôm, destined to search for each other and remain apart forever.
In classical Roman mythology, Venus was known as “Lucifer”, or “Light-Bringer” in Latin, in the morning and Vesper in the evening. This mythology carried over into Christian stories of a fallen angel who was punished for attempting to climb too high within heaven, another link to Venus’ path which approaches – but never quite reaches – the apex of the sky. Ancient myth about the planet was adopted elsewhere by Christians, appearing again in the book of Revelation, in which Jesus refers to himself as the “bright morning star”. Interestingly, according to the story Jesus eventually undergoes his own three-day period of death and rebirth celebrated annually as Easter.
Perhaps no culture was as intensely devoted to Venus than the Mayans. To the Mayans, Venus was known as Chac ek, “The Great Star”. To the Mayans, Chak ek was the most important celestial body – even more so than the Sun and Moon. Their calendars meticulously recorded the movement of the planet and predicted its activity over a period of thousands of years, accurate to within the hundredth part of a day. The Mayans believed Chac ek influenced the activities and quality of life on Earth, and all major events within the empire – including war – were carefully timed to coincide with the position of the planet.
All these cultures and societies all over the world – too many to mention – were enthralled by this mysterious Morning Star and the mysterious order of her movement across the sky. By observing, tracking and recording Venus and the other planets as meticulously as they did, a general understanding and appreciation emerged for astronomy. This in turn advanced our understanding of the physics, optics, mathematics and geometry necessary to successfully observe the stars, leading to even more discoveries.
More recently, Venus contributed to Europe’s domination of the globe during the age of exploration. Back in the 1700’s the seafaring nations were busy colonizing, waging war and trading all around the world. But even with their new expertise and expensive warships, a seemingly simple question of navigation confounded them: How can a sailor accurately measure his location on the planet independently? How far north or south of the equator a navigator is – or latitude – can be identified relatively easily by measuring the angle of the Sun at noon. But identifying location longitudinally, or how far east or west one has travelled, is a much more difficult problem that led to some tragic and embarrassing shipwrecks at the time.
It was believed that having an exact measurement for all these relevant navigational references – the distance from Earth to the Sun, the distance to the planets, and the size of the Earth itself would contribute to a solution and provide an answer to the question of navigation. And as it happened, a rare astronomical event – the transit of Venus – would provide an opportunity to provide that information.
The transit of Venus is the name for the special alignment of the Sun, Venus and Earth. An observer here on Earth can witness Venus as it transits – or travels – across the face of the Sun. Astronomers at the time realized that by timing the length of time it takes for Venus to pass between the Earth and Sun from various vantage points across the globe, all kinds of measurements could be calculated: the size of the Sun, Venus and Earth, for starters – as well as the distances between each of them.
The scientists realized they would only get two shots at this, because transits of Venus are a once-in-a-lifetime event. The orbital cycles produce a pair of transits eight years apart about every century, so expeditions were prepared around the world in one of the first international scientific endeavors to record the transits in 1761 and 1768.
The transit of Venus in 1761 was an excellent trial run. The expeditions included a new team of astronomer Charles Mason and surveyor Jeremiah Dixon, whose excellent observations would make them famous enough to be called to settle a land dispute in North America by establishing the historic Mason-Dixon Line.
But the second transit in 1768 was the main event, with observers sent from the arctic circle to the south Pacific. A special scientific commission from King George III placed Lt. Captain James Cook in command of the Endeavor to lead the expedition to Tahiti. After a successful observation of the transit from the southern islands, Captain Cook steered his ship westward to eventually reach the mythical Terra AustralisIncognita and claim the continent now known as Australia for the British Empire.
So, we see how even as an object of curiosity and inquiry, Venus has played a major role in the shaping of our collective human history. Major advances in the study of physics, astronomy and mathematics were made in our attempt to better understand the planet and how it related to our own.
Over the centuries as telescopes became more advanced we would observe that the entire planet is permanently engulfed in thick clouds, spurring imaginative theories and fictions of advanced civilizations living and breathing just like us.
Once we got a closer look with the help of satellites and probes, we realized how unlikely that was. Since 1961, 42 missions have been attempted to explore Venus, with the first successful flyby in 1962 by NASA’s Mariner 2 probe. The first ever successful human landing on another planet was achieved by the Soviet Venera 8 lander in 1972. While the data returned from Venera 8 was limited, subsequent landings and flybys painted the picture of a planet far different from the beckoning and jubilant morning star celebrated by so many cultures around the world.
These early observations depicted a hellscape. An atmosphere dense enough to crush a steel craft raged in a perpetual tempest at the poles, and where scientists hoped clouds might offer life-giving rain almost no trace of water was found. Instead, corrosive sulfuric acid was found in abundance, with the toxic liquid actually raining down from the sky at higher altitudes. And across every surface, infused in every gust of caustic wind, was an astonishingly intense heat.
It became clear that any life here would be having a rough time of it. By the 1970s it was clear that complex life on the planet would not be viable, but scientific debate continues even today on whether the atmosphere might support colonies of extreme bacteria or similar organisms. Evidence for life continues to be sought within the data and spectrophotometric data collected so far, but definitive confirmation will hopefully be provided by one of the 15 future missions currently being developed by various agencies worldwide.
So, what does all this mean for potential human exploration? How would an explorer experience these conditions firsthand? By compiling our observations so far we can make a rather good guess.
Step one for many explorers will probably be to say goodbye to friends and loved ones – doubly so for the first visitor to a world as dangerous as Venus. Not necessarily because it is a suicide mission – scientists and engineers will do their best to keep you safe – but because early manned voyages probably won’t come with a return ticket. Fuel and repairs are tough to come by without infrastructure, and the thick atmosphere of Venus will require an immense amount of thrust to relinquish any craft back to open space. So, the first explorers will probably become permanent residents to pave the way for future visits.
Fortunately, Venus is close, a mere 24.8 million miles at its closest, but it’s never a straight shot between orbiting planets. The quickest trip to Venus so far was accomplished by Mariner 2 in 1962 which spent 109 days en route. It’s probably safe to assume a trip will take around 120 to 130 days, or 4 months. In terms of space travel, that’s a quick commute. If you manage a full night’s rest all along the way you’d be left with about 2,000 hours’ worth of time to kill. Assuming any interplanetary explorer worth their salt is a fan of Star Wars, you’d have enough time to watch the full series of 11 live-action movies only 80 times or so before it was time to land.
But sadly, you probably wouldn’t get the chance to make it through that many. Your waking hours will more likely be filled with exercise to keep your muscles and bones strong as they become accustomed to weightlessness, patching up the occasional damage caused by a stray piece of debris or conducting experiments to make future long-term space travel easier for future explorers. So maybe you’d only get to see Star Wars 30 or 40 times. Bummer, I know. But the real work begins once Venus is in view.
The first task will be determining a final position to bring the spacecraft in for landing. Beneath the clouds the surface is generally rocky and uneven just about everywhere, so the main consideration will be weather. The clouds will obscure your view of the sky anywhere on the planet, but the equator offers less wind which is no small concession. As far from the poles as you can get is usually where you want to be on Venus.
Scientists were mystified to discover that both the north and south poles of Venus are crowned by intense storms unlike anything they’ve seen before. At each pole swirls a violent double vortex, each of which churns like two hurricanes here on Earth circling around each other. The south pole has been better observed, where the combined size of this huge storm is estimated to be as large as Europe with wind speeds of over 300 kilometers per hour. Most of the wind at surface level is composed of carbon dioxide, which makes up 96.5% of the atmosphere, and most of the rest is nitrogen. That means the air is much, much heavier than here on Earth – about 50 times as dense. So, if 300 kilometer-an-hour winds doesn’t sound all that bad to you, remember that it packs a much heavier punch.
If it’s all the same to you, I suggest we land closer to the equator where wind speeds are usually down to about 5 km/hr. Our landing module will be reinforced like a submarine to counter the intense pressure of the atmosphere as we descend. Even just alighting atop a hill on the surface of Venus is the pressure equivalent of diving 3,000 feet underwater here on Earth. Admittedly, most submarines on Earth aren’t bathed in sulfuric acid before they carry people deep underwater, but unfortunately there’s no way around it here on Venus. The thick clouds covering the planet are almost entirely composed of the corrosive acid, so our lander will have to be well protected to ensure we continue to withstand the pressure and heat as we descend. And boy, is it hot. Venus has the hottest temperatures in the Solar System outside of the Sun, thanks to that thick blanket of clouds. Our poor landing module will also need to protect us from temperatures hot enough to melt lead, around 880 degrees Fahrenheit (that’s 470 Celsius). At least we won’t get zapped by lightning. Probably. The clouds do appear capable of producing lightning like on Earth, no strikes have been observed directly yet so if it does occur it’s likely pretty rare. So that’s good.
But here we are at last, safe and sound on our own little slice of paradise – we survived the wind, the acid clouds, the scorching heat and the crushing pressure. Now what?
I don’t think a little sightseeing would be out of the question, we did just travel quite a long way after all. But if you’re waiting to see what a sunset looks like beneath the churning clouds of Venus, you might be waiting a while. A single day on Venus is as long as 243 days on Earth – that’s the slowest rotation in our solar system by a long way. And not that it will make much of a difference from under the acidic haze, but the Sun will actually set, very slowly, into the eastern horizon instead of the west.
There won’t be different seasons to speak of like we’re used to on Earth, so no need to plan a different outfit for the springtime – you’ll find your ultraprotective suit to be conveniently stylish year-round here. A supercritical sea of carbon dioxide at ground level would probably make walking outside feel like you’re trudging along underwater, but at least the thick atmosphere will keep us as cozy as a pot in a kiln throughout the long night. On second thought, it’s probably best to get back inside.
Safe within our surface submersible we can turn our attention to observation and experimentation, to attempt to unravel some of the other grand mysteries Venus still holds.
For starters, as we look up into the toxic, roiling clouds: how has the atmosphere changed into this incredibly hostile state? There are a lot of unexpected peculiarities about Venus’ sky for us to consider, for example its composition – for being so similar to Earth in size, composition and location, the air of Venus is highly enriched with noble gasses as compared with Earth. Does this hint that the planets formed from very different primordial nebula compositions, despite their proximity? Or perhaps a large comet impact delivered the gasses in some past collision? There are likely many clues to be found within the craters and rocks of the planet to help support or discount these theories.
What’s going on beneath our feet, anyway? What lessons can we learn about volcanism and plate tectonics? What evidence can we find beneath the clouds that are impossible for our telescopes and probes to see from above? It is clear that volcanoes once covered the landscape – in fact, there are many times more volcanoes on the surface of Venus than Earth, and many of them are larger than the largest here on Earth. But are any of them still active? Perhaps this is explained by the fact that without the continuous recycling of crust that the Earth undergoes, the Venusian volcanoes simply last longer, shielded from erosion and impacts by the thick atmosphere?
Erosion does seem to work differently on Venus. On the occasion that an object manages to punch through the thick Venusian clouds, it makes a crater just like you would expect. On Earth, such craters are worn down by wind and rain, and on a world with no atmosphere the craters are gradually erased by… other craters. But most of the craters on Venus appear to be in pristine condition.
Paired with the high number of well-preserved but quiet volcano calderas, these observations support a prominent theory that Venus underwent a globally catastrophic resurfacing event sometime around 300 to 600 million years ago. Perhaps in contrast to Earth’s gigantic conveyor belts of crust being generated and subducted, Venus alternates between long periods of geologic calm, gradually building temperature and pressure until everything is released in a massive, planet-wide eruption. Perhaps a quick escape pod would be a good idea after all…
And speaking of erosion, where has all the water gone? With such an abundance on nearby Earth, surely there would be traces on our twin world. One hint lies in one curious detail: Venus lacks a large internally generated magnetic field like the one Earth has. Instead, it’s much weaker magnetic field is induced as an interaction between the outer ionosphere as it collides with the solar wind from the sun as opposed to an internal dynamo generated by convection currents in the mantle. Not only is this more evidence that the internal workings of the planet differ from Earth’s, but also helps explain the lack of water: as the heat of Venus rose and water evaporated, it was gradually blown away by the solar wind without a protective magnetic field.
There are many differences between the Earth and Venus, but from the perspective of organisms living on a planet currently undergoing rapid climate change, the lessons from Venus are invaluable. Evidence shows that in the past Venus was likely quite different, with global, permanent changes to the characteristics of the planet imposed by a drastic runaway greenhouse effect. Whether the effect was initiated by some specific geologic event or gradually snowballed as a natural progression from its initial composition is still in question, but the very real and profoundly serious effects of these processes is well worth our study. We could learn more about the forces at work in our environment on Earth, helping us prepare for new challenges or warning us of the catastrophic consequences of our actions.
To encourage future expeditions to the planet, it will fall to us as the first explorers on Venus to make sure the adventurers to follow find more comfort and access than our little shelter can provide.
One promising idea is to take advantage of the thick Venusian air and sail atop it in a great airship instead of sheltering on the surface. A container of air as we would find it on Earth would be quite buoyant indeed on Venus, which has caused some engineers to envision entire colonies – or even cities – of humans floating above the clouds to continue study of the planet from above.
A valuable takeaway from our visit to Venus is that even after the dozens of successful probe and lander missions, centuries of observation from telescopes, an impressive array of sensors and massive amounts of data, our nearest and most similar neighbor still holds so many questions to be answered. Next to the farthest and strangest space anomalies detectable from Earth, it can seem like the book on Venus has been written and closed already – but nothing could be further from the truth.
We hope you enjoyed our visit to our sister planet today and learned some interesting facts to feed your curiosity about this mysterious planet. We’ll be continuing our journey next week to another familiar destination with another personal interplanetary tour – this time of the Red Planet, Mars.
Settle The Stars- Mercury: Turning Slowly, Moving Fast
Alexander Winn takes us to Mercury to discuss how… habitable it is.. or (spoiler alert) it isn’t.
Transcript:
Hey folks, this is Alexander Winn.
In this episode we’ll be visiting Mercury, the fascinating small rocky world zipping around the Sun. This will be the first in a series of episodes exploring the solar system and all the unique histories, challenges, and opportunities it includes, one planet at a time.
Mercury has captured the attention and imagination of stargazers for millennia, and today we’ll take a closer look at the mysteries and discoveries that continue to shape our understanding of this little planet.
Based on all the information accumulated, we can sketch out our likely observations as we make our own imaginary visit to the planet.
Planning the trip would have been slightly different from visiting other planets in the Solar System. A route to Mercury must take into account its unique orbit, which is the most eccentric of all the planets. That means that if you were to look at the orbit from above, you would notice it doesn’t follow a circular path around the Sun. The actual orbital path looks more like an oval, with the Sun slightly off-center from the middle. The result is that the distance between the Sun and Mercury can vary quite a bit, from 46 million kilometers to 70 million kilometers at opposite ends.
As we approach and enter Mercury’s orbit in preparation for landing, we would find the surface to look a lot like that of the Moon – heavily cratered and grey. One crater is particularly striking, due to its massive size. It’s called the Caloris Planitia and could comfortably fit the state of Texas. This crater was caused by an impact so large that the terrain on the opposite side of the planet has also been altered – possibly by shockwaves traveling around the planet and converging on the other side.
There would be mountains and ridges as expected, but upon closer inspection we would notice what look like strange ripples and wrinkles in the landscape. These are features first spotted by probes, and evidence that the planet is actually shrinking – albeit very slowly. The radius of Mercury has decreased by about one to seven kilometers over time as the inside of the planet has cooled, leaving the outer crust to bunch up into these strange shapes.
In the past Mercury had a lively volcanic history. As we peer out of our imaginary spacecraft we can still see some evidence of volcanic activity in the form of cooled lava flows in some locations, but now that the inside of the planet is cooler the volcanoes have stopped.
The inside of the planet has not cooled completely, though – surprisingly our ship’s magnetometer can tell us that right away. Surrounding the planet is a strong and stable magnetic field. This field is much like that on Earth in that it is dipolar and aligned with the rotational axis of the planet, but much weaker – only about 1.1% as strong as our own. These magnetic fields have only been observed on planets with a liquid-hot, iron-rich core, which generates the field with what’s called a dynamo effect.
As we make our preparations for landing, one more striking feature becomes obvious to us: the planet is rotating very slowly. One day on Mercury lasts 58 Earth days, and when you account for the quick time it takes to revolve around the Sun, the small planet completes three of its days every two Mercurian years.
Scientists have some of these observations – the slow rotation, the impact crater, the eccentric orbit, and strange terrain – linking them to a single impact event that has forever changed the planet. There is evidence that the entire planet was once tidally locked in its orbit around the Sun, in the same way the Moon is tidally locked around the Earth. The Moon orbits the Earth and rotates on its axis in an extremely stable arrangement in such a way that only one side of the Moon ever faces the Earth. Similarly, for possibly billions of years Mercury only showed one face to the Sun.
Scientists believe that an object at least 62 miles in diameter smashed into the planet, forming the massive crater and causing the slow rotation we observe today.
Once on the ground, our bodies begin to adjust once again to the presence of gravity. We only weigh a bit more than 1/3 what we do on Earth, but our muscles, skeletons and sense of balance welcome the familiar feeling of solid ground underfoot.
Our imaginations and intuitions are mostly correct as we begin exploring Mercury. It’s the closest planet to the Sun, so it must get pretty hot, right? Absolutely, to the tune of 800 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s over six times hotter than the highest temperature recorded on Earth, in Death Valley California – so double-check your spacesuit coolant. And while you’re at it, check the heating mechanism too, because what is less obvious is that due to its extremely thin atmosphere, almost all this heat dissipates as the planet slowly rotates out of the sunlight. The result is a long, cold night where temperatures can reach as low as -136 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s the largest surface temperature discrepancy anywhere in the Solar System, and just more evidence that the climate on Mercury can be very… well, mercurial.
And not that you need reminding, but better keep that helmet on. The atmosphere on Mercury is barely there and very transient, being replenished by evaporation and radioactive decay of elements on the surface of the planet just as quickly as its being blown away by the solar wind. Certainly nowhere near breathable, let alone fly the space kite we brought.
If it isn’t obvious yet, Mercury is not very hospitable to human visitors. It is much more comfortably observed from afar as we’ve enjoyed doing so far.
[History of Human Exploration]
Mercury is visible to the naked eye, so it’s been on the mind of astronomers on Earth for an awfully long time. The first thing that probably stood out to early stargazers is that against a backdrop of stars that march across the sky in more or less the same formation, Mercury is one of only a handful of lights that follows a different path. We know now that these independent bodies are in fact planets, but back then they were special stars – and deserved special names to designate their higher status.
It would be easy to assume that Mercury was named after the god of communication and commerce for obvious reasons. It moves so quickly relative to the other stars, and it never moves far from the Sun in the sky, after all. These are qualities we would expect the messenger for a king to have. But it’s actually likely that the god Mercury (and similar gods in other cultures around the world) only exist because of the planet. Without the unique qualities providing inspiration, perhaps there wouldn’t be a messenger god in the pantheon at all.
Whatever the reason the name has stuck, and it’s very appropriate. We say that things are “mercurial” when they change quickly, which perfectly exemplifies the small planet’s quick movement around the Sun and drastic surface temperature changes. But quick as it is, Mercury was spotted and recognized well before the Romans got around to naming it.
The ancient Greeks actually applied two different names to the planet originally. It was called Hermes when the planet was visible in the evening after sunset, and Apollo when visible in the morning before sunrise. Eventually Hermes stuck for both as it became clear the two were the same object, which the Romans adopted as Mercury.
Ancient Babylonians attributed similar divine qualities to the planet, naming it Nabu after the god of writing and divine messages. The Babylonians also attributed both male and female aspects to the planet because of its appearance as both a morning and evening star.
Cultures around the world have watched Mercury closely for centuries, often linking its movements, characteristics and even mythology with that of Venus. Because these two planets are both closer to the Sun than Earth, they follow a different pattern across the sky than the rest. Being closer to the Sun also means they both exhibit phases when viewed from Earth, like our Moon.
Being closer to the Sun from Earth also means that from here we’re able to observe an event called the “transit” of each planet, which is when the planet passes between the Earth and the Sun. Mechanically it’s like a solar eclipse, except that because Mercury is so much farther away from us from the Moon it doesn’t block as much light from the Sun. You wouldn’t even notice it happening if you weren’t looking at the Sun, but these events fascinated early astronomers as they were valuable opportunities to estimate the size and distance of objects within the Solar System with a little help from geometry.
Transits of Mercury are quite frequent given the speed of the small planet’s orbit, but much rarer are events called “occultations”. These occur when multiple planets align perfectly in their orbits with Earth, and astronomers in 1737 were delighted to observe the occultation of Mercury and Venus from the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. The same event won’t happen again until December 3, 2133.
Mercury’s closeness to the Sun and tiny size makes it quite difficult to observe from Earth, so it was only a matter of time before we tried getting right up close for a look. But of course, being near the Sun also presents unique challenges to probes and spacecraft as well. For starters, there is less room for navigational errors. In wider space adjustments are easy to make with small thrusters. But when targeting a small object so close to the Sun, high speeds and proximity to the star mean that one wrong move could send your expensive probe right into the Sun. Of course, radiation and temperatures threaten to fry the delicate instruments and electronics as well.
But as you might expect, those challenges haven’t been enough to dissuade us from taking a shot at a valuable up-close look at Mercury.
In the mid-1970’s, Mariner 10 made the first fly-by of the planet and provided an unprecedented view of the planet’s geological features and discovered the planet-wide magnetic field. The field was a big shock to everyone at home. Mercury’s slow rotation was though to be a sure indicator of a geologically dead planet incapable of generating such a field, but in fact the field is structured and behaves similar to our own and helps shield the planet from some of the bombardment of solar radiation. Mariner 10 shut down after making three close passes to the planet and – barring an unlikely collision with a space rock – could still be out there orbiting the Sun, occasionally passing by Mercury again for a quiet visit.
In 2005, we got our second chance to view Mercury with updated equipment. NASA’s satellite MESSENGER was equipped with an array of instruments to capture more data about the planet over a year-long observation. Scientists were eager to see more of Mercury’s surface and find out more about the geological history, search for water, and puzzle out how it can maintain even a sparse atmosphere. We discovered that there is in fact water on the surface of Mercury, locked in ice deep in craters and crevices away from the sunlight. MESSENGER completed its mission successfully on April 24, 2015 and went out with a bang – leaving a 52-foot crater as it fell to the surface.
[Future Human Exploration]
The future of Mercury is bright – please pardon the pun. In 2018, the European Space Agency and the Japanese Space Agency joined together to launch BepiColombo, a new mission to probe the planet and discover even more. When it reaches Mercury in 2025 it will spend a year studying the magnetic fields and capturing a variety of new infrared, ultraviolet, X-ray and gamma ray images of the surface to answer some of the biggest questions we have about the planet. As is normal for all scientific ventures, hopefully these new observations will lead to even more questions, more missions, and more discoveries in the future.
[Outro]
Building on the contributions and careful observations of astronomers for centuries, we’ve collected a huge amount of information about one of the most mysterious and unusual planets in our Solar System. I hope you enjoyed learning about Mercury, and I look forward to continuing our voyage across the stars in upcoming episodes.
In the meantime, be sure to subscribe if you haven’t already. Settle the Stars is available on pretty much every podcasting platform, and we’re also mirroring our episodes on YouTube at YouTube.com/EdgeworksEntertainment (and be sure to ring that bell so you know when there’s a new episode). And don’t miss the other awesome shows that are part of the Edgeworks Nebula: Slice of Science, the Synthesis, and our upcoming show You Have My Sword, where Krysti Pryde will be analyzing and deep-diving into the world of Lord of the Rings and JRR Tolkien’s Middle-earth.
Thank you all for listening, and as always, happy terraforming.
Settle the Stars is a proud member of the Edgeworks Nebula, a collection of intriguing and informative podcasts from Edgeworks Entertainment.
THE Andy Weir, author of “The Martian”, joins us to talk about his NEW BOOK, “Project Hail Mary”. It’s our Season 1 Finale, so like NBD. He tells Lacey she’s pretty and Alex that he likes TerraGenesis (!!!). We all try to keep our cool… uhmm sort of. We geek out over books, film and of course, Andy’s dog, Coco. Pick up a copy of Andy Weir’s new book “Project Hail Mary” today!
𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕊𝕪𝕟𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕤𝕚𝕤 is a live talk show that aims to find the relationship between science and fiction in pop culture. We’ll discuss a book, movie, or show each week that’s science-focused and talk about just how realistic it is, where reality is cooler than fiction, and exactly where certain liberties were taken.
00:08
Hey folks, this is Alexander Winn. And I am Lacey Hannan.
00:12
And we are here with the latest episode of The Synthesis, the show where we talk about real science in entertainment. This week we are talking about “Project Hail Mary”, the new book by Andy Weir who wrote the Martian, which we went through chapter by chapter as well as Artemis. This is an awesome book, I sat down with the intention of reading it over the course of a week, and I read it in about 18 hours. And, yeah, this week, the cool thing that we have is,
00:39
we have in the interview with Andy Weir, yes. And we talked about Hail Mary, we talked about some of his past projects, we talked about some of his future projects. So if you’re keen to know all things Andy, we’re and the entertainment he puts out for us, then tune in to the rest of this because we have a good time. It’s fun, it’s casual.
01:03
That being said, there are a few spoilers for the story. We don’t give away everything. We don’t give away any of the major plot twists. But we do talk about things that are revealed halfway through the book or that sort of thing. So if you are really intense about avoiding spoilers, and you’re really looking forward to this book, maybe go grab it, it should be on shelves now. And come back and check it out. Once you’re done reading.
01:28
I hope you guys enjoy it as much as we did, because we thoroughly we thoroughly loved this book. I mean, I would say that it’s quite a bit different than then his past work. And that was fun. And it was interesting to see him. Take a new
01:46
Yeah, it’s got everything that you like about the Martian and Artemis, but it’s got some new elements that he hasn’t played around with in his stories yet, which is, which is fun.
01:56
So take a gander, you guys.
02:01
All right. We are here with Andy, we’re author of project Hail Mary, which we have right here, which is an excellent book that Lacey and I read over the last week, I expected to read it over the course of about five days. And I ended up reading it in just under 24 hours. ended up really cutting into what I was planning to do that day, but I have no regrets. So joining us as Andy Weir, the author, thank you so much for being here.
02:27
Thanks for having me.
02:28
The first question that I have is, you know, I’ve seen other interviews that you’ve done for the Martian. And for Artemis, I’m a huge fan of both books. And I noticed, you know, when when you were talking about the Martian, you talked about how that story really began as just sort of Andy we’re got curious about how a Mars mission would work, and started working out the details. And then you’ve mentioned that Artemis sort of began as Andy Weir got curious about lunar economics and how a city on the moon network, or really more about like, what will humanity’s first city that’s not on earth be? Yeah, what will it be like?
03:04
So I’m wondering, is it safe to say that project Hail Mary basically began as Andy Weir got curious about how alien biology might work? Or was there something else that led you to this particular story?
03:16
So is there an issue with the dog being here? Just checking. Okay.
03:20
I love that. Yes.
03:22
Your audience will be like, why is Andy Weir hugging a mop? Um, no. So, actually, like project Hail Mary came from a bunch of different ideas, I had four different stories that didn’t really flesh out each on their own. But somehow, in a series of shower epiphanies, they really fit well together as a single cohesive story. Now it looks like when you read it, it seems like oh, yeah, everything leads logically. But like, these were all chunks that I put together from other stories, strangely enough, astrophysics itself was came from a story that I was working on, that I never published, where they had a spacecraft fuel, that could do mass conversion and turn it into light. propulsion. And, you know, I never got anywhere with that story, but it’s, it’s in Project Hail Mary. Then there’s another one where a character that I lifted directly from one of my other stories, was a woman who had just this massive amount of secret authority. Like she can just basically tell governments what to do. And they do it. And but nobody knew who she was or that, you know, or, you know, stuff like that. And she was working toward a, you know, a non selfish goal. And so, okay, so she’s in the book, that’s the character of strap. And then also, I had an unrelated idea of a guy waking up aboard a spaceship with amnesia, you know? Yeah. And then yeah, and then we’ve had our spoiler warning already. Yes. And then also the notion of a first context. Yeah, so all those things ended up dovetailing together really nicely.
05:05
Yeah, well, they like you said they came together seamlessly.
05:08
They did. I would be curious. You know, in talking in what you said about the guy waking up on a spaceship with amnesia, this narrative breaks the mold of your other ones. How was it writing something that was more of a mystery than your last two books?
05:32
It felt great. I love it. Because I’ve learned while I’m writing it, because when I’m writing, I’m always reading what I wrote, and putting myself in the mindset of like, okay, now I’m a reader who doesn’t know anything other than what I’ve read so far in the story. And what I found is that there’s nothing for pulling a reader along, like as unfolding mystery, like making the reader wonder, okay, what’s going on here, and then giving them a little bit of information. And then they’re like, oh, okay, another clue. And they like that. The biggest challenge for me was that, if I told the story linearly, if I just told it, like, from the beginning of all the events that happened to the end of all the events that happen, it would be a very weird story. It would be like, all the characters in the first act, you’d never see them again. You know, once they launched the ship, and then the one of the most important characters you wouldn’t see until the middle of the book. Yeah, like Rocky. Yeah. And, and then so it just be like, there were two books that were glued together. And it wouldn’t make a lot of it would not be enjoyable. So I hate flashbacks. I’m the first person to tell everybody when they’re asking for writing advice. One of the things I say is don’t do flashbacks. So here I am a massive hypocrite. But it was really the only way I could tell the story without having a really weird disjoint sequence of events. So I figure I tried to think of, well, what what is it that bugs me so much about flashbacks? And what bugs me is I’m usually really invested in the primary plot. And then the flashback is used to show me some expositional crap I didn’t care about like, oh, okay, you know, here’s, here’s like this, you know, amazing events that are going on, or shattering events. And now we’re gonna go back and spend 10 minutes of like, if it’s a TV show, 10 minutes of screen time, showing you how the protagonist met his wife. Like, I don’t give a crap about that. Go back to the main plot, you know? Yeah. So I think your flashbacks are, it’s kind of like, you’re out playing with your friends, and your mom tells you to come in and clean your room. Right? It’s like that. And so I figure Well, it’s alright, if you’re out playing with your friends, and your mom tells you to come in and have pie. You know, it’s okay, if the flashbacks themselves are just as entertaining and compelling. I guess a lot of writers like to use flashbacks as a easy way of putting exposition into a story. But I used it to be part of the unfolding mystery, and also the flashback sequences coincide with the main sequence and stuff like that. So hopefully, hopefully, when when you get to a flashback, you’re not disappointed, but you’re like excited because you’re gonna get more information.
08:11
I think that is how it plays out.
08:12
Yeah, that that was the goal. Thank you.
08:16
I will support that.
08:17
That was definitely my reaction. Yeah, I was very fascinated by what was unfolding on Earth as well as the spaceship storyline. So one of the things that obviously jumps out when you read project Hail Mary, as opposed to the Martian and Artemis is there are a lot more sort of five parts of the sci fi there’s there’s aliens, there’s, there’s more stuff that is just sort of not grounded in specific reality. Whereas Artemis in the Martian, you have the sense that no, this exact story might happen. This is exactly how it might play out. So I’m wondering, you know, you’ve you’ve built this sort of brand. And obviously it’s a it’s a personal interest of yours of having everything grounded in realism. So when you did approach this story that was a little bit more fantastical. How did you decide where to allow for convenient fictions? Like, when is it okay to just make it up and say, This is how it works? Because it does.
09:14
Well, my goal was to make like this, you know, there’s alien life forms in this book. Yeah. Two different species. And, and, well, three, I guess, three. And and I wanted to make sure that I, I figured it would be nice to have like, a story, a hard sci fi story that involves alien life. I’m not the first person to do that. But the idea of like, okay, all the previous my previous books, these are things that you could conceivably see happening. All the characters are humans, it’s not that super far into the future. There’s nothing really fantastical, but I wanted this to at least be physically possible. So you know, there’s, there’s, there are basically three biospheres involved in the book there’s earth. And then there’s arid, you know, Rockies Homeworld, and then there’s, well, what they ended up naming Adrian, that planet and tell SETI, what that tells SETI system has a biosphere as well, right? That’s the homeworld of the astrophysics and stuff. And so the main thing I was like, it’s like, okay, I want this to be as plausible as possible. So I decided, like, here’s the thing it’s like, if it seems really unlikely that life would independently evolved in all three of those stars, mainly because they’re very, very close together in the grand scheme of things. Tell SETI is like 11 light years from here. 40 or Adani, which is where Rocky’s home system is, is like 16 light years from here, and the Milky Way galaxy is 100,000 light years across. So that’s that’s just way too close to for it to be reasonable that life evolved separately, you know, so I decided there had to be a panspermia event. Well, fortunately, we’ve already demonstrated that the towel city biosphere has life forms that can travel interstellar distances. So I decided that some ancestor of Astra phage was the
panspermia so life only evolved once and it evolved on planet Adrian. Right and earth and arid were both basically seeded by panspermia, it’s all just natural. It’s not any intelligent life or anything like that. Just the same way that you know, there’s life on, on on all seven continents of Earth, even though it really only evolved once, right? So how to get to the other continents? Well, it’s spread out. So that’s like one thing I wanted to do. And also the idea that you know, Rockies biosphere, is I kind of think of first contact stories that involve everybody’s like, super comfortable in the exact same environment. And, you know, in Star Trek style, where it’s just like, some forehead bumps are the difference between Don’t get me wrong, I’m not throwing shade at Star Trek. I’m a total Trekkie nerd. Absolutely. Like I’ve seen literally every episode of every trek related anything. But But yeah, I mean, I didn’t want to be alien to be some hot, blue skinned woman who wants to learn more about this earth thing called love making cry, want to be like a genuinely, really, really as alien as possible, like, completely incompatible with Earth’s biosphere? Even the way their language works is something you cannot make the sounds that their language makes, they can’t make the sounds that are make we you need interpretation in the way and so on. Yeah.
12:38
Well, and that kind of leads me to one of my questions is, you know, you talk about grace. At one point, you establish this pretty early on his he writes this paper about how not all life is going to need water. And then we go on to meet Rocky, who does. And I’m wondering, oh, this is wrong.
13:04
I’m wondering like, yeah, okay, so maybe that just answers my question. I was kind of wondering, what camp Do you fall in? of? Does it have to have water or not? I
13:11
actually, I actually believe that you don’t need water for life. I don’t buy into the idea that water is required for any form of life. However, within the context of the story, it was a panspermia event, we’re all descended from a single common ancestor. Right? So the life that well, in the real in reality, it’s life that evolved on Earth, right. But within the story, it’s the life that evolved on planet Adrian evolved to require water, so all of its descendants require water. Yeah, the fundamental cellular mechanisms, everything you can, there’s no getting around it. So all the life that that he encountered does require water, which I thought would be a funny thing. Because usually, if you have a main character, who’s the sole voice saying one thing, and everyone’s telling him he’s wrong, it’s almost a guarantee that that guy is gonna turn out to be right. Yeah, I thought it’d be neat for 170 characters just wrong.
14:04
I loved that. Because we, you know, again, we just have done an in depth, like a deep dive on the Martian. And we love how, you know, intelligent and yet not a superhero, that what he is, yeah. And his capacity for knowing lots of things or being able to pick up on things really quickly is awesome. And then you’ve got grace, who’s also incredibly intelligent, but is wrong on something that’s pretty big is
14:36
Yeah. To be fair, he was kind of partially right. One of the things his paper said was that the Goldilocks zone is how do you feel about scoring on your show?
14:45
You’re all good.
14:46
I do it. Okay. That’s the Goldilocks zone is bullshit, right? Yeah, this is this is the thing that I do believe that this notion of the Goldilocks zone is like, what? It’s like, Oh, this is the range where liquid water can happen. I’m like, no The range is much larger than that. Yeah, all you need to have liquid water at a temperature above 100 degrees Celsius is to have more than one atmosphere of pressure. Yeah. And so like Rockies Homeworld, the the, the surface, atmospheric pressure is, like 29 atmospheres, and the temperature is 210 degrees Celsius. And water is a liquid. Yeah. Even though it’s like 210 degrees Celsius, like 450 degrees Fahrenheit. But water is a liquid because the atmospheric pressure is so high. So now you have liquid water, way outside what they call the Goldilocks zone.
15:36
Yeah, playing with with atmospheric pressure and the boiling temperature of water is, has been fascinating since you played with it in artemus. And the idea that you can’t have hot food
15:48
can’t have can’t have really hot food. Yeah.
15:52
That is, you know, that’s one of the things when we, when we hear at Edwards talk about, you know, the the future cultures that will exist on other planets, one of the first things I always reach for is different planets might have different cuisine, because for example, you can’t have soup on this world, because the atmospheric pressure is too low, it just tastes tepid and gross. So yeah, it’s, that’s a, that’s a very fun thing to play with. So as, as you are, as you’re working on these things, you know, the the impression for the reader is there’s a problem, and the hero works on it and finds a solution and then moves forward. And my understanding is that for the Martian, that kind of has to be true, because you were releasing a chapter by chapter, yeah. But for subsequent books, you as the author do actually have the opportunity to hit something and then go back and be like, Ah, this would actually be a lot easier. If you had 20 solar panels, instead of 15 solar panels, I’m just gonna go back and change the number of solar panels he had. So I’m wondering, how often does that kind of thing happened? Do you present yourself with a problem? And then just force yourself to fix it with what you got? Or do you change?
17:03
I will change things for sure. I’ll change things to make it solvable. I won’t necessarily make it easy on the protagonists, but I’ll make it solvable. But also, I did do that on the Martian, I would go back and change chapters that I’d already posted. Oh, yeah, it was sort of a disclaimer on my site. At the time when I was reading it. I’m like, Okay, this is a serial, but it’s a book that I’m writing. And you’re seeing a chapter at a time. So I might go back and change chapters you’ve already read. And when I did that, I saw at the time, I had a mailing list of regular readers and stuff like that. And when I change things that I already posted a while ago, I would alert the readers I would say, Hey, everybody, chapter seven, I’ve made changes. Okay? Oh, you can either go read chapter seven again, or here’s a recap of the changes that I made.
17:50
It’s like patch notes for software now.
17:52
It’s exactly that well, I’m a I’m a software engineer, right. So I was And so yeah, I really was release notes or patch notes. Yeah.
18:00
That’s love. I love that there’s the the transparency there is rather than hurt. Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah. So this kind of goes off in a slightly different direction. But you have this character that I just was so heartbroken for. And there’s like a lot of heartbreak I about lost my mind. I’m not Rocky, I assume. Well, I that one about broke me. But there’s I’m not going to give away that spoiler. But there is another character. Leclerc le cleric.
18:41
Oh, yeah, first of all occurred.
18:45
So I’m wondering, is there one scientist or one person that you’ve written in this story that you have the most empathy or something for?
18:57
I mean, the obvious answer would be grace, you know? But I don’t know I mean, Leclerc. It’s, it’s it’s sad. But that’s the guy doing the opposite of everything he’s stood for, for the good of all mankind. Right? all humanity. One person I actually sympathize with that may surprise you is strat. She’s in charge of literally saving all of humanity. And she has to make some hard decisions. Yeah, yeah. And he’s not a monster. She’s not a robot. She has emotion. She has feelings. But she she’s also ruthless in making this thing happen because she has to be and so whatever, whatever columns or issues she has, she has to set aside to do this stuff and she makes it look easy. But at the end, you find out that you
19:50
know, she is she does feel bad about some of the things that she’s been forced to do. That being said, we know about Andy we’re writing a villain because he wrote the Moriarty stories. Did Mitch I adore? Yes. Yeah, we, I have always been fast. I actually wrote my own sort of version of Moriarty stories A while back. And when I found yours, I was like, Oh, this is awesome. And then I saw Andy Weir. And I was like, seriously?
20:17
Well, thank you. Yeah, I had a lot of fun writing those. And I would love for that to be a TV show. I even pitched it at one point. But the people who were slightly interested in it then heard about like, somebody else is doing somebody else at I don’t know if it ever got green lighted, but somebody else at the time was also making some sort of Moriarty based thing. Okay. Gonna be kind of supernatural or weird. I don’t know. It’s gonna be completely different than mine. And it was some big name person that you don’t want to be perceived as being in competition with. I don’t remember who Well, it wrong for not having it again. Yeah, pitch it again. Or just or just keep writing the last as
20:58
I was writing those before I wrote the Martian, right. So I intended for them to be a serial as well. And he was going to slowly build up his cadra. of if that’s how it’s pronounced of criminals like so bit by bit. You know, the first story is just him and Captain Moran. Yeah, yeah. Who in the books is Colonel Moran, right? Yeah. Captain ran. But now he’s got a powerful ally in violet Sutcliffe. Yeah, is the arsonist. Yeah, she’s very good at it. So that was gonna be another one. And then bit by bit he was going to accumulate, you would see him building up his syndicate.
21:35
Yeah.
21:36
Amazing.
21:37
I’m here for it.
21:39
Yes.
21:39
So the next question I have is, you know, when we when we did the Martian on our show, we did sort of a chapter by chapter analysis of the book. And then the ending episode of that miniseries was, we talked about the movie. And we are both huge fans of the book and huge fans of the movie. But you naturally start getting into, you know, how do they differ and that sort of thing. And one of the things that we realized was, because it’s a movie, you obviously don’t have as much time. And so there’s an interesting distinction where the book of the Martian is the story of someone coming up with solutions. And the movie of the Martian is the story of someone implementing solutions. You don’t actually see him doing the math, he just talks into the camera, he says, here’s what I’m going to do. Yeah, there’s a similar dichotomy. In project Hail Mary, where when we’re on in sort of the present day on the spaceship, he’s figuring out solutions. And then in the flashbacks on Earth, it’s much more of just Hey, the Russians have figured out how to do this, or, hey, we, we are going to do this in Antarctica, because it will have this effect. And so I was wondering, was there a choice to establish that dichotomy? Was there ever a version where you got more into the figuring it out on on earth side?
22:54
Interesting, you point that out? No, that that there was no point where I consciously thought about that. I guess the thing is, with the earth segments, they’re largely expositional, they’re there to bring the reader up to speed and hopefully a fun and unfolding mystery way of why all this is going on in the first place. Right. And so I didn’t want to, I want to spend not too much time there. Because it’s fun for a while, but not forever, right. And so I wanted I you know, I liked the idea of skipping and skimming over time to just the highlights, you know, this is interesting. They, they’re, you know, nuking a big chunk of an Antarctic ice shelf to deliberately massively increase global warming. Yeah, it’s interesting. Yeah, that’s that’s quite a moment in engineering. Yeah. Leclerc. seat of your pants terraforming your own planet.
23:52
Yeah. And Leclerc, a lifelong environmentalist climatologist everything he can to prevent this exact stuff from happening is now the agent of it.
24:04
It’s always so so sad when a character that you like you sort of look into the future. And you’re like, Yeah, I don’t think things are gonna end up well for him.
24:14
You know, what law clerks long term goal was to was to work towards saving Earth’s environment. That’s true. And that’s what he was doing. No, it’s true. It’s true. It’s not the way he expected it.
24:25
Yeah. And if you’re feeling bad for Leclerc, just imagine after it, you know, after Earth gets the cure for Astrophysics and stuff like that. astrophysics is now a perfect clean, renewable energy resource. True.
24:41
Yeah. And what I loved in I believe it was about that scene that you mentioned that, that climate change and climatology like all of that is really a science that’s in its infancy, and I thought that was kind of I thought that was lovely. Have you point out because we tend to think of, oh, every six months, technology has advanced again and again and again. And we tend to forget that a lot of stuff that we know, has taken centuries. And you’re, and you’re right, we, we don’t give a lot of benefit to the fact that it is so young.
25:19
Well, also, planets are large. So predicting what’s going to happen across a system of that size is very difficult. And so that’s why I set the clerk up in the novel of being, you know, one of the biggest issues with climatology and why we, frankly, one of the main reasons we end up with climate denial, in my opinion, well, there’s always going to be one. There’s always going to be a demographic who just whatever. But I think there’s a middle demographic that’s kind of in climate denial, because climatologists are consistently wrong in their predictions. It happens all the time. I mean, you can dig up as many climate predictions as you want from the 1980s forward, and they’re pretty much all wrong, like or, or wrong to varying degrees that are like, Okay, this is not, I mean, this is like, almost like, you chose randomly what was gonna happen? So I set Leclerc up as being like a climatologist, who’s whose models correctly predicted the future climate, not super accurate, you know, not like, Oh, it’s gonna rain on Wednesday, but like, Oh, this is the amount of polar cap melt, you can expect. And this is the amount of oceanic rise you can expect. And this is the amount of like, average oceanic temperature, you can expect that sort of stuff. And his models were correct. Most others weren’t. So I wanted to introduce the scientist who’s like, I mean, I think there’s a general public understanding that climatology is really difficult and, and vague and the predictive aspects of it aren’t. We’re not very good at yet. So I wanted to introduce a character who is good at it. Yeah.
27:06
And by then it won’t be quite as young as it is today. So you only takes place modern day. I mean,
27:11
okay. Okay. I was thinking. I was I think I just because the Martian, we’ve got just around the corner, and then we’ve got like, what the 27 days? For 2018? Yeah.
27:25
This is now
27:26
Yeah, yeah,
27:26
I suppose that’s a that’s true. Right? Well, um, yes. So it ties into that, what? Then I recognize that this could come off as ego testicle. So I’m gonna try. And
27:46
Sandy, why am I beautiful? Right? You can’t explain this.
27:55
Look, yeah, that doesn’t just happen. Right?
27:59
So okay, so you have you are so great at doing real science and entertainment. And I just, it’s, I’ve always loved the historical in in books, and movies, and all of that. And I’ve only recently learned that I enjoy science, that was not something that I knew could be true, through at least college. And so it’s like, between him and between your books. And the Martian movie that I’ve really come to discover, oh, I can a understand this. And be I might not retain all of it. But I can be reminded, oh, yeah, you know, like, I got I got that. What is it that draws you to doing real science in all of your, in all of your entertainment? And and do you want to see more of that in the world from other people?
28:53
I guess the first part, I would say, I’m drawn to it, because I just I like it, you know, everybody has things that they’re interested in and passionate about, and that happens to be mine. And so you know, you write the stuff that you’re interested in. But um, yeah, so I guess that’s just, it’s, it’s important to me. Yes, I know you want attention. But as for the other thing, yes. I would love there to be more hard sci fi, because that’s my favorite type of science fiction to read. After the Martian became a success. I thought, Oh, this will be great. Now, a bunch of, you know, hard sci fi Oh, come out. I can read it and enjoy it. And it didn’t happen. Yeah, nobody did that. And so I was like, well, the bad news is I don’t have anything fun to read. You know, it’s right in my wheelhouse. The good news is, I guess I own this market niche.
29:44
You do. We are also disappointed that other people haven’t been like, I feel like everyone’s relying on you to do it. And I’m so sorry. I also congratulate you.
29:55
Yeah, we actually, you know, with our show the synthesis. It’s all about a Examining real science in entertainment, and we, we started the show and we did you know, Apollo 13. And we checked out gravity, we checked out the Martian. And then there was a point at which we were like, there’s actually not that many things that we can talk about on this show like that. Eventually, you just start doing historical movies like The Right Stuff in October sky and those sorts of things where you start getting into more yellow, like, based on Yeah, exactly. Because stories like the Martian stories. Yeah, yeah, but but you sort of it’s it’s amazing how quickly you run out of hard sci fi movies and TV shows.
30:39
Coming soon to edgeworth nebula. Welcome.
30:50
Do you have my sword, a token podcast hosted by me? Christy pride. You have my sword as a comedic, historical deep dive on different topics from Tolkien’s work, spanning the Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, the silmarillion and beyond. We’ll talk about things like new Missourians. You don’t even deserve rights. Tom bombadil, the ultimate white guy, Baron and Lucien a better love story than Twilight. And, yes, I’ll tell you why the Eagles couldn’t fly the goddamn ring to Mordor. You can find you have my sword on Instagram and Twitter at YHS podcast. Or you can visit us at you have my sword podcast calm. I do the research. You did listening. Everybody wins. Except Saren. fuck that guy. catch y’all soon. And remember, you have my sword.
31:40
fun thing you may or may not know, you guys are really into the subsidiary, you know, but one of the so they you know, for films, they always show them to preview audiences right beforehand and get feedback and then maybe even make changes. So it’s like they, they they do market testing and stuff like that. And for Apollo 13. They showed it to a bunch of people, and they got their feedback from it. And one of the pieces of feedback was, well, it was a cool movie, but it just seem to reel it to unrealistic. If that really happened. There’s no way the astronauts would survive. Yeah. Well,
32:19
in that same vein, and perhaps even more horrifying, I’m sure you saw I certainly did all the people and yeah, all the people who read the Martian or watch the Martian and then said, This is incredible. I can’t believe they didn’t cover this in our history class. Why didn’t our teachers tell us about this? There were like,
32:39
really disturbingly large number of people who thought the Martian was like, based on a true story. Yeah. Well, I guess congratulations. Yeah. A compliment. I’m pretty sure.
32:50
Yeah. You wrote something that’s so believable. It’s more believable than Apollo 13?
32:57
I guess so.
32:59
You know, that real science will do it
33:01
for you more realistic than Apollo 13? Yeah. Yeah.
33:04
So I want to I want to circle back to something you said a few minutes ago, which is, you talked about how you’re you change things to make solutions possible. Yeah. I’m curious. In in project, Hail Mary, or in your other books. Can you give us some examples of times where the story led you to a place that you just sort of hit a brick wall, and you’re like, oh, he would just die? Like there is no solution to this?
33:28
Yeah. I had. So in the Martian. Now, this is something that is more in the book than in the movies. So in the movie, when he goes from the area three landing site to the area for landing site, it’s just sort of a montage in the book, the dust on? Yeah, in the book, he come. He runs into a lot of issues. Yeah. So one of the ideas I had, among other things in the book, he rolls the rover. Yeah, yeah, rolling it down a hill, like, you know, sight overside and brakes, and edit, there’s all sorts of issues with that I was going to make him in that instance, he was also going to breach the RTG. So the radio thermo generator, anyway, RTG, it has a bunch of it is literally in a thing. It’s a bunch of material inside that is so incredibly radioactive, that it generates constant heat. And then that heat is used to create electricity. So that’s fine. And that’s that’s a real technology. That’s what’s powering curiosity and now and now perseverance. But I was going to have him break it and then there’d be Oh, God, radiation. Oh, okay. Well, I’ll put on my eeba suit, because it offers a lot of radiation protection, and I’ll throw the RTG away and then or something, right. Okay, so that was going to be one of the challenges he faced. But from then on, he would have to be without that RTG he wouldn’t have the heat source in his rover, he wouldn’t have the RTG helping recharge the rover and stuff like that. And all the numbers just told me there’s no way that he would survive that he would be consuming power. Just to keep warm, he would be consuming power fascinate faster than you can possibly acquire it. And so he would have died. Yeah, I just, I could not find any solution to that problem. And so I didn’t have that problem happened
35:16
to you. Just based on that alone? Do you have a lot of numbers that you run? Like you have to you have to do spreadsheets to just make sure. Are you like a spreadsheet King at this point for you? Right? I am, I am quite the king, I am the monarch of Excel. Well,
35:33
yeah, tons of spreadsheets, I do lots of math, I want everything to be accurate. And so I mean, the reader only encounters like, 5% of all the stuff that I do. And I just want it to be right so that I can feel warm, knowing it’s right. Also, the cool thing is, if you stick to real science, I mean, the universe is internally consistent. Yeah, if you make up physics, then you end up having to make up more physics to cover the edge cases of the physics you’ve already made up, and so on, but the you but if you just stick with reality, then it’s really cool. Because first off, you don’t have to make stuff up, you just calculate it. Second off, you’ll run into problems that you wouldn’t have thought of. So for instance, in the Martian, our hero, Mark Watney grows potatoes, as I’m sure you know, to survive. And originally, I was like, you know, okay, researching how to grow potatoes. And one little tidbit I saw was like, Oh, the moisture content of the soil needs to be at least this percent. And I’d never thought of that. Well, I was like, of course, you need to water them. But it’s more than that they need to be in a soil that is at least a given percent moisture, or the soil itself will Leach all the water out of the plant and kill it. I’d never thought of that. I’m like, wait a minute, how much water does he need to make that moisture. And I’m like, wait a minute, that’s a lot more more water than is likely for a Mars mission to bring with it. So he’s going to need water. And at the time I wrote it, it was believed that Mars was completely dry and arid. And so he had to manufacture water. So that whole subplot of him creating water was because I was going down a rabbit hole on how to grow potatoes.
And I wouldn’t have thought of it otherwise. Now, and that little footnote to that is, so curiosity landed after I wrote the Martian, one of the first things it did was scoop up some soil and say, Hey, guys, there’s a shitload of water in here was irrelevant and inaccurate. But I can counter that by saying, curiosity is that is that Mount Sharp, which is nowhere near as adelia Phoenicia, which is where Mars Mark was. And so I say acid la punishes a desert, you know, I say that it, it has a different water content until somebody sends a probe there, they can’t prove me wrong.
37:42
That’s right. And it’s you know, it’s a it’s a big planet, and they’re not going to hit every spot, it might take a while.
37:51
That actually was going to be my next question. I’m sorry. Sorry to interrupt. Oh, there’s one thing you know. So after with the Martian was very popular. And of course, it was very popular with NASA and JPL, folks, right. And so, in the book, I say, the exact latitude and longitude in accidentally play the exact location of the areas three landing site. And Mark describes it. It’s like a featureless plane with like rocks here and there, and maybe a few craters, but other than that, there’s nothing going on. So JPL pointed Mars Global Surveyor, at that location, took a really super high resolution photograph where every pixel is a square foot. Oh, wow.
38:29
On the surface of Mars, yeah. And then said, Hey, everybody, this is where Mark Watney his landing site is. It doesn’t look anything like described in the book. You guys.
38:44
Scientist wasn’t expecting anybody to point a billion dollars satellite, Mars, terrify.
38:51
Maybe that’s what scares people from writing hard sci fi. Yeah.
38:57
Well, that it’s funny that you say that, because that was actually going to be my next question. You know, I’m a big fan of the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. And one of the things he has said is, you know, he wrote that book, and I think the 80s. And we obviously know a lot more about Mars now. And he has said things about the I don’t know how to spin out but perchlorates in the soil, great rates in the soil, things like that, that would have radically changed how the Mars trilogy would have gone down if he’d known at the time. Are there other examples of sort of future proofing your stories? Do you do anything to try to like, anticipate what might be discovered, but we don’t know. Yeah,
39:36
I really don’t. Because it’s kind of pointless, you know, to try to predict. I just focus on trying to make a novel that’s fun to read at the time that it’s released. If you’re writing speculative fiction about the future, you’re going to be wrong. Yeah, like it’s only a matter of time before your story is out of date. Like and another whatever. We’re in 14 years, we will reach the date that the Martian takes place. And when it doesn’t happen, my book will then be inaccurate. Right, right. Or Yeah. Yeah. So I don’t feel bad about that.
40:15
Yeah, that makes sense.
40:18
I mean, I, I’ll say, fine.
40:21
Okay. I’ve got one more question. Which is, you know, you are, I think undeniably known in the popular imagination. As a scientist, like I’ve seen you interviewing I’m not a scientist. Well, I mean, I guess but
40:37
yeah. But I mean, like, you know, for example, we did National Geographics. Mars, and you were one of the experts interviewed as in that. So, you know, people imagine you as someone heavily associated with science. That being said, You have also written you know, the Moriarty stories and things that are unrelated to science. I was one of the 5 billion people who read the Martian and fell in love with it. And when and then later went, wait, this is the guy who wrote the egg. I, everybody loved the egg. And then yeah, oh, yeah. So what I was wondering is, because you have, you know, what could be described as two natures, the storytelling, and then the science, but obviously, our one nature because you’re one guy. The Martian started out as figuring out the science that you wanted to figure out how this would work. And so you told the story to do that. Is that how you generally approach stories like Artemis and project Hail Mary, or do you start more from a story standpoint, hey, I want to tell a heist about this, you know, plucky girl on the moon, and then you come up with the engineering challenges that would arise from that?
41:46
No, I almost always, I mean, I always thus far start with the science. Like I’m like, here’s a neat thing that I want to think about. And then I start working out like I had. So for artemus, for instance, I designed and explained the economy of the entire city of Artemis, before he came up with any characters or story.
42:06
Interesting.
42:07
Like I’m like, Okay, now, I put a huge amount of work into a setting. Okay, now I need stuff to happen. And I actually, it took me a while to come up with a story to take place in there. Like I went through a lot of different Okay, what if this is the story and then I work on it for a while, and I it’s kind of down? How about this? You know, I had to go through a lot of revs before I came up with a plot that I like, interesting.
42:28
So are we go now I have heard you say that you have have considered writing multiple stories in Artemis. Is that still a plan?
42:40
I mean, for now, I think No, because it wasn’t as popular as I’d hoped. People are debases Andy wares other book, right. And I really, I really hoped it would be more popular than it is. I think jazz was such a self destructive person that a lot of people had a tough time rooting for her, because she really was the agent of her own problems. Yeah, no, I was trying to make a more nuanced main character with flaws and a story arc and maturing and personal growth. But I think I went a little too far. Also, what’s funny is Mark and jazz are both based on my own personality. Mark is the idealized version of me all the aspects of myself that I like, and none of my flaws, whereas jazz is as much of a fuckup as I was when I was her age. And turns out, I guess people will have a hard time rooting for a guy who is as much of a fuckup as I was at 26. People think jazz is some sort of masturbation fantasy of mine, but she’s really just me. I guess he really is. I mean, yes, she’s a woman and she’s Saudi and stuff like that. But her personality and most importantly, her flaws are the ones that I had when I was that age. Interesting.
43:56
I feel like people that need to go listen to the audio book. Yeah,
43:59
Rosario Dawson did a great job, no doubt about it. But if a book is only entertaining as an audio book, then that just means Rosario Dawson did a good job. Doesn’t mean I did a good job, right? So I need to make entertaining stories that that are good, even if you don’t have an A list actor reading them.
44:19
I mean, I suppose I hear that I have. I have rebuttals because I like it so much.
44:25
I’m glad you like it. I’m glad you like it. I got one thing that kind of sucked for me and I didn’t like is that if you’re a male author and you write a female lead, there’s a whole subsection of people who are just going to hyper focus on that. Yeah, like, let’s talk about how realistic this portrayal of a woman is yay or nay or whatever. And nobody questions. My you know how realistic my nail characters are, you know, frankly, it’s not realistic that Mark Watney would go, like so long on Mars alone in a day In a situation without ever, like without ever really losing his mind or succumbing to crippling loneliness or stuff like that, but everybody just kind of accepts that. But if you write the other gender, and then people, and suddenly, instead of like, you can write strat who’s the side character and nobody’s gonna question that. But the moment
45:21
we’ll see, I mean, I may get some on that. Although, yeah, I mean, yeah, so, and I do think that it’s a little asymmetrical. like nobody gets on JK Rowling for Harry Potter being unrealistic. Right? And I’m sorry, he’s a teenage guy who has this incredibly hot female friend never tries anything. And I’m sorry. Yeah, JK Rowling does not know what teenage boys are like. On the inside. She just doesn’t know how degenerate we are when we’re that age. Back me up on this, Alexander.
45:55
Absolutely.
45:59
I’m sorry, a teenage boy who is not a pervert, that’s just female fantasy.
46:05
I agree with that. Yeah. I find a lot of them. I have a lot of.
46:12
Well, we well, we are huge fans of Artemis around here. Yes, we are.
46:17
Thank you. I’m glad to hear it. I did have ideas for Artemis sequels. I had an idea what I really wanted to do was make my follow up. I even pitched it. But the publisher said I wanted to make a murder mystery set in Artemis. And the main character is Rudy the Mountie, the car. Oh, yeah. That’d be the main character. Jazz would be secondary like she. So I had the idea of having different main characters within us. But, you know, my editor said, Yeah, that’s a neat concept. But this particular story is not that good. Oh, wow. It’s probably right. And he also said, like, Look, you’re a science guy. You, you know, you’re really good at that.
46:57
So if you write a murder mystery, and you could put a lot of work into writing a decent murder mystery, or you could write another really cool Brown, groundbreaking science thing. Right?
47:10
Now, I feel like you just need to send them the Moriarty stories again. And yet, like, here, allow me to be a scientist and disprove you.
47:21
Thank you very much. That’s nice. But I guess he didn’t much care for the story that I had in mind. But he’s open. They’re open to it. And of course, I mean, I could bully my way into it. I could just say, Well, this is the next book I’m writing. Yeah, publish it, because someone else probably will. Right. Yeah, but, but I didn’t want to do that. My editor is very good at this. And it’s wise of me to pay attention to what he has to say. Yeah, of course. Well,
47:42
maybe someday we’re just gonna have to see if we can’t find someone who can do like a hard science, hard sight, sci fi Anthology, and you can do short stories and want good sci fi mysteries. I mean, the the robots. The robots stuff from like, the caves of dawn series from Asimov is really good. Yeah, those are like science fiction, murder mysteries. And they’re good at both of those things. Make it okay. And I say robots, and I meant caves of steel. Robots of Dawn is the name of the third book in that. heaves of steel is the first book. Wow.
48:21
I’m gonna anyway, that recommendation. Yeah.
48:24
By Asimov. Who’s my favorite author of all time side note. But anyway, I do have ideas for project Hail Marys sequel.
48:33
Oh, very cool.
48:36
It lends itself to a sequel, you know? Yes.
48:38
There’s definitely a string setting, you know?
48:41
Yeah.
48:42
Oh, I’m so happy to hear you say that? Because I was like, I you know, you haven’t really done sequels yet. And so I didn’t want to get my hopes up too high. But now they’re high. So just know that so you’re so I think what she’s saying is you’re committed. We’re now to be seen, but yeah, I will be writing your letters.
49:02
That’s not what I’m working on. Right now. I’m working on another standalone story, but okay.
49:07
All right.
49:08
I’m not not not really talking about it. Because I don’t know if that’s for sure what I’m going to do next. I want to get at least far enough into it that I feel like okay, yeah, this is working. This is what I’m gonna do. Good.
49:19
We we heard we heard an interview with you previously, where you talked about the value of writers not talking about their ideas. Yes. That’s all heartedly agree. As somebody who who has written and also makes games there’s definitely a loss of momentum that comes from telling people about them satisfies your need for an audience. And you’re like, Okay, I got that need next magic.
49:40
Need to get a movie and get like Andy Serkis in here to bring bring rocky to life. nothing
49:47
going on. Oh, really? Yeah. No Ryan Gosling is attached to play Grace. Okay, and we have Phil Lord and Chris Miller attached to direct drew Goddard’s working on the screen. Play right now. He wrote the adaptation for the Martian. Excellent. Oh, he’s good at what he does for sure. Yeah, Lord Miller, Phil Lord Chris Miller, they directed the 21 Jump Street movies out Lego movies into the spider verse.
50:16
MGM who’s doing it? They bought the rights for me outright. Not an option, not just a purchase. And that usually means you’re taking it seriously, but you never know.
50:26
Right?
50:26
Oh my god is gratulations. Yeah. And also congrats to us. We get to watch an amazing, awesome. Oh, wonderful. Well, thank you for joining us. This has been for having most excellent. Yes, it has.
50:42
We’ve enjoyed this thoroughly. Yes.
50:45
And thank you for writing project Hail Mary.
50:48
It was reading project.
50:50
Good luck with the launch of the book. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Andy.
Lacey and Alex put a telescope up to the film “October Sky” starring Tobey Maguire. Based on a true story, did filmmakers do this tale justice?? Or will we have a lot of heavy sighs this episode? Billy Joel said it best, “we didn’t start the fire”, no but for real, the rocket boys didn’t start the fire. (spoiler?)
𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕊𝕪𝕟𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕤𝕚𝕤 is a live talk show that aims to find the relationship between science and fiction in pop culture. We’ll discuss a book, movie, or show each week that’s science-focused and talk about just how realistic it is, where reality is cooler than fiction, and exactly where certain liberties were taken.
00:12
Hey folks, this is Alexander Winn and I am Lacey Hannan and you are here watching The
Synthesis, the show where we discuss real science being used in entertainment. This week
we are talking about the movie “October Sky” based on the book “Rocket Boys.” Yeah, it’s
it’s a good time. Yeah, I love this movie. This is this is one from my, like teenage years that
was sort of helped chart the course of who I wanted to be as a person this. Yeah, October
sky was big for for Alexander. Yep, a little bit a little bit. It’s the story of a group of high
school kids in West Virginia and West Virginia mining town who start making homemade
rockets and ended up going higher than any of them ever thought they could. And it’s
awesome.
01:04
It’s based on let’s see how long I can make him talk. That’s what’s happening over here. So
that’s a dangerous game, because I’m just gonna take over the whole show. He can talk
forever. That’s true. So a couple of things that were interesting that I found sort of behind
the scenes before we actually start talking about the movie. Let’s talk about talking about
the movie. So first off, it’s based on the book rocket boys. But it’s not called rocket boys
because the marketing team at the at the film studio when they were making the movie,
did some focus testing and found out that women over 30 would never go see a movie
called rocket boys. So they renamed it October sky based on the October skies a Sputnik
flew over. But interestingly, October sky is an anagram of rocket boys. And I was not able
to find anywhere. Anybody saying if that’s a coincidence, or did somebody like Alright, we
can’t do rocket boys. I guess I’ll make an anagram like, was that the thought? I don’t know.
But anyway, October sky anagram of rocket boys. That’s interesting. A little weird, right?
It’d be weird for it to be a coincidence, but I can somehow still see it being a coincidence.
Yeah, exactly.
02:11
I looked up to see you know how much money it made and all that kind of stuff. I I found
out that it made $34.7 million. And I was like, Oh, no. was October sky a flop? No.
Welcome to the 90s the whole movie only cost 25 million. So it was quite successful. I’m
just so used to like Marvel movie budgets. And and what we know right now is that
02:34
producers have told me this frequently that we don’t have midsize movies anymore, right?
And the audiences can see that we have all these indie movies that are made for under 5
million.
02:47
If they’re under three, it’s even better. And then big tentpole movies, right. And that’s your
your Marvel stuff or anything. That’s your blockbuster. And that’s what keeps all of the
other movies funded. But they don’t do the mid size movies are not very often right. And
which is unfortunate. Even when the stories could be a mid size budget, they often get
inflated. Yeah. So
03:13
yep. So a couple of interesting things. You know, as always, when you’ve got a story that is
being twice adapted from from real life to book and then from book to movie, obviously
things are going to change. There are a bunch of things like that, that we don’t need to go
into. Apparently, there were six rocket boys instead of four. Homer Hickam was a junior his
father’s name was also Homer. So in the movie, they changed it to john so people wouldn’t
get confused. You know, things like that. But a couple of interesting things that I found. In
terms of the legacy of this movie, I didn’t realize that this movie had like a legacy. I
thought it was just like a good movie from the 90s that if you’ve seen it, you probably
enjoyed it. But a couple of interesting things came out of this movie. First off, there are not
one but two festivals honoring the rocket boys. Yeah, annual festivals that are held every
year. One of them is in West Virginia, and it actually honors the rocket boys. It’s a thing
that they do every year. And then the other is in Tennessee, there is an annual gathering
about the movie. They filmed it in Tennessee instead of in West Virginia. And it’s like it’s
like when you go to New Zealand and you visit all the Lord of the Rings filming locations
there’s like tours and stuff of October sky filming locations, which I love that yeah, it’s
awesome. Like I was I didn’t realize that this movie was that big. We’ve talked not not us
with you guys. But Alex and I have talked a lot about the the different mechas that Yeah,
crop up, you know, like, okay, so people know that. The original Star Wars movies. There
were parts of them that were filmed in Tunisia, but there’s really no place to go. Yeah, I’ve
been to Tunisia. It was pointed out to me. Hey, that’s where that part was filmed. Well
okay, but
05:00
There’s like nothing there. It’s not like a Star Wars site in the same way that like when you
go to New Zealand, there is hobbiton, you can visit hobbiton. It’s got a visitor center with
a gift shop and they’ve got tours. And that’s like not the only thing like there’s there, you
can go to Mount Sunday, which is address address, but you also have all the tours that
take you there and one when we went on the tour anyway, the the bus driver had been a
sound guy on the movie, and he just liked to do the tours. Yeah. And so he was he was not
only talking about, you know, this is where they filmed such and such. He was like, this is
where we filmed this. And he’d like walk you through, he talks about like going to the
Oscars and stuff like that. I mean, it was so cool, right? And you’ve got a couple of
different places like that in New Zealand.
05:49
hobbiton is obviously like the big one. But you know, every so often we look up and we’re
like, Where are the rest of them? Because there’s so much fun. Yeah. And of course, you’ve
got, you know, backlots that you can see tours of Yeah, you know, and there are and there
are like locations again, like like Tunisia where there’s sort of no pomp and circumstance,
you know, you can go visit the Ghostbusters building in New York, you can go visit the
friend’s apartment building in New York, things like that. You can just sort of point out and
be like, Oh, look, that’s the that’s where they shot the thing. But there’s nothing there.
Yeah. And it’s so surprising it. It seems like if somebody I mean, I don’t actually know what
the the Ghostbusters building in New York is right now. It was supposedly a fire station. I
don’t know if it’s actually a fire station. But whatever it is. I feel like somebody could buy
that movie or buy that building and make bank. I mean, you’d have to get the you’d have
to get some sort of rights. But I don’t know why someone hasn’t. Maybe they’ve tried but I
don’t know why there isn’t a central park like that just doesn’t Yeah, make a lot of sense to
me. And he is in Turkey. Somebody started a central perk of love cafes in Turkey. Well, I mean, that’s one way to do it. Yeah. But so what I’m, what I’m saying is, it’s really cool that there is one for this movie, right? All things. Yeah. Amber cool, that it’s a science movie. And it’s based on a true story. I love I love that fact. Yeah, tell me more. So the other thing that really jumped out at me, there’s just, it’s just crazy
how history unfolds. It’s, you know, they’re just weird little wrinkles in how things happen.
07:26
October sky came out, I believe in 1999. And in the audience, there was a guy who saw the movie and was super moved by it and was really sort of powerfully motivated by the message of this film. And that person who was Jeff Bezos, and apparently, when he left the theater and went to go talk about it after the
screening, he was talking to a
07:59
he was talking to sci fi author, Neil Stevenson. And he mentioned that he had always
wanted to start a space company. And Neil Stevenson was like, Well, why don’t you? And
now Jeff Bezos has Blue Origin, which is a SpaceX competitor. So like, October Sky is the
reason that Blue Origin exists. I guess. That is That’s bizarre. Like I mean, it’s not bizarre. I
shouldn’t say that. It’s just Jeff Bezos being inspired by I don’t know, I guess I shouldn’t say
that either. Because he’s the one who who, quote unquote, saved the expanse. Yep. That
guy is a is a sci fi nerd. He is. Well, I mean, I’m glad he brings us a couple of good things.
08:47
I one of the other things that I will say just that we, that we think we’re right on is Laura
Dern is the one who plays Miss Riley. And what’s wonderful actress Yeah, Jurassic Park
and Star Wars and a whole bunch of great stuff. Um, she was the one who played Ellen
DeGeneres, his girlfriend on the episode, where Ellen DeGeneres came out on TV. And
because of that episode, Laura Dern was black listed from Hollywood for quite some time
and had to get security guards to go with her she was being threatened a lot. And this was
her first movie that she got after after all of that, and it took her she lost a lot of roles
because of that took her a couple of years to get back into Hollywood yeah after this and
so strange but man what a comeback role like this is such a great always said that she’s
never regretted doing the doing the roll in that episode of Ellen and she’s very proud of it,
which I think is wonderful and lovely. It’s amazing how much in
10:00
In some ways, how much Hollywood has changed, because that today would not be the
reason Hollywood would black. Hollywood will still blacklist you for things. Yeah, this is just
not one of those reasons. So well, and you know, it’s just it’s especially crazy because she’s
not like she played a gay character on a TV show and people from Hollywood who ought
to know how actors playing characters works. blacklisted, or it’s very strange. Yeah, yeah.
Very strange. So but what a great comeback roll October sky. Yeah, sorry, shall we get
into it jumping into I want to do a synopsis up front.
10:40
I think I think we handled it up top group of group of kids in a coal mining town in West
Virginia, start developing homemade rockets and eventually use it as a vehicle to get out
to go to college get out of the, the really crushing cycle of being locked into this company
town. For a man who likes to use 10 words when he could use one. He actually just did the
thing where he just used one. That was like, one long sentence. Look at me, I’m growing.
Oh, my God, it’s happening.
11:20
Okay, let’s. So let’s just kind of start with the scholarship conversation. I, you know, they
talk about how jocks are the only ones who get out of the town. They’re the only ones who
get girlfriends, and are the only ones who get scholarships. Yeah. And I will say that being
from a very small Midwestern town, that was an experience. Now, it wasn’t quite this bad.
But it’s not like, it’s not like the 60s and a coal town, like, but there was a lot of people
trying to get, you know, there, make sure that they have the best grades or, you know, all
of these all of these big accomplishments that people could do with music and, and whatnot. And
scholarships were just hard to come by, or you get like 1000 bucks. And it’s like, how far is
that really going to get you. But the jocks would go on to get full rides. And so hearing
that it just kind of broke my heart, it resonated, because that was absolutely a thing that
people struggled with. It broke my heart, too, because it didn’t resonate. I grew up in a big
city. And I you know, it was a reasonably well off neighborhood. And I actually have
written in my notes, I am so glad that I didn’t grow up in a town where the whole local
culture was oriented toward escaping. Like that. I grew up in sort of the opposite. I grew up
in the town that you didn’t want to leave people referred to it as the bubble, because
everybody just sort of stayed in and then you know, did their thing in this neighborhood.
And the idea that I wanted to move to LA was strange. See, whereas I came from a town
where pretty much everyone wanted to leave, except the the college or university that
most people ended up at, was we I’m from Yankton, South Dakota. So I went to Yankton.
High, there’s only one high school, and we called it Yankton. High, take two, because it
was 23 minutes, if you were speeding five minutes, or five miles per hour over the speed
limit. That’s how long it took you to get to the university. And anyway, there was a lot of
there were a lot of people trying to escape. Who that next town over was, as far as they
got. I actually didn’t want to escape. I just always knew that my career wouldn’t allow me
to stay as much as I can love South Dakota so much. But I can’t do acting work there. So
gotta go. So that one, that one, it broke my heart. But yeah, well, this movie does an
incredible job of justifying why this scholarship is so important, like the, the slow grind of
lifestyle in coal, wood, and just the sort of, there’s a quote that is, you know, quite famous,
but that I thought of a lot during this movie, which is it’s from Henry David Thoreau, which
is the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. And that is exactly what this movie is.
This movie is quiet desperation. Yeah. And
14:41
even like the happiest minor. Yeah. Which is Jake. We see him pretty early on. Yeah. And
then we see him a couple times throughout. He’s the one who, when Homer ends up
working in the mines, Jake is his manager. Jake is also the one that’s at the strike.
14:59
All right.
15:00
The Union meeting and then is a part of the strike.
15:03
I he even was like he was the happiest of Yeah.
15:10
Yeah. And even then it just still felt like run ragged, I guess.
15:16
I think I for not being from coal country, I felt like they did a great job of really delving into
the culture and the, the lives and the pride that goes into this world.
15:34
It and it wasn’t beautiful. But there it was a nice, it was really nice to get that glimpse to be
that fly on the wall for Staffordshire. Speaking of the setting, by the way, the very first
thing that jumped out at me about this movie is something that I really enjoy, which is that
it portrayed something that was very real, but that doesn’t really get committed to film
very often, which is that America was getting its ass kicked in the space race. Yeah, like,
you know, Americans love to sort of when the point just before the buzzer declare victory
and then retroactively be like we won that game and not mentioned the fact that you
were losing most of the time. But that is exactly what happened with the space race. If
you go through the history of the space race between the United States and the Soviet
Union, the Soviet Union had the first object in space, the first animal in space, the first
man in space, the first woman in space, the first space station, the first probe on Venus,
the first probe on Mars, you know, like, it just goes on, and on and on, and on and on. And
then Americans had landing on the moon. And we were like, done, victory finished moving
on. And so these days, a lot of people look back on the space race as Americans won it.
But this story is set at a point where there’s sort of a big question mark about whether we are ever going to catch up to the Soviets in space. And there’s a lot of incidental dialogue where people are talking about Sputnik and they’re talking about how their cameras up on that thing, or they’re probably bombs up on that thing. Spoiler alert, Sputnik was a hunk of metal that beeped Sputnik did nothing. It was an achievement that we got a beeping piece of metal up into space. It did not have cameras, it did not have missiles. It had nothing It reminded some of that dialogue reminded me of so one of the lines was,
17:24
yeah, they’re not going to why would they bomb us? Like Yeah, why stuff a bomb? Yeah,
exactly. And I remember after 911 there were, you know, all of these conspiracies. I mean,
theories of just like assumptions. Yeah. Where bombs would be dropped. And I remember
my town is right on a dam on one of the biggest rivers in the US. And people were like, it
could happen here. And I was like, yeah, nobody’s gonna, nobody’s gonna get that far into
American airspace. And no one wants to put in that time and effort guy. Yeah, that’s why
they are the targets of al Qaeda are going to be the biggest symbol of the American
military, the biggest symbol of the American government, the biggest symbol of the
American economy, and the dam in Yankton, South Dakota, it’s like, okay, so after 911,
they, they took Bush to Omaha, Nebraska, which is like two and a half hours south of
Yankton. And they told everybody where he was because I’m sorry, nobody’s gonna get
and nobody’s gonna get to the middle America. That’s just not how it works. And so they
don’t care. Yeah. And so that’s what that made me think of it was just like, they did a great
job with small town America.
18:40
And I, I loved that. The thing that I really liked about seeing Sputnik for the first time is you
have to, this isn’t something that would happen for us today. But looking up there and
seeing Sputnik would probably be scary for a multitude of reasons. But that’s probably the
fastest I’ve ever seen anything go through space? Oh, yes. You know, can you imagine
looking? I mean, we see it all the time. We see airplanes all the time, we see different, you
know, we see the space station and satellites. This isn’t going to be something that occurs
to us, but for the first time ever, seeing there’s an artificial satellite up there. There’s a new
star in the sky. Yeah, yeah. And it doesn’t blink. It just moves really fast. Oh my gosh, I think
that would be I think that would be legitimately frightening. Well and just awe inspiring,
you know, like depending on how you look at it I totally by Homer Hickam his response
which is just all he’s looking up and there’s there’s a new light in the sky. How amazing is
that? Is that not that to me? That’s like childlike. That’s the childlike wonder of it. Yeah. If
you’re an adult living in a time and you’re really frightened by the the Russians. Yeah, that
would be scary. You’ve lived Yeah, no, it just think of your life. Yeah, it just it comes down to
20:00
What is more important to you the fear of what that thing might do? Or the all of the fact
that it happened at all? Yeah, like, you can be terrified of the Nazis and still be like, wow,
they made a really good plains, you know, and I get that. I’m just saying, like, if you’re
someone in your 40s, or 50s, you’ve lived, you know, a good portion of that century. And,
and you’ve never seen anything like this, you’ve lived a good portion of your adult hood,
and never seen anything like this. And all of the context around it of the Russians versus
the US. And oh, my God, I just think that there’s, and then of course, then there are these
kids who are like, this is dope. Yeah. This is dope. I want to do that. Yeah. And which is, I
think, I think it’s so cool that it’s inspiring to that. So
20:45
it’s, I have exactly the same thing, just that that moment is, is so great.
20:53
There was an interesting little callback to something we’ve discussed earlier on the
synthesis here, which is pretty early, he starts writing letters to Verner von Braun.
21:03
And it reminded me of the conversation that we had during the national the natgeo, Mars
episodes about how these days SpaceX is the big sort of pioneer in space. And the guy we
know from SpaceX is a businessman. And nobody knows the scientists at SpaceX. But
back then, obviously, it wouldn’t be a businessman because NASA isn’t a company. It’s an
agency. But even so, he’s not writing letters to the President. He’s not right, even writing
letters to like, the administrative head of NASA. He’s writing letters to the scientist to the
guy who is making these rockets who’s doing the math behind these rockets? Because
that’s the hero. Yeah. And I feel like that’s an important difference between how it went
then and how it’s going now, you know, now that I really think about it, I feel like this
movie didn’t touch on real science so much as it touched on real history. That’s where we
get so much more of the detail. Yeah. And it’s just little nuggets that they put in there.
You’ve got von Braun, but and then you’ve got Sputnik, obviously, like, these are a couple
of obvious ones. But we hear about the Red Tails from World War Two, excuse me, airman.
And you also, you know, you get I don’t remember his last name Ike, the guy who’s the first
machinist who helps them and then go ends up in the mines.
22:31
You know, he’s talking about his family back home and in Europe, and what, presumably
behind the Iron Curtain? Yeah, exactly. And so I don’t know, they’re just these, these little
things that felt, you know, they, when they take apart the railroads, and the kid is like,
Yeah, because mines die out, and then they don’t need the trains. And so we, of course, we
can take these,
22:59
which is, I did not like that, that sequence at all, it was a little terrifying for me, but I think
they did a really good job. What I’m saying is that they did a great job of dealing with the
history of the time, giving us a lot of a lot of context, and giving us a really good reference
of where we are. And when we are, you can always put, hey, this is cold wood and the sick,
you know, I don’t know where these 1950s. And that doesn’t necessarily route you to that
until you have characters like and I don’t remember what the man’s name is. But the black
man who says that he’s he was in the Red Tails and World War Two, and you’re like, oh,
man, you’re not even very old. Like, I don’t know, there’s just something really lovely about
it creates these roots for the story that really placed it in an in an era and a time. And I
loved that. Yeah, yeah, historical accuracy. For sure. The other thing that this movie does,
which I agree, it doesn’t do a lot of real science in the sense of the nitty gritty of how it all
works. The closest that we get is a few montage is working on rockets, and then the
trigonometry sequence where he’s actually like walking you through. But even then, he
doesn’t describe the math too much. He just describes the conclusions of the math. But
the other thing that this movie does, which I really, I feel like makes it fit within the
synthesis is it is all about the attitude towards science. It’s about how people think about
science. And it’s even back to what we were just talking about that a town full of people
are looking up at this light in the sky and thinking threat. And one guy is looking up in the
sky and thinking achievement. And that is the scientist distinction. You know, he’s focusing
on the how not the the end result and there’s, you know, you were talking earlier about
capturing sort of the pride of small towns big
25:00
They there is definitely this culture in very small towns of like, we don’t need those big city
folk. And there’s a great moment where, where Homer is talking to his dad, and the dad
just dismisses Verner von Braun, like it’s a fad. It’ll move, you know, they’ll move on as soon
as they’re done. He even says, maybe then they’ll have to get a real job.
25:24
And then, shortly thereafter, he gives his own justification for why his life is important. He
says, this, the coal we mined, make steel, and if steel fails, this country fails. And I just felt
like that is such a great representation of how everybody has pride, everybody finds a way
to justify how their life is sort of the most important effort being made right now. And, you
know, yeah, yeah, you need steel for the 1950s. It’s, he’s not wrong, but at the same time,
like, You’re seriously gonna say that, like your job in the coal mine is the only important
thing that Verner von Braun has just needs to get a real job. Yeah, it really feels like the
way that at least in America, we look at CEOs. And we’re like, well, without them, we
wouldn’t have any jobs. Yeah, you know, and but then you have the working class going.
Without us, you wouldn’t have a company. Yeah, exactly.
26:20
You know, in some ways, both are correct.
26:25
So, you have, you have to have both, and both are being able to run a company and also
being a part of the working class. Both are worthy of praise and recognition and
recognition. And have you get to have pride about either one of those. And I so but that
stubborn need to, to diminish the others importance is just that’s very real. And I mean,
I’ve heard it, I have heard that exact line about like, when I’ll get a real job. I have never
forgiven that person. It’s like one of the few grudges that I am willing to hold. Yeah,
because Screw you, man. I’m working three jobs. Well, and that’s one of the things that I’m
very grateful to my parents that I never did hear that like, my, my pretty much my whole
family is lawyers. And I decided that I wanted to go to film school. And then I didn’t end up
making movies, but I did make video games and nowhere along the way that I did
anybody say like, Oh, well, you know, give it a few years, but then you should really think
about going to law school. like nobody ever gave me that speech. And I’m, you know, now
here I am with That’s awesome. Right? Yeah, very grateful. Yeah. I have to say real quick
on the science front, that montage where they’re just shooting off rockets and failing. Yes.
Oh my god. It’s one of the longest montages I’ve ever seen. Because like, oftentimes a
montage will tell you a story, right? It’s okay. They did this. And then they it’s like one step
after another. Yeah. No, no, no, this is not that. This is just failures. Yeah. And I like you
know how sometimes in comedy like, okay, the there’s the rule of three, you do it three
times. That’s the funniest. But then some people are really good. And they can take it past
that. And you can do something 10 times, and it’s hysterical every time. That’s what was
progressive. Yeah. funnier, because of how many times it’s happening. Exactly. Yeah. And
so that’s what this was, for me. I was like, this, it, there was a moment where I was like, Oh,
this is about this is going on too long. And then you saw the next one, and the next one.
And it just, I don’t know, there was Glee and the fact that they didn’t get it right the first
time. And they kept going. And it’s kind of funny how, like, how dedicated these kids are,
yeah, and obsessive. And I love it. There’s just something about it that I was like, oh, man, I
hope. I hope I have kids that do. Like, they don’t have to build rockets, but like, fail that
many times and keep going just try it. Well, you know, the other thing that that scene
does, that is sort of subtle, because this is a this is a type of montage that exists in a lot of
movies is like the the hero trying to do the thing and failing. He hasn’t figured it out, you
know, there’s, there’s a montage like that in the first Iron Man movie where he’s trying to
build the suit. And he keeps like, thrown himself up against the ceiling. And you know, he
keeps failing and all that.
29:23
But because this sequence is so long, I feel like a subtle but important message gets
communicated, which is not just, oh, they’re new at this. They’re figuring it out. It keeps
going. And what you walk away with is a sense that, Oh, this is hard. Yeah, this is not easy.
This is not something that you just do a few times and figure out No, you’re going to do it
again. And again and again and again and again, and you’re going to keep failing. And by
the time we come out the other end of that montage. We’re buying into the idea that he
really does need to go learn trigonometry.
30:00
Get a totally new kind of steel. And like all the decisions that the rocket boys are making
in this movie, they now carry the weight of expertise, they have figured out that this is
actually necessary. They’re not just playing with toys. I had a, a rocket section and a tech
class. Yeah. And I think that so I had seen an October sky before this, and did not enjoy it.
30:25
And why is that? Because it made me cry. And I don’t like to cry in public. Thank you, I’m,
I’m working on it. Crying is allowed for men and women, we should all be allowed. But I
did not have that mentality in high school. And I used my long hair to my advantage to
create a curtain because nobody wants to cry in front of their peers and so that’s, that’s part of why I didn’t like this movie. And so I didn’t really remember much going into it. But another reason why I think I wasn’t stoked about this is because I didn’t understand why rockets were so cool. I took I took the tech class, we all had to take and I took the rocket module that sometimes you just ended up taking because you didn’t get your first or second or fifth choice. And the rocket module is so lame and so boring. And
this movie made me go Oh, it could have not been Now it could not have been this. Like,
that’s just not how it could have. They’re not gonna let you blow yourself up. Yeah, exactly.
31:36
But simultaneously, this movie made it made me understand why these kids were
interested and intrigued and inspired and all of that. All of the eyes. Yeah. Speaking of
blowing themselves up, I really like at the beginning, the mom says, Just don’t blow
yourself up. And then he turns around, and nearly blows himself up. That’s when the fence
gets blown up. And I was just like, oh, kiddo, please don’t hurt yourself. did not tell you not
to blow yourself up. Yeah. And then they go on to not wear goggles. There’s a moment
where they you know, like through that entire montage and I was going oh my god, can
you just can someone put on goggles please. Like, I’m so terrified for your eye.
32:24
I am not telling you to not blow the things up. I’m just just yourselves and your eyes, just
the vulnerable bits. I will say I love his mom. I love his mom. Very sweet.
32:38
She’s She’s got through her mural. And her preoccupation with Myrtle Beach. I feel like she
is one of these characters that that you talk about in writing classes where she’s got her
own story that’s unfolding and this movie isn’t about her but she’s definitely got a thing
about Myrtle Beach and her relationship with her husband and wanting to go off. And so
at the end of the movie when they’re doing the sort of where are they now and it says that
she retired to Myrtle Beach. It’s not just trivia, it feels like the conclusion of some you
know, it feels like the culmination of her arc. And now is great.
33:14
We do we need to we need to talk about john, we need to talk about homers dad. Yeah.
33:19
I had actually filed him in my memory as worse than he was somehow. Chris Cooper.
Obviously, this is his brand. Like this is the kind of character that Chris Cooper does. And
he does it so well. which kind of sucks. I feel like for Chris Cooper, like, I don’t know what it
would be like to be a guy in the world whose whole job is like you get hired to be the
asshole abusive dad. And that’s just a look. It’s another script where I’m like punching my
son. Yeah, like that. I feel like that would be a bummer. But that being said, Chris Cooper
does an incredible job with these roles. And I feel like this is the ultimate one. This is so
that I think it felt very real. He couldn’t. It could have been taken in multiple directions, it could have
been far more abusive, or he could have been more of an alcoholic, and they still would
have lived in reality. But what I liked about this is he was just an asshole for so much. The
first thing we see is, hey, a guy nearly gets himself killed. And everybody is gathered.
Because people are coming up from the mind and something has obviously happened.
JOHN has saved his life personally. Yeah. And so they call him a hero and Homer says
that’s my dad. And then john yells at the man who who’s obviously hurt and nearly died
and it’s like you’re fired because I told you not to like screw up your screw up. And then
homers, like, that’s my dad. Yeah. And
34:55
you. I love that the first way we get introduced him is
35:00
That he does have good qualities, but he’s gonna follow it up with being an asshole. And that’s just the way it is, you know, there’s a thing that I have been I have become interested in in
the last few years, I am not an angry person, I actually struggle a lot to express my anger
like I, I err on the side of jovial too much. You may notice my wife sitting next to me
nodding gently and behind the camera is our producer also nodding gently.
35:33
But there are certain characters in fiction that I’ve become kind of fascinated by because,
at first, I didn’t like them. I categorically just wrote them off as assholes. These are
characters like john in October sky, but also like Roy, in the TV show, Ted lasso, if you’ve
seen that show. Also, you should, you should watch that last Oh, but Roy and Ted lassa,
also vorenus in the HBO and BBC series Rome. These are characters who are sort of only
angry, they only operate in the world through anger, but they’re not bad guys. They’re
assholes. But they’re not bad guys. And it’s fascinating to watch them struggle with their
anger, when they don’t want to be angry, you know, like, there’s a whole arc where
verbenas is trying to reconnect with his wife, who he hasn’t seen in like 10 years, because
he was off at war. And he’s an angry guy. But she’s his wife. And how do I do this? You
know, and, again, Roy in Ted lasso, dealing with his anger, but also trying to turn it into a
constructive force. And there’s actually a moment in the show where somebody calls him
out and is like, you’re not letting yourself get angry. And we need you to. And now with
john, the thing that I found interesting about john is a surface reading of October sky is
he’s an abusive father. But really, he’s not an abusive, like, he doesn’t beat up Homer, I’d
still say his visa. Well, I mean, he is cruel in a lot of ways. He’s emotionally abusive in a lot
of ways. But what he does is, it’s like he only has one emotion. And that’s anger. And he
will express it at you.
37:25
When you do something that makes him angry, he will get angry at you. But then we also
have scenes of him expressing love. And it’s in the language of anger, he, how does he
respond to,
37:39
to his son and his friends getting arrested, he bails him out, and he lectures him and he
gets up in his son’s face. And then he immediately turns around and protects one of the
other kids from his physically abusive father by getting angry. And he barely says
anything kind to the child, but you can tell he’s trying to be kind to the child by getting
angry at his abuser. And I’m just fascinated by this character who is trying to use anger
constructively. I so I have lots of feelings about john. I don’t have a lot of good feelings
about john, to be honest, like, he’s emotionally and
38:19
he’s emotionally abusive. He’s verbally abusive. And I have to be clear, I’m not forgiving,
john, I’m saying he’s an interesting character. And I don’t put him on the level of Roy. No,
no, because Roy has a lot more going for him in terms of good attributes.
38:41
Whereas this guy is willing to sit in his anger. And we see the difference, the way he treats
his sons, because I don’t remember what the oldest son’s name is. But he, that son does
not get in trouble. That son is clearly the golden child, clearly, and john is proud of him
and all of that stuff. Whereas he’s got this incredibly and you know, what? A child’s
athletic ability ability is totally worth being proud of. But having another son who’s
incredibly gifted at I won’t, I shouldn’t even say gifted. He is working so hard to be good at
something. And is.
39:28
I mean, we know from Miss Riley, that Homer is not good at math. Right. But he’s, this is
not the story of a wunderkind. Yeah, this is the story of a dedicated person. Exactly. And I
think that there’s should Why isn’t there pride for that? Yeah. And I, like I get it the the
moment that he pulls that stepdad off of one of the kids, and says, you know, he’ll beat
him. If he sees this happen again, and says to the kid, you know, your dad was one of the
best people I knew. I was like,
40:00
That is good and that it’s great that we’re seeing that we’re seeing it really far into the
movie. This is this is his save the cat moment. Yeah. But it’s like, at least halfway through
the movie. Yeah. And
40:15
I think although I would say, really has saved the cat moment is the scene that you
described because our introduction to this character is not. He’s yelling at our hero and
getting up in his face and all that our introduction to this guy as he saves people’s lives,
and then screams at them and appropriately. I don’t know that that’s a save the cat
moment, though. Because you’re not emotionally invested in it doesn’t make you
emotionally invested in him. Yeah, that’s right. I think that the point of a save the cat
moment is to be emotionally invested and root for someone, even if it’s just a little bit and
yeah, if it’s if it’s not literally a save the cat moment, I feel like it is a deliberate way of
introducing us to this character. And he’s, he’s being presented simultaneously as scary
and helpful. And that’s exactly like, that’s what I was saying when I was in when I was
talking about his introduction. Yeah, I appreciate that. We get both sides of him. But I
don’t think that we care about him at that point. And it you know, it takes until middle of
the movie, and then we kind of go back to Okay, he’s not as bad as he could be. Right.
Which is not how I feel about ROI, or vorenus. Yeah, where I, that is very much how I feel
about barinas. That’s not how I feel about ROI. No, I would put vorenus as sort of worse
than john. I mean, I don’t really remember Rome as well as you did. But there you do. But
yeah, I. And then at the end, you know, we see this, this moment where he mocks his son
for not recognizing his hero. And I was just like, excuse my language, but I’m gonna say
this, you shut the fuck up, man. Like, this kid is in shock that he won, like, and you couldn’t
just say something nice about being proud of him. You had to mock him for not
recognizing
42:15
his hero that it’s it’s not like today where you see these people on Instagram and TV. And
all of a sudden, no, he had a picture that was stolen from him. I was so so angry. Yeah. And
so I don’t I don’t think that that to me read as vulnerable, though it is. And therefore a little
more sympathetic. It’s still a dick move. But I didn’t hate him for it. Because I saw that he,
he was just he didn’t know how to process feeling like his son hated him. Sure, I get that I
think, I think this character really reminds me of a guy I went to college with who was a
year younger than me, who grew up on a farm. And his dad never once told them, I love
you, or I’m proud of you. And the way that it really,
43:07
it really messed with this guy’s life to feel like he wasn’t worthy of his father’s affection.
And I and you know, being in theater, you kind of get a little bit more into each other’s
backstories personal lives and emotional lives and all this stuff and how much in some
ways it like fucked him up to just not here and so I don’t have a lot of forgiveness for
someone who treats their kid like this. And like I said, I don’t have forgiveness for him
either. If this was a real person that I knew in real life, I think he was a fucking asshole, and
I would not want to associate with him. But as a, as a fictional character, I find it an
interesting way to go to take this fundamentally unlikable character and present them as
trying, you know, like, like, it’s, it’s an interesting arc for someone to start from a place that
is essentially a villain and then show how can they you know, this is not the story of
somebody who doesn’t want to connect with his son This is the story of somebody who
apparently really wants to connect with his son and simply doesn’t know how he himself
was raised by somebody like this so I don’t
44:25
know No, no I cuz I don’t think he’s trying so much as he’s got like these moral parameters
that you do not cross. You do not hit kids. You do not get anybody else on like any other
miners killed you, like people shouldn’t die in the mines. Like, these are the things that he
cares about. And that’s it so long as you don’t cross those lines. He’s gonna be an asshole.
Well, but you have to at least give that he struggles in this movie that like there are you
know, it’s not just
45:00
Homer who is unhappy with how these conversations go down, he, there are multiple
scenes where the dad is trying to, to,
45:08
like, like he’ll sort of start to do something conciliatory and then kind of recoil from it. And
you know, it’s not he’s not just sort of brushing it aside, ag Be a man and move on. This is
somebody who is looking for a way to connect, and
45:25
I can I can’t help you here. I can just I can see the chain of fathers stretching back. I know,
and I get it, there’s a there’s a history that has that really leans heavily on this man, and I
get that. But that doesn’t mean I going to be particularly sympathetic to his, his traumas.
It’s it’s a vicious cycle. Yeah. And we know that, that we know that that’s how this sort of
abuse works. But yeah, I, it doesn’t mean that I, I can just check that box and be like, that’s who you are, man. And I good on you. I’m not sayin that’s what you’re doing. Okay. Just, but I, I cannot just give him any sort of passes. And he’s sort of like extra sympathy or anything. I can’t give him anything. Yeah. So that’s, that’s where I’m with him.
46:22
Not wild about him. In In a similar vein of this movie, capturing how people really work. I
had to chuckle there are a lot of movies every year, there are a lot of movies that depict
some version of the awkward teen. But I feel like this movie speaking as someone who was
an awkward teenage boy, this movie did a really good job of capturing what it’s like to be
a genuinely clueless teenage boy. Like, it’s not just that he doesn’t know how to talk to the
pretty girl, it’s that he didn’t even realize that the pretty girl was talking to him. You know,
like, there’s there multiple scenes in this where there are, you know, girls that are flirting
with him or somebody trying to get his attention that he just doesn’t even clock that that’s
what’s happening. I feel like that is a subtly different thing. But that, yeah, that spoke to my experience. One of the other things that I kind of liked. So recently, I saw something about how clicks are
changing clicks and like high schools and middle schools and and in some ways for the better word, a lot of groups are intermingling in a way that in this movie you don’t see in my high school you saw a little bit of
47:33
and it you know, there’s a moment in here where
47:40
you remember, one of the kids is shooting his car? Because it’s dead again. And he’s mad.
Right? And they’re talking love that scene. Yeah, it’s a great scene. And they’re talking
about getting out of the town. And one of them says, you know, we’re never gonna get out
of this town route. We’re all hillbillies. Well, except for Quintin. Yeah. And then what you
see is that of all of them. quittin is the most hillbilly in terms of where he comes from
external variables. Yeah. And I loved I love getting that glimpse into his life. And the fact
that Homer didn’t make a meal out of it. The movie didn’t make a meal out of it. I was
wondering why Homer was talking to a prostitute. And then suddenly, we’re going
48:34
to the woods to the shack. Yeah. And, and Homer doesn’t care. He’s like, This guy has
become my friend. I, you know, he sat down at this table, and everyone was like, in shock,
which they did make a meal of that totally. But that was less important.
48:56
They’re not making a meal of where Quintin came from. And I loved that they did that. I
thought it was it was a nice touch on the director’s part that they did that and, and the
writers part for putting it in there.
49:08
Because quitting was obviously determined to at least try to not stay in town. Not that he
was probably going to get out of town. But right. Yeah, yeah. There were a lot of things in
this movie that were delightfully understated. They’d never made a meal about the fact
that Oh, della has a bad leg. Yeah, that’s a thing that that character has. And for all I
know, it was just a decision that the actor made because it was nowhere in the script. So
yeah, maybe it’s something that the actor has. And because there were times where it was
worse than others. No, and it was just a part of it. I feel like I don’t think it’s something the
actor has, because I’ve seen him in other stuff. So if it is, then it’s something that he knows
how to hide when he wants to.
49:53
But yeah, that there are a lot of things like that that were just very nice. Do you remember
the scene and the lab
50:00
Where they are mixing up something and then they pour it down? And do you know
exactly what happened? Yeah, so because I need, I need a little bit more play by play.
Yeah. So they’re, they’re sitting there as sort of a classic scene in in high school movies
about smart people, you get these in these scenes in Spider Man movies and stuff is the
the kids are in the back of the room. And they’re doing their own science experiment that’s
so much more advanced than what they’re being taught. In particular, it’s Quinten,
showing off a formula for essentially rocket fuel. It’s, it’s his version of what they’re going
to put in the rocket to make it blast off. And they’re working on it, and and examining it,
and then the teacher starts coming their way. So they very quickly, they pour it into the
sink, and then they run the water and wash it down the drain. Now you have to imagine,
all those desks have sinks, and they’re all going to feed into one pipe. So somewhere down
under the floor, all of those things are connected. And so they, they watch this rocket fuel
down the drain, and then they go back to their experiment. And a couple of minutes later,
one of the girls in the class strikes a match to starter Bunsen burner tosses the match into
the sink, and the fumes from the rocket fuel that they’ve made just explode up out of every
sink. Yeah. And I, I guess, really what I’m asking because that all made sense. And I caught
all of that is what did Do you remember what the chemical composition was of it? I don’t
remember the specific composition. That’s fine. I didn’t ask you before the show. But I, I
was sitting there going Wait, what? What is? What’s there? Yeah, that water wouldn’t
affect that it would still light up like that. Yeah. But it’s fine. It’s I did, I did appreciate in the
world of rocket fuel, I did appreciate that. They made the shift from solid fuel to liquid fuel.
That is the thing that they really use liquid fuel and rockets. And so it was cool. That was
one of the few moments where we get told a specific scientific principle that is executed
on screen sort of in the style of the Martian. And I really appreciated that, especially
because it had to do with Roy Lee saving the day with moonshine, which was one of the
most charming shots of the entire movie. Another example of using science and this is just
52:32
probably my favorite scene in the entire movie.
52:35
And the most synthesis moment in this movie is finding och 13. Yes, I’ve loved that
moment. That whole sequence of doing the math, learning the trigonometry, doing the
math, figuring out how far it could have gone, and then measuring it out. With the rope is
and the music. I listened to that I have the October sky soundtrack, and I’ve listened to
that song 400 times. Listen, I think my favorite part about it is they do the math. And then
they and then you know, they have to do the boring human part. Yeah. Which is alright,
one, two, like we’re gonna we’re gonna take the rope from here to here. All right, let’s,
alright, now you move. Oh, that’s two. This is three. Like, oh my god. That is. It’s it’s just it
felt so human it felt. So
53:30
I feel like probably what a lot of scientists feel like we get, we often see the cool stuff that
the scientists do in movies and TV and stuff like that. And, and kids are going to often be
inspired by how awesome it is. But then there’s the mundane that you have to do. And it’s
honestly a good portion of what you do. And that’s what we see here. And then I love
seeing the moment of like, what, what how did we go wrong? Yeah, the math is right.
What didn’t we consider? Yeah. And then they figure it out? And? And that just felt so real
to actual science as well. I don’t know. There’s, that was one of my favorite parts of the
movie. Well, I feel like, you know, we made an interesting distinction back when we’re
talking about the film, The Martian. And that is that the book of the Martian is the story of
someone coming up with solutions. And the movie is the story of someone presenting
solutions that we don’t actually see Matt Damon come up with the answer on screen the
way that in the book, we do see Mark working through the problem. And obviously, it’s just
a matter of screen time, you know, whatever. But most of October sky is presenting the
science Hey, look, they figured out how to make our rocket. But I feel like the search for
rock 13 is the one moment in this movie that really celebrates the process of science that
it’s not just about finding the answer. It’s about how do
55:00
Did you find the answer? And what led you to that? And once that is solid, you know, the
answer is going to be solid, you know, if you if you did the process, right, that is the
promise of science, the promise of math is if you did the process, right, your conclusion will
be solid. And it was, yeah.
55:24
I have to talk a little bit about the educators. Okay. Yeah, movie.
55:30
The principal is a villain.
55:37
He made me exceptionally angry. Yeah. So my grandfather was a principal for many,
many years. And you know, I know, I lived with him for for a good while. And I know what it’s like to be
around someone who is, you know, can be harsh, and who’s an educator and rigid and
can be rigid rate, but my grandfather would never, ever keep anybody from trying to learn
something. Yeah. And I, I,
56:19
the fact that this principle is so entitled, because he can, he’s allowed to go off to college,
and he’s allowed to get out of whatever city he grew up in, and be a principal here, but
everybody else, unless you’re a jock, everybody else, you’re gonna, you’re, you’re poor, and
you’re going to the mines. And that’s just the way it is. And you should, like, it’s, it’s fine. If
you drop out of school.
56:46
I was horrified by all of this, and it was, I really, really struggled watching him and Miss
Riley, not be on the same page. And like, thank God for the Riley’s of the world.
57:04
I think I hope everybody has had, like, Has everybody had a teacher like that? I hope that
you have, please tell me that you have. I was lucky enough to have a couple. I had a
wonderful English teacher, I had two incredible debate coaches, who also for the most
part, were in the English department that were phenomenal. And they never, they never
let you slip. But they always had they it always felt supportive. Right? Yeah. And this
principle is like, Oh, no, these kids are our bad kids, because they’re making rockets and
learning math and science. Shame on you. Also, I’m going to let the cops arrest you at
can’t make a scene and he lets the scene happen. He lets these boys be completely
humiliated. And so anyway, I wanted to drop kick him. Yeah, to the to me. So I am
frustrated by him. I don’t think I hated him as much as you did. But the biggest, most
damning thing that the principal does that I just, it makes me bear my teeth. Every time I
watch this movie, is when they have found Doc 13. And Homer is showing off the
trigonometry that proves that they couldn’t do it.
58:36
It very quickly becomes obvious that Homer is right. There is not a long time in that scene
where the where the principal is like holding his ground and insisting that Homer did it. No,
it’s like, oh, okay, well, you found the rocket, I guess you didn’t do it. But as soon as Homer
starts presenting the math, the principal makes a crack about how you learned more in
the coal mine than you did in high school. And that, to me, is just the most petty, like that
is the thing that makes me decide this is not somebody that I care to sympathize with,
because he knows he’s wrong. And he’s still lashing out at the kid for being smart for
having knowledge. That’s the crime that he’s ridiculing right now is that this kid learn to
something. And that is just inexcusable for an educator. Like That would be bad from
somebody who worked at the mine, but at least with that, I could write it off as like, Oh,
well, he’s like, sort of, he doesn’t have an education. And so he’s threatened by people that
he thinks feel superior or whatever, but like, this guy’s clearly educated. He’s clearly pretty
well off. He should be celebrating kids who go out and learn trigonometry on their own.
Yeah, you know, this scene also reminds me of I don’t remember what the statistic is, and I
don’t remember where it’s from, but I’m going to tell you about it anyway. So join me for the ride which is a How we talk about how the cops close a lot more cases than they used to. And we should
be proud of them for that, and all of this stuff. And I’m sitting here going, Well, that’s
because of science. And also because the work didn’t have to be done. If anybody had
showed those kids, the rocket that the cops had found,
1:00:21
when they found where the fire had started, the kids would have been like, we don’t know
how to make that, that has spring loaded fins. Like, that’s insane. This is so cool. We know,
we should have thought of that. And by the way, the principal was the one who took one
look at it was like, that’s not their rocket. That’s like, I know exactly what that is. That guy
probably served in World War Two. And he Yeah, yeah, like the lack of work that went into
things and the assumptions made, and the stereotypes that were used to, to convict I
don’t know, if it’ll, if it makes you feel better. One of the things that they changed in the
movie, that is not how it went down in real life, is exactly that. Apparently, in the real story
that actually happened in the 1950s with the rocket boys. The cop showed up. And they
were like, hey, somebody started a forest fire. And we heard about your rocket, and we
think it was you. And it was like, a couple of minutes before everybody was like, wait a
minute, you couldn’t have made this rocket. And they they were they never like, got
expelled or anything like that doesn’t make me actually feel a little bit better. But yeah,
yeah. Sort of.
1:01:33
Within the context of the film, it’s still frustrating. I was I, you know, there was a moment in
the movie where I was, you know, we learned that right? Miss Riley has Hodgkin’s
lymphoma. And I was sitting here going, Oh, man, was this just for the movie? Was this
true to life, because we know that this is based on a true story. But true stories always
have something that’s embellished, as seen by your example. And it broke my heart when
we saw at the end that she died at 30. And she died at 31. And I was just like, Oh, fuck no,
like the amount of kids that are losing out on a light in the school.
1:02:14
But by the way, I’m older than 31. And that’s weird, somewhere, like I didn’t notice. But
somewhere along the way, I passed the age at which people can die young and still have
like, done things with their lives. I’m still in the mindset of like a teenager where if
somebody died younger than me, then they like sort of didn’t get to live at all. It’s very
strange that somebody can be several years younger than me and the Billy Joel song.
Only the good die young no longer applies to us. I know. Right?
1:02:43
Who What have we done? Yeah, seriously. weird shit people, demonstrably. So. Obviously.
1:02:52
I, I, I don’t have a lot more to say. But bringing it home, I will. I will say I would like to talk
about a couple of the shots that we see that again, they don’t make a meal out of
1:03:07
I’ve got three of them, go for it. The first one is when Homer is going down into the mineshaft for the first time, and he’s on night shift, you can tell he looks up through the grate in the elevator and we see Sputnik go over Yes. And somehow it did not feel on the nose to me. And I was like, how did they do that? And I
think it’s this maybe the setup? Or the fact that it’s not commented on? I don’t The setup is
we’re going to they’re going to see it every night after sundown. And you’re going to be
able to see it like the hour before dawn. Yeah, something like that. Right. And we we’ve
already established that. And I don’t know, I think part of it is that they don’t do it a lot.
There’s the scene at the very beginning where they look up and they see Sputnik and then
the next time they do it is that scene two thirds the way through the movie. If it had been
like this recurring theme that like every night he’s looking at the sky and watching Sputnik
or something, then it would have felt more heavy handed when he’s going down into the
mind and he’s still looking up at the sky. But the fact that it just it’s played more casually
than that, like, yeah, that was the day that everybody was looking at it and then it was just
part of the sky. Yeah. But it’s still up there. It’s still up there. It was, it was a beautiful
moment like this. This sinking into his own personal hell and watching what has inspired
him further away, again, further out of reach.
1:04:36
It was beautifully done and a very literal hell, the whole mind sequence was just that as a
terrifying environment, not into that at all.
1:04:45
The number 723 that’s Ike Ike’s number when he gets sent to the mine. And we see that
they they show us an insert of of that and then we
1:05:00
He pulls it out later. Yeah, completely forgotten about that medallion. And he pulls it out.
What?
1:05:10
At the science fair? Yeah. And, you know, he has a moment within I was just like, Oh damn.
1:05:19
off day. I’m like, we haven’t seen him playing with it. I as an audience member forgot it.
And then you’re gonna do this. And I just like,
1:05:28
I loved it. It was so lovely. Yeah. And then my last one is, they’re going, they’re doing that
final launch. Right?
1:05:38
And, yeah, it’s cool that his parents show up.
1:05:44
They set off the rocket. And it’s, it’s me. But then when they pull out, and they do all of
these
1:05:55
super wides, and you see it from all of these other people’s points of view, yeah. And
getting and Miss Riley getting to see it through her hospital window and knowing what it
was. That was a shot, Okay, I’m gonna cry, I’m absolutely gonna cry. I didn’t, I teared up.
But I did that last
scene, every time that I see that, like, I can watch that clip on YouTube. And I tear up that
whole last launch with the dad. And you know, counting down it is by the way, I lost track
at a certain point, but I’m pretty sure that that is the only launch in the film that actually
happens after one. The entire film there like 543 I think Yeah, there. There were a couple. I
noticed that too, that there there were not very many. It’s actually it’s it’s relevant to
another thing that I really liked, which again, in the understated, they never really make a
meal of it thing is they’re increasing infrastructure. Over the course of the film, they’re, you
know, at the very beginning, they’re like lighting the match and then running away. And
then a little bit later, they have like an erector set with a match and a string. And then a
little bit later, they have like a electrical sort of switch that they throw. And then at the
very end, it’s this very nice like wooden box with a light and I really appreciated that their
infrastructure improved over time. You got the sense that they aren’t just making rockets,
they’re refining their whole process.
1:07:22
Another thing that I broke my heart, but I liked how they played it off was him meeting
von Braun and shaking his hand and not even realizing that that was von Braun until he
was gone. Apparently, even that is wish fulfillment on the part of Homer Hickam who
wrote the book rocket boys by the way.
1:07:42
He never met him apparently, apparently in the real story. He went out to find Verner von
Braun at this conference because somebody told him that at the science fair Verner von
Braun was attending and that moment that he went out to go find Verner von Braun and
try to shake his hand was the moment that Verner von Braun decided to visit his exhibit.
Oh, no. And I hate that story. I could have I could have done without that.
1:08:10
very heartbreaking that you are leaving us with that. Well, no. Well, so the last scene with
the rocket launch, that is something that just gets me every time the music, we I could do
a whole nother episode of the sentences just talking about the soundtrack to October sky.
But there’s something
1:08:34
this is one of those things where I feel like I’m putting something on the film. I don’t know
that this is necessarily what they were going for with the shot. But it’s what I took from the
shot. This the scene that you were talking about with the the rocket being viewed from far
away and watching it go go up. And I just that shot gets me for a very specific reason.
1:08:57
That is a much better way to end this episode. All right.
1:09:03
So that is it for us on The Synthesis tonight. Tune in next week. We have a very special
episode. We’ve got one more episode this season on the synthesis. And we have a special
surprise. We are going to be interviewing Wait, wait, wait, are we actually telling people? Is
this how we’re telling people? I think we should we’re Yeah, we got it. We got to build hype
Right. I mean, yeah, I suppose. Guys. Yeah. I don’t know. You guys. This is a big deal. Yeah,
we worked hard to get this this and I don’t know it’s like it’s like a surprise party. I feel like
we’re supposed to be really quiet about it until it’s but that you’re right. We should. All
right. We should tell everybody so that they can get excited. But all right. So after reading
the Martian for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks, we reached out to Andy weird to
have him on our show. And we got him but we’re not talking about
1:10:00
The Martian. Oh no. Andy Weir’s next book. His third novel is coming out next week. It’s
called “Project Hail Mary”. And they sent us a copy. We read it. I read it in like 18 hours. And
it’s an awesome book. And we have Andy Weir next week for an interview discussing his
new book “Project Hail Mary”. So here’s the deal. If you there are spoilers in it. Yep. So if
you light spoilers, we don’t go through every single twist and turn. But there are things that
you don’t get from the back of the box. Yes. And so I just want to put it out there that I
would say that there are some lights and some midsize spoilers. So be careful if you are if
you are a big reader of, of Andy Weir, go on buy it. It’s a great book. It will be on shelves. I
think the day that our interview airs next week. So So get excited to, to me, Andy Weir and
his adorable dog. Yes. By the way, for those just to underline, this is a pre recorded
interview. So we’re not going to be taking questions from the audience or anything like
that we need to work around a year’s schedule, but we’re going to be releasing it at the
usual time. 5:30 pacific time on Thursday next week. I believe that’s may 6. So tune in and
check out The Synthesis interviewing Andy Weir. We talked about “Project Hail Mary” we
talked about his second book Artemus and we talked about the Martian. So tune in next
This week, “Ad Astra” starring Brad Pitt. Wowie Wow Wow. Space cowboys and Brad’s awareness for humans being wasteful. Not too shabby. BUT will Alex point out some major flaws? Will Lacey freak about the abyss of space or the lack of emotional availability!? TUNE IN.
𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕊𝕪𝕟𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕤𝕚𝕤 is a live talk show that aims to find the relationship between science and fiction in pop culture. We’ll discuss a book, movie, or show each week that’s science-focused and talk about just how realistic it is, where reality is cooler than fiction, and exactly where certain liberties were taken.
00:03
Hey, folks,
00:04
this is Alexander Winn. And I am Lacey Hannan.
00:07
And you are watching The Synthesis, the show where we examine how real science is used in entertainment. Tonight we are talking about Ad Astra the Brad Pitt film from a few years ago.
00:19
Yes, we’ll give you a little bit of a rundown. It’s a, it’s kind of a domestic drama, played out in space, we have a almost like an EMP happening that comes from around Neptune. And it’s causing a lot of problems and the rest of the solar system, especially on Earth where you know, it super matters because people live there. And they’re thinking that it’s anti matter is that something along those lines is causing it. And there’s a ship out there that they’ve had some problems with. And so they bring in Brad Pitt, because his dad was the captain of that ship. So Brad Pitt is part of Space Command, which I will say is better named then space force. But he is what? He’s not a captain. He’s a major. Is that right? And yeah, so he he’s working on the space elevator, EMP hits.
01:23
They’re like, Okay,
01:25
we got to do something about this. And so they call him in, and they’re going to get him to Mars so that he can be in contact with his dad. And then the whole thing kind of spiraled out of control from there, as he takes off in a ship and kind of accidentally kills the entire crew. And then wanders out to Neptune to go get in contact with this dead person face to face. Yes, indeed. So that’s, that’s those are the basics. Yep. And we’ll just kind of go through it.
01:58
Yeah. So this is very much a Heart of Darkness story. That’s the vibe that I was getting very much. All throughout Heart of Darkness. For those who haven’t read it is a book from the late 1800s, about a guy who is trying to find one particular person who has disappeared into Africa. And this is back when Africa was, you know, the dark continent, it was just a big blank space on the map. And so this person is going into the wilderness of activity going beyond what is known to find one particular person out there. It was famously adapted as Apocalypse Now, a story about someone during the Vietnam War, who’s going off into Vietnam to find a commander who has disappeared into Vietnam. And it’s exactly the story. It’s apparently it’s not like officially an adaptation of Heart of Darkness. But I don’t know why. Because it’s literally the same story. So yeah, it’s, it’s interesting. I figured. So this was a film that neither Lacey nor I had seen before we before last night. And I added it to the list of things that we wanted to do for the synthesis. First off, because it’s a sci fi astronaut, movie. And that’s kind of what we’ve been doing. But also specifically, because, you know, the synthesis is all about examining scientific realism, in entertainment. You know, we’re not doing the Star Wars and the Star Trek, that sort of thing. We’re doing stuff like the Martian that at least bills itself as being plausible. And the writer, director of this film, James gray, said, specifically that he wanted to make, and I quote, the most realistic depiction of space travel that’s ever been put in a movie. And to basically say, space is awfully hostile to us. And so that was a that was a flag that I could not ignore. That is exactly what we want to talk about on the show is the most realistic depiction of space travel ever put to film. And let’s talk about how he did.
04:05
I’m not wild about it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, listen, I didn’t hate this. In comparison to some of the things that we’ve seen and in a vacuum, my might hate it. I don’t know. I don’t want to. I don’t I don’t like hating things. Yeah. But I just felt like, there. There was a lot in terms of the space travel specifically that just felt wild wildly. Wrong, like basic basic is, how did his dad was there the McBride’s right? Yeah. Okay. How did commander McBride stay alive on a ship? For decades? Yeah, he’s out there for like 30 years. 30 years. Yeah. And it was not. It was supposed to be half that long. How did he How did he manage that? We don’t we don’t have any Yeah, way of creating food and water for an oxygen for that long.
05:05
Yeah, we are, we are left to assume that they had some sort of like algae tank or something that they could grow their own food in perpetuity, but it’s never commented on. Yeah, yeah, that’s that’s something that I have had to make up what I just said, to explain
05:20
Yeah, you have to fill in some plot holes for them. And I just felt like I wanted them to tell us. Yeah, like, how does this work? Because it’s cool.
05:29
Yeah. Is that surviving alone in space is the entire premise of the Martian? Like there’s, there’s a whole movie there that that you could have gone into for Tommy Lee Jones? Yeah, I think. So I had a funny little realization, where I was like, Oh, I think I, I have a good point. And then I realized that it was not a good point. The thing that I that I was thinking, after I saw this movie was I felt like that quote, from the director about how he wanted to make the most realistic science fiction film, the real, most realistic depiction of space travel that had ever been put to film. My my gut feeling was that he sort of told the art department that and nobody else like he didn’t tell the writer that he didn’t tell, you know, that sort of stuff. Because there is so much that is beautiful. In this movie, I love the art direction. I love the cinematography, I love some of the set pieces, like visually, this probably is the most scientifically accurate thing that I’ve ever seen put to film. But then the story is so not scientifically accurate. That I was I was left thinking, Okay, this guy must have like, been brought on to the project with a pre written script, read it and said, I, the director want to make this the most scientifically realistic thing ever. But I still have to deal with the script that was handed to me. It seemed like a perfectly reasonable explanation. And then I got on Wikipedia, and I realized that the director was the writer. So I guess that wasn’t it. He if he wanted to do it scientifically, accurately, he missed the mark. That being said, like I said, there are definitely a lot of things about this movie that I I really enjoyed in that. In that vein in the scientific realism side,
07:13
listen, like, let me point out one other thing that I really struggled with, but then I will follow it up with something that I liked. And I know you liked it, too. Yeah. Okay. So one of the other things is Mars to Neptune, in 79 days is impossible, and ridiculous and cannot happen. So why, why? Why do that? And I recognize that the story kind of calls for it. Oh, my gosh, there’s this uncontrolled release of anti-matter and it’s going to kill everybody. We don’t have a year or two to get out to Neptune. Yeah,
07:50
exactly. But you, you made this, like, you wrote the story and 70 they said, as he says when he lands on Mars, it’s been seven weeks since he’s had oxygen and sunlight and something else. And I’m thinking that seven weeks from Earth, and then there was this moment that he is on the moon for a while before they head off to Mars, and I’m also sitting there going wait seven weeks, seven weeks to get from from to do all of that. You know, I don’t believe you. Oh,
08:23
yes, seven weeks is a little more realistic like in other universes, like if they had said seven weeks to get to Mars in the expanse universe. Yeah, I buy that. Like they’ve got these crazy Epstein drives that can burn it, you know, high g for the entire duration of the trip. Yes. I completely believe that you could get to Mars in seven weeks. I don’t even think it would be that hard. But if it takes you seven weeks to get from Earth to Mars, how the hell are you getting from Mars to Neptune? In 79 days, math doesn’t work. Yeah.
08:56
And speaking of math, by the way, I actually did the math, I looked it up from Mars to Neptune is on average, about 2,654,820,000 miles. And on in that distance to get there in 79 days, you would have to be averaging 1.4 million miles an hour. Now obviously, Brad Pitt’s fragile human body cannot just put the pedal to the metal and get up to 1.4 million miles an hour. So in order to do that, you would have to have a long period of acceleration and then a long period of deceleration. But if you spend a long period accelerating a long period decelerating, then you by definition have to go even faster in the middle part. So it’s just the math does not work. Like if he has an engine that can get in from Mars to Neptune in 79 days, then you don’t need to be searching for extraterrestrial life, which is what Tommy Lee Jones his whole mission was about was trying to contact alien life. That’s not a problem and Because you can just go there. Yeah, like, if you can go that fast and Neptune, then you can just get to Alpha Centauri without it being that big a deal.
10:08
And so I just, I feel like the director did not accomplish what he set out to accomplish. And he failed me. And I don’t approve of that. Generally, but what I will say I really enjoyed Mars or the moon, when they when they get to the moon, and we see how things, you know, the the gravity change. And you know, there’s that chase with the pirates. That’s like, that was cool. I had one minor problem with it, it doesn’t even matter. Yeah, it’s the, the whole thing that that going off the side of the crater, and just kind of
10:53
spinning out into nothingness.
10:56
And then landing. Like, we talked about this earlier, landing in the shadow. And of course, the shadows on the moon are so dark, because there’s no atmosphere to diffuse the light. So you get it’s like it was, it was awesome to see someone do that and, and get it right. Yeah. So I enjoyed parts of the space travel, it was just so few and far between that it barely
11:25
I feel like the biggest strength of this movie. And I really, it never got to like the whole movie, this is the part that I was just really loving, was, they did an incredible job of making sci fi stuff seem mundane, that like this is just Yeah, you’re just we’re going to send you the Mars, you’re going to stop by on the moon on the way we’re going to take a commercial flight to the moon to keep a low cover. And, and then they just move on. And like they really a lot of time, filmmakers sort of can’t resist the urge to be like, Oh, he’s going to the moon, you know, like, like, they sort of make a meal about it. And they really the actors and the editing and, and the writing, everything really led to, like the guy said, we’re going to send you to Mars by way of the moon. And it really felt like he was saying we’re gonna send you to Oregon by way of Kansas. And that’s just how this goes like, that’s, it’s no big deal. It’s not like a crazy top secret, you know, insane mission. It’s like, no, we’re just, we’re gonna send you to Mars,
12:24
we’re gonna set you to Mars. So that it, it feels a little bit so that it’s not as noticeable. It’s
12:33
exactly like we’re gonna stop by on the moon because it’s convenient for for, you know, keeping your cover, it’s not a big deal to go to the moon. And there were just so many things like that, in this. In this world, there were so many things that were just sort of casually, futuristic, you know, the whole opening sequence on the space elevator, which, by the way, is the coolest, and maybe the only representation of a space elevator that I’ve ever seen in a big budget thing. But also not a space elevator. I guess it’s they describe it as the International Space antenna. Yeah. Which is weird, because if you’re building something that high, and that thin. That doesn’t work, unless it’s tethered to something in space. Like if it’s a space elevator, it makes sense, because it’s a cable running between the Earth and a counterweight. But if it’s just a tower that he was like, at the top of the night, that’s weird. So I wish that they had just called it the space elevator because way cooler. So tell me tell me more about this. Tell me why it’s weird.
13:37
So you know, with anything that you know, in, in the world of just sort of like kindergarten physics, okay. If you have an object that is going back really far, guys, yeah, if you have an object that’s taller than it is wide, there’s always going to be a tipping point. And the tipping point is, as you tilt it, the point at which its center of gravity is no longer over itself, the point at which its center of gravity is over air, it will start to fall. And so the thing about building really tall things like skyscrapers and antennas, and that sort of stuff, is that you need to widen it to make it taller. That’s the fundamental concept behind a pyramid. You know, like, if you’re gonna build a really big a really tall thing, you need it to be really wide. And, you know, you can you can fudge it as your materials get better. You know, it’s, it’s no, it’s no coincidence that skyscrapers happened at the beginning of the 20th century, right when like, really strong steel was developed because steel can hold it, but the taller you get, the less wiggle room there is, you know, like if you if you picture a radio antenna, that’s like, you know, 20 storys tall. If you’re off by half a degree, you’re already leaning so much that your center of gravity is off the base, which is why if you’re, you know, driving across country and you see a radio tower, they often have cables hold holding them down.
Because those, if it ever starts to lean in one direction, the other, the cable will pull it back, you know, that’s why they they’re designed that way. So if you have something like what we saw at the beginning about Astra that is ginormous, heaven tall. Yeah, that is space tall. But you know that that thing is not like the whole complex that he’s working on isn’t really any wider than like an office building, you know. And, and this, most of it is just hanging off of these quite thin tubes, that are the actual structure that is reaching down toward the ground. And so the idea is that if you have something that tall, you either have made it out of a manner of a metal that is infinitely strong, that can just handle any kind of force, the atmosphere and wind and you know, like everything is putting on it. If we assume that they don’t have God metal, then then it needs those cables that radio tower has, or, and here’s the big thing, or it needs to be tethered to the sky. And that’s how a rate that’s how a space elevator works is a space elevator is a real thing. You can really build it. It’s perfectly valid science, and it shows up in a lot of science fiction. And what you do is you have a counterweight, you have a big thing like a moon or an asteroid or a really big space station in orbit, and then you do a cable down to the earth. And the cable wants to fall, the cable is not supporting it’s on wait. It’s just taught, it’s pulled between the Earth and this counterweight. And you can imagine like somebody swinging like a bolo, the force of that orbiting object is pulling the cable taut so it stays upright. And so you know, when when the movie started, and he’s out on this incredibly tall thing, and he’s like doing maintenance operations on and I’m like, Oh my god, this is so cool. It’s a space elevator clearly, like the only way something could be this tall. Is it the space elevator? And then later, they refer to it as the International Space antenna. And I was like, what, what?
What? That’s, that’s weird. Like, why not just call it a space? That’s clearly what you have is a space elevator. And it’s so much cooler than an antenna. Right? It was a it was an odd choice. But either way, in my head cannon, it was a space elevator. And that’s awesome. For sure. Presumably there was an elevator in the antenna. That’s how we got up there in the first place.
17:24
Oh, right. Yeah, cuz they didn’t just climb.
17:26
Yeah. That was not, that was not literally a stairway to heaven, built into this, like a spiral staircase with 15 billion steps. Yeah.
17:34
Is it Stairway to Heaven, like a song about to his little girl that died? So that might get really sad. And really, I mean, it’s also just a phrase. But yeah, but that’s okay, whatever.
17:47
But yeah, like, you know, that was an example of that was a super cool representation of the thing. And what what I was talking about earlier, this mundane sci fi, it’s like this incredibly awesome set piece of sci fi storytelling. And he’s like a repair guy. You know, like, he’s just going out. And he’s licking himself onto it. And he’s going down, and he’s doing stuff. And he’s, he seems to be functionally the equivalent of like, a window washer on an office building. And I just I loved that. There are so many things in his movies where they took this incredibly cool sci fi thing. And then they were just like, yeah, that’s how the world works.
18:23
I will say that this is the first time that I’ve ever cared about commercial spaceflight. Oh, yeah. The way they showed it. I was like, Oh, yeah, no, this just feels this feels the most realistic. Yeah. You know, we’ve seen spaceflight in the expanse. We’ve seen it in other areas. And it always feels really kind of grim. Yeah, to me, and this just felt like, oh, you’re getting on a Delta flight, you’re getting on a United Airlines Flight, whatever it is. And, and, you know, you’re, I guess paying for your blankets and pillows by then which is a crock. But, you know, there was there was something about it that just felt like okay, this makes sense to me. And it’s cool. The only thing that I really didn’t like, and this is just my, I mean, I think it’s actually a big deal. I’m I shouldn’t downplay it. But the tree hugger comes out in me. The the moment those huge fuel stages just come off and you’re sitting here going, how many commercial flights go up every day? And what about those fuel tanks that just land in the ocean?
19:39
I guess it’s especially interesting because that’s old tech. That’s how it worked in the 60s. But that’s not what SpaceX is doing these days. They they’ve got reusable rockets that you don’t need to just jettison things off into nothingness. So that was an odd choice. It
19:53
was an odd choice. They had some they had some old stuff happening. Yeah, there was something that felt that was clearly in the future. Because they can get, yeah. So Neptune in 79 days,
20:03
it almost it almost seemed like, you know, there were enough throwbacks to sort of the Space Age tech and design and stuff that it almost you could do a reasonable headcanon with this movie, that it’s sort of like a sequel to for for all mankind This is like it’s an alternative universe an alternative history of a world where the space race never ended. And so they do still kind of do it like they did in the 60s, because they never stopped doing
20:27
it that way. I guess there’s, there’s something kind of interesting about that. I’m not usually one for filling in potholes, like, my, my thing is that I want to take things at face value, like, oh, look for the symbolism, I will do all of that. But it didn’t. It doesn’t, it doesn’t always work. And so in this case, I’m happy. Like, I’m not happy to but I’m willing to fill in a couple of the plot holes. And one of the things that they talk about is the amount of war that’s happening. He says that he spent three years over the Arctic Circle, or what the fuck is happening over the Arctic Circle do and the moon has turned into the Wild West. Like, this is all worse than it’s turned into, like, you know, in Mogadishu like, yeah, it’s
21:14
and then and Mars is the same way they talk about, you know, the the outpost that they go to is the American one. And it doesn’t seem like you want to go to the other ones. If you’re an American, like, what is happening? We have not we apparently went to space without coming up with some treaties first, which I think is problematic.
21:36
Yeah, it’s almost like this movie is set during world war three. And they sort of forgot to tell us, you know, that, like, there are all these military installations everywhere. And everybody’s fighting everywhere. And they just kind of like it’s not relevant to this story. So we’re not going to get into it. But like, you set up a really book world.
21:51
Yeah. And but believably so like, it wasn’t post apocalyptic. It was just, this is the futuristic version of the 1930s of the 1940s. Not the 1990s. You know, it’s not a perfectly prosperous time. Are you? Me? It made me sad.
22:05
Yeah, it was.
22:07
I don’t know. It was hard before we move on from the moon, by the way, in the world of odd choices. And I it’s not a criticism. Exactly. It’s just sort of a dot dot dot question mark moment when I was watching. You know, Richard Branson, has a SpaceX competitor. There’s a company called Virgin Galactic that is trying to do private spaceflight, and that sort of thing. And they sold some tickets. Famously, they offered William Shatner a ticket to go into space. And he was like, No, like, No way and for him. But it was, it’s an interesting choice when they take a commercial flight to the moon. It’s Virgin Atlantic. It’s not Virgin Galactic. It’s, it’s Virgin Atlantic, which is the company that really exists that you can like fly to London.
22:53
We did Virgin Atlantic go under. I think
22:55
they were sold and like it was consumed by another airline. But yeah, and they kept the aesthetic. The whole room is lit in sort of pink and purple, which is like if you’ve ever been on a virgin flight, that’s actually how they decorate and stuff. Yeah, well, I’m
23:07
so close even says like, she loves that, that there’s DHL on the moon. And it’s I do appreciate that some of these corporations have stuck around. Yeah,
23:18
I just I wonder what kind of behind the scenes licensing deals had to be struck to get virgin but it wasn’t Virgin Galactic. Yeah, it was the what was the specific legal delineation there because you know, they wanted it to be Virgin Galactic. But yeah, that that whole sequence go on to the moon. It’s all great. I loved on an art direction level. I don’t know why this I got such a kick out of this. I think it was just because I wasn’t expecting it. In one of the very early scenes after he’s fallen off the space elevator. I was admiring their uniforms. I liked the it was it was green, but it had a black shirt and a black tie. It was just kind of like looked all gray. It looks pretty green to me.
23:59
Maybe I’m wrong because it was kind of dimly lit, but it it read to me as army green jacket with a black shirt and a black tie. And it was just one of those things that Yeah, I believe that as a future fashion choice that they wouldn’t do right now. But it’s not so different that I couldn’t see them doing it in a few decades. But and so I was like, okay, that’s kind of cool costuming. And then they went to the moon and I noticed that all the soldiers had lunar cammo they had this like camo pattern that was white and gray and black, but it wasn’t Arctic camo. It was like, sort of futuristic and had all these straight lines that were sort of breaking up the profile. And then when they went to Mars, those same kind of guys were wearing, like tan and gray and orange camo, and that’s Martian camo. And they never talk about it. Like they never address it. They never make a meal of it. They just, that’s what the soldiers look like at this base. And I love that that is exactly the kind of world building that I Appreciate where they just thought about it a little bit, you know, their soldiers aren’t wearing green camo because you wouldn’t wear green camo on Mars. Right does. Putting aside from the fact that you, when you go on the surface of Mars, you’re wearing a spacesuit. Like they’re never gonna wear that camel outfit on the surface anyway, but it’s the army. You got to give them something to wear. And yeah, it’s gonna be Martian camel. I just I love it. Yeah,
25:22
I wasn’t entirely sure why it was green. But okay. What? The Space Command?
25:30
Oh, the Space Command. dress uniforms. Yeah, that they were beautiful. I thought they were nice looking. But they they fell. Oh, hold on. I was like, What? What is? What is what the green?
25:40
I’ll tell you what is up with the girl? And it pisses me off? Oh, no, it’s realistic in a way that makes me mad. Because spaceforce which came out after this movie was made, but this movie was pressured. Us space force the new division of the armed forces. I know where this is going. Uses army ranks. Come on, guys, they don’t use Navy ranks. You haven’t watched enough science fiction to know that the person who’s in charge of a ship is supposed to be a captain. Come on. Space Command is supposed to use Navy ranks. That’s how this is supposed to work. Everybody knows that there was even a bill in Congress that was going to force space force to use Navy ranks. And it got voted out because Congress is garbage. And it makes me mad. And so the the answer to your question of why is their uniform green? For the same reason that he’s a major? It’s because the US Army ranks? You guys, I have heard this rant multiple times. I think it may have even already happened on this show once. So, you know, I can’t get into it much.
26:55
I’m just saying Congress needs me. Like, this is us. Congress needs to get your shit in here for a number of reasons. But one of them is you gave us space force army ranks. And that’s stupid. And anyway, they have army ranks in this too. And I’m sure that’s why their uniforms are green is because their army guys not Navy guys. So yeah, we will wait. Okay,
27:22
that’s our show tonight, folks. Thanks for watching. We’re done.
27:28
So I I need to talk about the character.
27:35
Yeah, look for a little bit get some film stuff in we have more science to get back to but let’s Yeah, I entertainment side.
27:41
Yeah. Let’s talk about the part where we get into the fact that Lacey didn’t super enjoy the movie, and I kind of did enjoy the movie.
27:51
So Brad Pitt and so here’s the deal. I think Brad Pitt is a great actor. I think he’s interesting to watch. But I thought that the words they put in his mouth were stupid. Oh, I’m sorry. Not necessarily the words they put in his mouth. The words they put in his head because all we heard was freaking voiceovers. Okay, so his initials,
28:18
this is going to be Lacey’s army ranks rant.
28:21
Listen, the initial monologue that he has is like he’s, he won’t be vulnerable to mistakes and he calls his relationship unimportant. And I’m sitting here going, dude, you’re putting so much pressure on yourself. And he talks about how good he is at compartmentalizing. I was like, oh, man, dude, you’re setting yourself up to fail. This is not how EQ works. This is not how mental resiliency works. Who gave you How did you get to be a major
28:47
you use your
28:49
ability to handle stress is bullshit superhero stuff. Like this is not real. And and I’m not the only one who thinks that because I found a whole article on inverse calm Hold on, I have to Who is it? I don’t freaking know. It’s a NASA psychologist on Ad Astra and, and combating stress. And he talks about how AI is really not going to cut it. And he’s like, I’m not trying to be defensive. I was impressed. Because you know, I have harped on this multiple times you guys about the psyche vows or the lack thereof, as seen in
29:31
the one of the interstellar graphic smart like basically everything that we’ve done on the show except for the Martian. It’s got a really bad psychological screening.
29:39
And he talks about like, I’m not trying to be defensive, but it’s going to take a very long time to get to a point where AI could do what psychologists do, because you’re first looking for. You’re looking for people that are good at handling stress, but then you’re also looking for being able to to train people to handle stress, and you okay over there got a cable, like, tangled in my chair.
30:11
I’m sorry, all I’m seeing is the top of your boss
30:14
on me. I’m just being weird.
30:17
Okay. Bye. But,
30:20
you know, stress, there was a there was an astronaut that came back to Earth. And then because of the psychological stress she like, attempted to kidnap somebody. I
30:31
mean, the straw. Yeah, got real weird. She wore diapers so she could stock people longer. And yeah, I got real weird.
30:36
Yeah. So I’m just saying, like, the idea that psych evals could be done. The way that they do them in this movie, like, I appreciate the amount of them. I don’t appreciate how they did them. Because I think it’s BS. I don’t think like, I know that this movie is not set in the next 10 years. But it seems like it’s set. Not that far in the distant future. And I don’t believe that neural networks are going to be great for psychology and psychological evaluations, because there’s no trust there. Humans don’t just trust machines. And one of the things that this NASA psychologist says is, humans don’t like to give up agency to machines, we are practically unwilling to do it. And now, that’s going to be with like super private things and, and things like that. And so the amount of work that they have to do to build up enough trust to get astronauts to actually talk to them, is huge. And he just says that you can’t like, it’s it’s not that it will never happen. But it’s unlikely to happen anytime in the near future. And I appreciated that because it it fed into what I was feeling I was sitting there going, I’m sorry, this guy, you remember, there’s a James Bond scene, and I think it’s with Oh, I don’t remember which James Bond where they open the they open the movie with him pretending he’s dead. And he has like, slowed his heart rate down to zero. And he’s in the hospital. And so they declare him dead. And then they leave the room and he gets up and walks out. I think it’s a Pierce Brosnan one. And I felt like it was like this. It’s just so it’s so not real, that a man would never have his heart rate go over 80 know, when he’s falling from the sky, you know?
32:48
Yeah, there’s a certain there’s a certain amount of it’s not about tough. You’re, you know, there’s a I think it’s in the Dresden Files, books. There’s some book that I’ve been that I read recently, where the main character talks about how, when something is flying at your face with the intent to kill you, you get scared. And that’s not a matter of toughness or cowardice. It’s not a matter of training, it’s not a matter of anything. If you have bilateral symmetry, you’re going to be scared. Like, that’s just how this works. And that is to me. Yeah, like there’s no such thing as a guy who’s whose heart rate never goes above 80 when he’s in the military.
33:37
And one of the things that this guy says, I’m going to read a quote from this article, it’s, it’s, it’s really interesting. And of course, you know, at one point, he talks about the Martian, which we love, so the only makes it better. But he says, as humans, agency is so important to us having our self determination that I think it might be a source of information. And it might have a high degree of predictive probability on things, but human decision making will always be in the loop. And there will be a myriad of factors that determine an individual’s readiness to perform a mission regardless of what the psychological status and I just think that’s interesting, because my whole thought on those cycles is they’re not taking in there are too many variables that I, I think that they didn’t look at, and also the variables that they did look at felt like BS. Yeah. So anyway, I could go on about it for the rest of the time that we have, but I won’t,
34:39
I will overflow agrees with you. Because soflo stated that he’s got the emotional range of a pet rock.
34:47
Yes. Yeah. And you can even hear it in the, in the in the voiceovers. Because, you know, a lot of the language is very philosophical, but it’s not deep. at all It feels like it feels like a freshman. Like poetry slash philosophy major, like talking about his mental state. I have very specific people in mind for this. And I’m sure all I think we all do, right. And that’s just it feels so emo. Yeah, totally, totally Alex. But I really struggled with the voiceovers because they, they felt very shallow, even with the vocabulary that they use. One of the other things is he’s like they’re using me. They’re using me. So you know, he’s on. He’s on Mars. And he’s been given the script to call out to his dad. And then they put him in a calming room, which is like one of the least calming
35:49
Yeah, we’ve ever seen.
35:51
You ever need to stress me out? You put me in that calming room was horrifying.
35:58
And he’s just like pacing. Right? And definitely not calming down punching the wall. Yeah. And he’s like, they’re just using me. God damn them. And I’m like, Yeah, man, they’re trying to save humanity. You do what you have to do. Like, who gives a shit if they’re using you?
36:13
Well, and also they told you, yeah, we’re gonna use you. Well, that’s that’s the mission is to be used by the army to make contact with us and you agree
36:21
to it. So if you have a problem with it, lay out your argument. I want to know what it is. I’m sure you have one. Even if I don’t agree with it. Just lay out the argument. But you can’t just say they’re using me and think I’m gonna feel bad for you. Like I had zero empathy for this guy the entire time. I just didn’t care. I didn’t care if he found his dad. I didn’t care if he went back to his wife. He said his relationship to her was unimportant. Like that as one of his very first line. So for her sake, I hope she never goes back to him because he’s toxic. And it just like, I don’t know, I felt like the main character had zero emotional depth.
37:02
Yeah, well, there were a lot of things for it throughout the story. There are a lot of things were the human side was weird. Like, I mean, the biggest one for me, isn’t even Brad Pitt’s character. It’s that the professionally trained spacepilot freezes up at the landing. Yeah, like, this is your whole job, man. Like, what? What is the problem? Exactly? And they never say like, there’s no, there’s no indication in the storyline of what exactly is the problem, they get hit by a surge. So they they’re not going to land on autopilot. And I mean, the only thing that I can think of is that we’re living in a world where autopilot is so universal, that he just actually doesn’t know how to land without it. Like, you know, yeah, sure. If all of the automatic transmissions in all of the cars and all of the worlds suddenly stopped working, a lot of people wouldn’t be able to drive a manual, you know, like a stick shift. Yeah, sure. But you’re a pilot man. Like, even if you don’t know how you should be figuring it out. You should be grabbing the stick and punching buttons and figuring out what to do. You shouldn’t just be sitting there and then glancing with a four lawn look over at the guy next to you like what the fuck is your job? And then at the end, Brad Pitt is like, I will not report what you did to space calm, and I’m sitting there going okay, but like, you should. Yeah, like, for the for the betterment of everybody that’s ever going to be on the sky ship. You should report this is exactly what you need to
38:29
crew at the very least would have died. Had it not been for Brad Pitt’s character. Yeah. And, and not to mention the people at the landing site. Yeah, it just what the hell
38:41
yeah. When a pilot responsible when a pilot can’t land his plane, you report that shit to space calm? Yeah, it was it was very strange. There were a lot of things like that, that were just okay.
38:53
Yeah. And I kept going, you know, they’d have you, you’d, you’d have trained for all of this. And then, you know, my mom’s a dental hygienist. And she has to go to a certain amount of training every year, and it’s rather a lot. And pilots get refresher courses
39:10
all the time. Yeah. And so what the hell is your problem, man? And, you know, we’re totally skipping over the first time that we see this guy, lose his cool, and it’s just a touch. But that’s when there’s the Mayday and what the what the hell was the point of that Mayday? I don’t, what what did it do for the story, to have these deranged, poor animals, lose it on their scientists and then kill the captain of this pilot that was checking on the Mayday? Like, what the hell was that and why?
39:51
Yeah, it’s I mean, to me, it was interesting. Yeah, like doing animal testing out there and one of them gets loose and there’s a crazy like, how do you how do you deal With that, that’s an interesting premise. But what did it do for this story? Like if you had cut that scene, what would you have lost?
40:08
Nothing, literally nothing. Yeah. So all you just get is this weird gore fest for a minute. Yeah.
40:14
And, you know, there was a point with the with the sound or the music earlier on in the film that I was like, Okay, wait, did we just step into a thriller? Or is there going to be like pops of horror in this movie? Because the music kind of set that up? But the trailer did not. And so I was confused. And I, I didn’t. I didn’t know. I don’t know what they were trying to do with this movie. I felt like they were trying to mesh too many genres. And they didn’t do a good job of it.
40:55
Yeah. Well, so segwaying back to some stuff. That was really cool. The Lunar Chase was really cool. That was a really cool action scene. And, again, from the from the sort of art design side, I felt like that scene had a lot of really cool, subtle things to it. So for example, when you’ve got a bunch of people in white spacesuits on white rovers, driving across a white plane, it’d be really easy to lose track of who is who, you know, that’s, that would be a real concern. And I feel like they did a great job of not letting you there were there were little cues like the the good guys had gold visors, and the bad guys had black visors. The rovers had subtly different designs and that sort of thing. But they were Yeah, like that whole thing and worth mentioning. This movie was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Sound Mixing. And it was that scene, I’m sure that got it for him. Because the the sound mixing in that scene of there is no sound in space. But there is sound of stuff hitting you. When you drive into a rock. You can hear it because it’s coming up through the rover. And, you know, that sort of stuff is that is that was really well done. I thought that it was exceptionally well done. And I and I will say that there, there were things that were totally beautiful the cinematography of this movie. I often love to not always I felt like some of the trippy stuff got really distracting. But there were times that it was just gorgeous. And you know, it’s the same cinematographer I believe who did and that did Interstellar. Yeah. So you know, the the planets were stunning, just like it. It was one of those things are just kind of makes you drool over where we where we get to live,
42:51
right? Yeah,
42:52
it’s so beautiful.
42:54
I want to go to there like, Oh,
42:58
yeah, yeah.
43:00
There is.
43:05
I don’t Did you did you just just just
43:07
just went out of my brain. There was the thing. And then there wasn’t.
43:11
I’m sorry, I interrupted your whole thing about the sound mixing and the the the chase on the moon with cinematography work, because it was something I could compliment. Oh, so I had to interrupt you just to say something nice.
43:24
Yeah, no, you’re you’re, you’re good. Yeah, the the lunar Chase was awesome. There were there were a lot of things that we haven’t seen before. You know, like, these days, for those of you who are watching it for all mankind is an Apple TV plus show that is dealing with the idea of combat in space. It’s alternative history where the United States and the Soviet Union continue the space race. And so they have they each have lunar bases and their conflicts on the moon. And they’ve made a lot of hay out of the fact that season two sees the first actual combat on the moon and they’re all the press material have these astronauts carrying like white and sixteens and all that. And so you know, that is starting to do it. But Ad Astra obviously been out for a little while. That’s the first time I think I’ve ever seen a realistic depiction of a battle on the moon. You know, that’s, that isn’t just like Star Trek, you know, that. That was astronauts fighting and I believed it that seemed like about how it would go down. Which is to say quick and really, really deadly.
44:30
Yeah. Which I Oh, tell me about your take on the fight when he gets when he gets on the shuttle that he’s not supposed to be on?
44:39
Yeah. So that I thought was interesting. I feel like again, from a storytelling standpoint, I sort of have some issues with it because you just slaughtered three people and took over, essentially an Air Force jet. And you know, like that was Whoa. But I did really appreciate That, you know, 03 combat is weird. You know, like, that’s, that’s not what humans were meant for. And I feel like they really captured the elegance of it. You know, Hey, he’s like, don’t, don’t worry, I’m not here to do anything. And they’re like coming out and one, one woman pulls out a gun and, and then all of a sudden the rocket kicks on. And you forget that, Oh, you don’t just float in space, you float in space, if your ship is floating in space, and then as soon as your ship starts moving, and you’re not strapped in, it’s effectively gravity. And she just gets squished. And it’s, it’s painful to watch. But it is a good reminder that like, you can’t treat this stuff as a given in space. And then, you know, the other guy and Brad Pitt are wrestling and they’re sort of spinning end over end as, as they’re fighting. And it just, I feel like, you know, one of the things that people talk about is, when you see a bar fight in a movie, it’s, it’s easy to follow. It’s like a boxing match. And they’re, they’re pounding each other and they’re taking, you know, they’re, they’re trading blows. And if you ever see a bar fight in real life, it’s like, it looks more like deer just locking antlers, it’s like two guys just run at each other. And they just sort of like grab each other.
And it just looks like a really angry hook. But let me tell you, as someone who worked in a sports bar for a very long time, those bar fights tend to turn into many people. Yeah, they tend to end up on the street. And it is not elegant, it’s totally hard to follow, and you don’t know who you’re fighting or why Yeah, and then and I’m not part of it, I’m just saying I’ve seen 16 people stop traffic because of this. And it’s
46:41
absurd. And the the the thing that I’m sort of leaning into right now is it’s not you don’t keep your distance, you know, it’s not to boxers, they’re like, you know, reaching out with their arm to punch the other guy. For the most part, they sort of smash their faces into each other’s shoulders, and they’ve got their arms like trying to hit each other in the back and they’re like me and each other, like, it’s just this sort of dog pile of, it really looks like an angry hug. And it that I feel like what’s captured in this scene is like, two people are trying to kill each other in space and it just looks kind of dumb, like, like they’re just kind of spinning it over and and try to get at each other and it’s just inelegant. Does
47:22
anybody know what was in that canister? That got loose? And then it just like killed the captain? Or the pilot, whatever? Because that makes no sense. And why didn’t the captain who was an arm’s reach of of oxygen put on his own oxygen mask? This man that pilot had zeros like serve to make his survival skills are zero and he should not have been in this position? Obviously, and the psyche, Val’s would have told us that, listen, I will try not to come back to the psyche. Val’s repeatedly,
47:57
but the psyche valid, you want to believe you
47:59
told us to this? And Alex was like, I take you know this. Do you think the military really has good psyche veils? And I was like, I don’t know. I mean, they’re probably not great.
48:10
Don’t get me to actually give the backstory on that comment.
48:13
Would you like to know, because it’s, the whole thing is like, these are all military people. And we like to think that the military has does good psyche. Val’s. But my question that, and Alex said that he you know, like he takes you were saying that you, you could handle the psyche vows. And that you took that at face value, which is, you know, the military is not great at everything.
48:46
Yeah, that basically Lacy was arguing that the the psyche vows were so bad that they were unrealistic. And the way that I read the film was that the psyche, vows are really bad, because the army kind of doesn’t care that much. They care if you can continue the mission, and they don’t actually care that much about your well being and as long as you can continue the mission, then they’ll, they’ll just sort of rubber stamp it. And that seems like exactly the sort of thing that the military would do. I just,
49:10
I couldn’t I can’t handle that. Like that just is so heart. Like it’s not heartbreaking. It just like it’s heart crushing. Yeah. And it’s, it is in itself crushing. And so I just, oh, I couldn’t I couldn’t handle it. And I kept saying like, they’re all of these people in these positions, that you’re asking me to take it at face value that at face value, that they should be here and that they should be in these positions, but I can’t take it at face value because I don’t value its face, and that the pilot is one of them. And also you can’t handle the edge cases which are both of the McBride men come on. And Ruth Megas character also probably shouldn’t be in the position that she should be on on Mars. So anyway, I’m just saying every last one of them had they’ve been promoted beyond
50:13
their capabilities. And I don’t like it. You don’t like to see it? Well, the way we got off on this was talking about the canister that gets shot that is that yeah, that is something that like, I really wish that they had just like thrown in a line of dialogue that that was like some kind of super toxic gas or something. And because I don’t think they mentioned it at all. But there was one thing that Brad Pitt says sort of like in passing, which it sounds like he says it was oxygen. And that doesn’t make sense. So yeah, I just have to assume that it was some kind of like nerve agent that God,
50:47
why would it just be sitting there on the wall like that? Yeah,
50:50
it’s, I mean, it seemed like it was maybe close to where they were keeping the nukes. So maybe it was some sort of like, super radioactive gas? I don’t know. It’s like, you can sort of fill in the blanks and come up with something that kind of makes sense. But I wish that they just thrown in a line and been like, yeah, that’s what, oh, no, you released the nerve gas that we were going to use to kill everybody on the ship that you know, whatever. Yeah, that was kind of odd.
51:14
Should we? Should we talk about the climax of the movie? Yeah,
51:18
I was about to say, let’s, let’s get to Neptune. So he’s so our hero arrives at Neptune. He’s there to to sort of reconnect with his father recontact his father and bring him home, and then also to destroy the ship because it’s been established that the the surge, the problem in this movie is coming from this ship. And I kind of misunderstood. I thought that this movie was a mystery about what is the surge? I thought that we were trying to get to Neptune so that we could figure out what is Tommy Lee Jones doing to create this phenomenon? And then it turned I guess that’s, I guess that was a misunderstanding. That was not what this movie was about. It’s just his ship is broken. And it’s causing this and there’s no like,
52:02
and his his thing is that he says that the crew mutiny, the mutiny, the last bit of the crew mutinied, and things went wrong, and that’s what started this.
52:14
Which, by the way, we’ve already established that the crew mutinied earlier and he killed them all. And so if these are his last loyal crew mutinied against him, these people suck and mutinying man, like this guy already killed everyone who rose up against him. If you’re going to rise up against him, you kill him in his sleep. I mean, come on, like you don’t just tell him, Hey, we’re going home and there’s nothing you can do to stop us. Like, there is a thing you can do to stop you. So like, you should really do a thing. Yeah, take take precaution.
52:48
They leaned into the creep factor. And a way that I felt was forced.
52:55
I appreciated seeing it from Tommy Lee Jones. This is an unusual role for Tommy Lee Jones and he he crazy this,
53:01
I mean, like, sure, but yeah, I’m talking about kind of the environmental stuff like Brad Pitt gets into the ship. And the first thing we like, the first thing we see is someone dead, with their head in a bag, like a plastic bag, and then you start to see more dead bodies in implying by the way that he was killed like by hand like this is not a guy who was killed because he got locked in an airlock.
53:29
This is someone who was murdered, face to face.
53:32
Yeah. And in the background is a TV playing at Black and White musical number
53:41
in the creepiest way possible in
53:42
the creepiest way possible, though, I would love to know what that film was because I want to see that. I’ve never seen that clip before. So if it’s a real clip, I need to know what it is.
53:54
Sure it is.
53:56
But it was just like it felt like creepy for creepiness sake and not actually for to move the
54:08
sense in the universe. Just a storytelling. I kind of
54:11
felt like they between that and the monkeys and some of the way that no drowning.
54:17
You can die in space for monkeys, but you can’t drown
54:20
this. Listen,
54:21
I like it not true. He goes underwater. He goes through an underground Lake it does. There is actually the risk of drowning in that asteroid.
54:29
I did not enjoy that part. But I didn’t hate it because there he wasn’t.
54:33
Yeah, there’s no actual problem. But I felt like the director slash writer was like I want to see these things and it was like walking into a convenience store. And just being like, I’m at 711 or while I’m here I’m going to get pick up my reasons and my cheese. It’s on my Coca Cola, and it was just like it was just like a grab bag of random shit. And I I couldn’t handle it because it just Felt pointless oftentimes? Yeah. So
55:05
we do have a few scientific things that happen around Neptune, which are interesting, including one doesn’t happen very often. That was more scientifically accurate. Then I realized I called it out. And then I realized that I was wrong. Okay. And that is he gets, you know, he, there’s a whole thing with his dad, where’s that basically commit suicide. And then he plans to do and he goes to go back to his ship. And he essentially peels off a piece of the hole to use as a shield. And then he rockets himself up through the rings of Neptune to his ship. Yeah. And I wrote down in my notes, flight through the ring was too smooth and too short. But still cool. That’s actually not true. I ended up I ended up looking it up after the it seemed like you know, this is space, like the rings of Neptune, the rings of Saturn, these are going to be huge. It’s going to take you hours to get through the the space that constitutes those rings. And I actually looked it up. Spaces weird, you guys, those rings of Saturn that you can see from Earth, you know, I think they are 30 feet, or 30 feet thick. That is razor thin, compared to the circumference of them. That is insane. If anything, the depiction of them in this movie, he’s in them for too long. Like it’s actually erring on the side of being too thick in this movie, he should have just kind of shot straight through. But that being said, it was too smooth. He was just yet right. He didn’t course
56:50
I didn’t understand why the rocks hitting him didn’t change the knocking projectory. Yeah,
56:58
or at least spin him like that really more than changing what direction he’s going in. They should have he should have been spinning like a top when he came out. They should have been hitting him at oblique angles. And
57:08
yeah, also, they were very blue from the inside. And I felt like that would be true. From the outside. You’re getting you know, from far away, you’re getting like the reflection and the ice, which is what a lot of what those rings are made up of. You’d be getting reflection from the planet or whatever. So that’s what you know, okay, we see them as blue. Cool, but I think inside of it, you wouldn’t. And it really looked like they had like a blue carpet with rocks on it.
57:38
Yeah, there, it didn’t look good.
57:41
There are so right here at the end, we get several things that are not scientifically accurate, which is unfortunate, because again, like there was a bunch of things that I really enjoyed. One of them was that another was this was one of those. So one of the things that I get so frustrated by in, in these sorts of things is like, why did you even put that line in? Like why do it if you’re not going to do it accurately? You know, and we’ve talked about this in in previous stories, where they’ll throw in some line or some picture that isn’t real. When they didn’t need that line. You know, in interstellar, there are lines about how Oh, it’s such and such it breeds nitrogen. That’s not a thing. And it doesn’t need to be. And I had to laugh. There’s this beautiful moment where Brad Pitt is talking about how you know his father is obsessed with the search for extraterrestrial life. And they’ve come out here beyond the edge of the heliosphere, which by the way is not Neptune. the heliosphere is 123 astronomical units wide Neptune is only 30 astronomical units out it’s way further out the Neptune but whatever. They’ve come out beyond the heliosphere to detect alien life. And he’s been working on detecting alien life. And there’s this beautiful scene where Brad Pitt is sort of looking through his data. And he’s looking through and he says he captured strange new worlds in greater detail than ever before. And there’s this montage of all these alien planets that he’s been photographing, right? Those aren’t alien planets. Those are the moons of Jupiter. They’re literally using photos of like Callisto and stuff. Like there’s a picture of Venus that they use. And it’s not even touched up. I know this because I used the textures of Venus in TerraGenesis. There are portions of Venus that haven’t been fully mapped. So if you look at a map of Venus, it’s sort of stripy, there, there are portions that are at higher resolution than others. And it’s frigging stripy. Like they didn’t even give it to a graphic designer to touch up the picture of Venus, this Callisto and there’s Europa and there’s like, over and over and over. They’re all these pictures of worlds from our solar system. Are you making a speech about strange alien worlds? And then using these like, Oh, my God, you could Get on any sci fi forum and find 20 graphic designers who would love to do pictures of alien worlds for Hollywood blockbuster, or, and here’s a radical notion. Just don’t show them. Just have him talk about it.
1:00:15
But that Okay, so here’s I didn’t know that you guys I did not know that that’s what I was looking at. And I was like, Whoa, Wow, those are really beautiful. My goodness, like, what a cool universe we live in, that there could ever be planets or whatever out there that look like this. Those images are what got me through that scene. And it takes me back to what I said earlier today about how how we’re so lucky to live in our solar system. It’s just so beautiful. And oh, that’s so sad. That makes me really sad. Like,
1:00:53
I’m not joking you guys. I have looked up Photoshop tutorials for how to make photorealistic images of alien planets with like procedural landmasses and all that kind of stuff. It takes like 20 minutes. Like, what was the art department thinking? Like, come on, just show us some cool alien planets don’t take the NASA archive of pictures of moons that people have been looking at for 500 years. Like this is literally the Galilean moons. Galileo saw these things. This is not new. If they didn’t even use pictures of Pluto. Come on. It was crazy. And then, so hold on, hold on.
1:01:29
I’m so sorry. You guys. So flow is you. I’m giving you like hero points today because
1:01:38
first of all, soflo is winning the chat on this but the movie was orchestra wives and I am so here for knowing that. No. And the next time we do a classic movie night, that’s what we’re watching.
1:01:49
I see. And I watch old movies on the regular
1:01:51
and it’s just so much fun. I wasn’t raised on them. So I know. I do not know my classic movies and I was on all of them.
1:01:59
Yes. And all. And then I just got a quote. What was said Vice soflo in in the chat. Helio pause for a moment you’re telling me they budget to the science on the heliosphere? Okay, I don’t generally enjoy putting that one. I am here for
1:02:20
guys. She always enjoys ponds. Lacey loves bonds. She doesn’t think she loves bonds, but she loves bonds. She’s mad because I called her out. I telling the truth, just so. So the takeaway here is if you have any really good bonds, be sure to send them to Lacey hunt,
1:02:43
oh, my God, we’re going to be a dead man.
1:02:48
That’s just your opinion. So the last little bit of scientific realism that we have to talk about is the very last moment in this movie. And I giving the benefit of the doubt because again, there were a lot of things that I really liked scientifically about this movie. The quote from the director that I gave at the very beginning, he did not actually say that he wanted to do the most realistic depiction of space. He said he wanted to do the most realistic depiction of space travel. So I guess that’s, you know, that could be read as just the getting from A to B, except that theory breaks down at the very end, because he tries to ride a nuclear slash anti matter explosion as what he himself describes as using the explosion as my primary propellant. Which is not a thing. You don’t just get to put a nuke at your back and surf the wave. That’s not how nukes work. But also, I just had to laugh. Because normally in space movies, you don’t know exactly where the spaceships are relative to each other. Like it’s just it’s an empty vacuum, you don’t you know, they might actually be tilted at 90 degrees relative to the sun or whatever. In fact, oftentimes they are in Star Trek if you really think about it, because they’re lit from above, which means that they would have to be like this and the sun is that way. But you know the space is very amorphous, there’s no upper down it’s tricky to know but in an Astra we have a rare moment where we know exactly where we are relative to both ships and to the planet because he went from one ship to another ship and he had to do it by going through the rings. So we know that his ship is on one side of the rings. The other ship is on the other side of the rings. So relative to Neptune they are north south from each other. Right there is a there’s a vertical axis here. Neptune does not have a particularly intense tilt the way for example, Uranus does. If this if this had been set on Uranus, it would have been Right, it actually would have been like, weirdly accurate in kind of a way if you could write a nukes, Shockwave or whatever. But with Neptune, we know that if one ship is here, and one ship is here, and he’s going to ride the explosion, that means that the vector of his travel is going to be the line from the first ship to the second ship, it’s going to send him straight up out of the plane of the ecliptic, and earth is that way.
1:05:25
And by that way, he’s going in 90 degrees. Like, yeah, that’s not a thing.
1:05:33
He really and also, I had this moment of, dude, you’re doing it wrong, because he was like, staring at back at the at the his dad ship that was about to explode. And I’m sitting here going, Man, you can’t look at a nuclear explosion. You, you are going you will be blind for the rest of your life.
1:05:54
And hope you enjoyed those eyes. Yeah, exactly.
1:05:57
I was I was actually panicked. It was like the only time that I cared about his well being for the irony of the movie. It was this moment of going. Don’t be stupid now.
1:06:11
Why up here chiming in in the comments, I on sale, not something you can make from trash. Yes, exactly. If you had a ship that was specifically designed to capture the force of an explosion in space, sure, whatever. But oh my god, you can’t just take a rocket and be like, I’m going to set up a nuke behind me. By the way, an anti matter nuke. Remember that this whole movie is powered by the anti matter reactions going on. And anti matter is way more powerful than a nuclear explosion. And then just like write it and be okay.
1:06:44
Yes.
1:06:47
Come on. You got Oh,
1:06:48
I’m just gonna put it out there. For all of those people. Who similar to to Roy McBride. And yours truly, Lacey Hannon. Who have father problems. Let me tell you, it is a it is a lot easier to just go to therapy than to travel billions of miles into space to deal with it,
1:07:15
especially to travel billions of miles into space to find a man whose opening line is, I never loved you or your mother. As soon as they gave me an opportunity to leave. I took it.
1:07:27
And Brad Pitt’s character even said something about like how we kind of knew that. Yeah, and I’m sitting here going, dude, then why are you Why are you here? Yeah. You were told multiple times your dad’s bad dude,
1:07:40
when people tell you who they are. Listen,
1:07:42
yeah, yeah. So anyway, therapy, I, you know, I’m just gonna harp on it every single episode therapy. It’s so so.
1:07:51
So you know, there are a lot of things. There’s actually there’s more that we haven’t even talked about. We didn’t even address the fact that he sent a message to his dad from Mars to Neptune. And then they waited for a response. And when they didn’t want to get one in a couple of minutes. You guys, the light delay from Mars to Neptune is over four hours. And that’s when they’re at their closest point. Once it’s an eight hour round trip to hear a message back, you can’t just sit in a room and wait for a response. There’s more. But fundamentally, Ad Astra gets high marks for scientific realism for the art department. It’s beautiful. It’s beautiful. And it’s well designed. And it’s it’s great world building. And it just everything that you see with your eyes is great. If the problem only comes when that information reaches your brain.
1:08:39
I will tell you my favorite image before we sign out. Yeah. That moment on the moon when he reaches what is what is it called that that moon sand. Like there’s a word for it. regolith regolith, there’s a moment where they’re driving along. And he sticks his hand up into the regolith as because it’s just kind
1:09:03
of dust suspended. And yeah, and it’s like, it’s like when you see in a movie, someone puts their hand out the window and they kind of do that wave thing with the air that streaming by right. And it was really, it was beautiful. And there was just like this lovely contented feeling that you get right before they start getting shot at.
1:09:22
But that was beautiful. Also not scientifically accurate.
1:09:25
I don’t. Okay, listen, this is the one time that I will give it to them. Because I it because I loved it and I needed the beauty. So anyway, there were some things that were fun and interesting. Brad Pitt. I didn’t love this. I didn’t like this. I hated this character. But Brad Pitt is fantastic. Yep. The roof Ruth negga is always great, always great and somehow always terrifying. I never know what I’m supposed to expect from her and this movie. Didn’t Let me expect anything from anybody at any point, because I didn’t know what was happening. But I still enjoyed her. There were some there were some great actors, given some weird stuff. And it was beautiful.
1:10:17
Yeah. So I think that’s it for this week. Tune in next week, Thursday 530. Pacific, we are going to be talking about October sky. We’re going to be going back to our roots Episode One was Apollo 13. We’re going to be doing another historical movie.
1:10:34
Yeah, I’m interested in this because we’ve had a couple of weeks of me not enjoying the things that we’re watching and i don’t like that I love to love things. And I’ve seen this movie once in my in my time, I don’t remember it because because it made me cry and i and i don’t like crying. And so I put it out of my memory. So we’ll see how I feel about it. But it’s there is definitely continuity. Here. We are continuing the theme of oh my god terrible fathers. That is who Oh, yeah, yeah, that’s, that’s gonna be fun. But check out October sky. It is based on a true story of the childhood of someone who grew up to be a rocket scientist at NASA. And for my money, it is beautiful. I’m really excited to be doing October sky because when I was a kid, October sky was like, like, if you had asked 14 year old Alexander when what he wanted to do with his life, he would have just handed you a copy of October Sky
1:11:33
to make the movie or to be a person on the movie on it.
1:11:37
It was just it was like the summation of everything that I love. It’s it’s film it’s space. It’s passos. It’s just yeah, I so love October Sky,
1:11:48
essentially what I’m saying is, I hope for all of our sake, that we can go watch this movie, and just love the ever loving shit out of it. Yes. And then we can just celebrate. And yes, and say good, warm, loving things about it. So that’s my hope, because this hasn’t been been.
1:12:09
Alright, so that is going to be next week on The Synthesis. In the meantime, be sure to subscribe on YouTube or subscribe to the podcast, whichever you prefer. If you’re on YouTube, be sure to hit the bell. So you’re notified about new episodes. And if you’re listening to us on a podcast, we just recently released the synthesis as a podcast and we could really use your ratings and reviews. So be sure to leave us those.
1:12:32
It is a huge deal. Please, please, please do that for us. Yes, we also have a Patreon page at Edgeworks entertainment. Nope. patreon.com slash Edgeworks entertainment. You can get a whole bunch of cool bonuses and rewards both from podcast and then also for TerraGenesis. And yeah, I think that’s it.
Lacey and Alex discuss the National Geographic series, MARS, episodes 4-6. A dude obsessed with plants, a giant dust storm, someone killing themselves by opening an airlock, someone being electrocuted, and discovering microbes on Mars. You get the jist, let’s have Lace and Alex break. it. DOWN.
𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕊𝕪𝕟𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕤𝕚𝕤 is a live talk show that aims to find the relationship between science and fiction in pop culture. We’ll discuss a book, movie, or show each week that’s science-focused and talk about just how realistic it is, where reality is cooler than fiction, and exactly where certain liberties were taken. Join us!
00:04
Hey, folks, this is Alexander Winn and I am Lacey Hannan, And you are watching The Synthesis, podcast or show where we talk about using real science in entertainment. This episode, we are talking about episodes four through six of National Geographic’s Mars.
00:22
why don’t you sound a little bit more excited about it? Cuz it’s
00:25
National Geographics. Mars, you know, as we went into last week, this is a show that I desperately wanted to like. And I will say this, I don’t know if I actually know if you’re going to agree with me on this. But I will say that I think that these three episodes are stronger than the first three episodes. Partially, I think that that’s because we just have more characters. And you just spread it out a little bit. You know, when you’re restricted to just
those crew members, you’re sort of stuck with like, oh, the captain is injured. And that’s kind of all that’s going on. Whereas now you’ve got more people. And it’s a sort of a broader story. But the other thing that I enjoy a little bit more about the second half of the season is, in a weird way, for all the sort of conversation that goes on in popular culture, about building cities on Mars, building outposts on Mars, building scientific stations on Mars, and all that kind of stuff. You don’t really see it. Like you, we have some movies like The Martian, and then, you know, sort of lesser versions of that like mission to Mars, or red planet, or, you know, movies about the first landing on Mars, the first people when they’re only like two or three people on the planet. And then we’ve got movies, like, you know, Ad Astra or the expanse where there are cities on Mars, and there are 1000s, or millions of people on Mars. But I can’t actually think of pretty much any other story. Live Action. That is, like 50 people on Mars?
01:59
Well, but I don’t think they get credit just for being the first No,
02:02
but what I’m saying is that I enjoy it a little bit more, because it’s unique, because this is a thing that I have yet to see. Yeah,
02:09
my my thing is, is that I wanted to see that, yeah, but they skipped over so much of the engineering and the like, how it would work. And they jumped straight from this crew of, you know, five people to a larger group. And we didn’t actually see, you know, at one point, they talk about the stages, and the documentary aspect of what we might do on Mars, and they say, we’ll do exploration, and then some sort of research station, and then we’ll do resupply from Earth and rope, rotate people in and out like Antarctica. And they use McMurdo as an analogue, which is the the place down on Antarctica. But then they don’t take the stages any further than that. Yeah. Which I thought was a little bit weird. But there’s a reason for that. Yeah. Keep going. We’ll get to McMurdo I’ve got a bone to pick with McMurdo.
03:09
Oh, okay. Well, so, you know, they, they don’t take the stages of what they’re going to do on Mars, they don’t go beyond those three, the exploration Research Station, and then the resupply from earthen, and switching people in and out. And I was just like, Wait, how are we going? Like, are we going to get to see any of the engineering or the policy? Or the politics come together? Or even just the people? Yeah. Because, you know, one of the quotes is, how does policy, engineering and politics come together to produce great science? Well, we don’t see any of that happen. And science has done so yeah, I’ve just like I was really frustrated, because I wanted to see what you’re talking about. And we don’t really get to see it,
03:57
we get it in a montage, which I think is probably my favorite moment in the entire show. It’s at the beginning of Episode Four. Because remember, Episode Three ended with like, hey, we’ve made a base, we have a place now to stay. We’re here we have a home, we can start really getting to work. And then Episode Four starts. And there’s this really cool montage where you can see them like building new things, and more people are arriving and rockets are coming and going and they’re building up the infrastructure. And literally, the first note that I have here written down is Episode Four, Time Lapse, finally some momentum because you do start to get that energy of you know, the the frontier town, and it was so cool. And they’re introducing new characters and now we’ve got you know, these people coming in, and then just before too long, we’re just back to back to those low gazes and mournful looks. And it’s just like, Guys, you had it like you did it. We know you can do it. Come on.
04:53
Well, I felt like part of part of the problem that we had is, you know, we see that the hab is being turned over. To expert scientists. Well, what were the people that were already there? Yeah. Because Marta, is the only scientists doing what she’s doing is seemingly, yeah, of looking for life on Mars, which seems like she would not be the only one doing that.
05:15
Right. When we met, it made sense with the crew of six, that shouldn’t be the only one. But you think that you’d have like an assistant or something now?
05:21
Yeah, exactly. So I don’t know. So I think it’s kind of weird that they turned, what they what they talk about is by handing over the hab to these expert scientists, it means that the crew that we’re following are the administrators. That doesn’t feel right, either. They are also expert scientists. So I don’t really know what distinction they’re trying to make, other than trying to set up this like, conflict and conflict of wills, a battle of wills, you know, and I just, and it just felt forced.
05:56
Well, and they didn’t, for me, at least, they weren’t ever even really clear about what the chain of command is. Because when Dr. Richardson arrives, she definitely starts throwing your weight around like she’s in charge. You know, like, there’s even a moment where somebody asks, did Hannah approve that? And she says, I told her Yes. Which means I don’t answer to her. But then, as soon as things start going wrong, she has to answer to Hannah like that’s, that’s what happens is, she’s chagrined. And Hannah is putting her foot down. So who is in charge here? Is this is, is one of them in charge of construction, and the other is in charge of emergency response? Or like, it was never clear to me what exactly was the handoff of power?
06:37
Well, and I think that part of the problem is they don’t explain a lot of things. You know, they kind of touch on what Dr. Richardson does. And they touch on what Paul does. Before you see him being obsessive, the plant guy.
06:54
Yeah. But they talk about his work and phosphorus something and, you know, they and then they talk about this conflict between Hannah and the scientists, but we don’t really know what the conflict is about. And I and he was excited to meet this Doc, like this scientist. Yeah, everybody there has read her work and all of these things. So
07:15
it doesn’t seem like they have a pre existing beef, which seems like it probably would have made more sense if these two kind of hated each other from back on Earth, and like they’re putting put together because they are the two biggest experts. But being the two biggest experts, they kind of butt heads a lot. Yeah,
07:28
I don’t know, I just felt like the the explanation for the science. And even the story is just lacking. And I’m like, Well, okay, first of all, we want to see, we want to see this story being told, and the science being shown in a way that we’re going to follow and we’re going to enjoy and, and get to kind of get into, you know, make it a little crunchy for us. I think the only people who are watching the show, want it to get a little crunchy. Talk about the science, but they don’t do any of it. Well, the science but also, you know, I
08:04
I’ve been thinking a lot about sort of where exactly did this show lose me. And there are a few points you know, like it definitely leans too heavily into the dramatic looks and the the long pauses like it’s it’s very slow and that sort of thing. But honestly, I feel like they missed. You know, every show, whether it’s educational or scientific or not, always needs to know its audience. And I feel like they missed an important part of their audience with this show. And interestingly, it’s something that I also feel like the Star Trek franchise has lost recently, which, if you’re a Star Trek fan, you may or may not be watching Star Trek discovery, which is current, the current show that is running in the Star Trek franchise, and it’s, I am not really into Star Trek discovery. And I’ve been wrestling with why and ultimately, what I decided was, it’s because Star Trek discovery is an adventure Star Trek discovery is fundamentally about going out and kind of kicking ass like saving the day. And that was kind of true of the 60s show, to whatever extent a TV show in the 1960s could kick ass but it was it was an adventure. But the Star Trek that I fell in love with was Star Trek The Next Generation and the 90 shows, which seem like an adventure. But if you really think about it, if you really go back and watch those shows now, what they are workplace shows, they belong alongside the West Wing, those are shows about people just doing their jobs. And as much as there is like saving the galaxy stuff. There’s also a lot of just like, yeah, I’m working the night shift this week. It’s been pretty rough. Like they just kind of talk about what it’s like to live on a spaceship. And they have whole episodes that are just about like, sort of keeping up morale and entire episodes that are about like, hey, the lights are going out and jordiz got to go fix the lights.
What’s wrong with the lights, man? Like why can’t you figure out the power grid that kind of stuff is what brings that Star Trek world to life. And I feel like that’s what was missing from this show. Anybody who’s going to watch a National Geographic show about an outpost on Mars doesn’t just want action and drama. What they want is, what would it be like to live on Mars? And they skipped that part. they skipped the mundane day to day just kind of like sitting around eating your breakfast talking about Mars. And that should have been there. That’s what I wanted.
10:30
Can I Can we just talk about Paul for a second? Because we must. So I had on here that, that the AI is the new Ben because I hate the AI. And then I realized the AI is not the new Captain Ben. There, there are people on the show that I hate far more than Captain Ben, which, according to Alex, I got very red face last week in talking about this, and I should you know, No, he didn’t tell me to tone it. I did. But he No, he would not do that. But also he was like, yeah, you were a little intense about it. There are people I hate more than that. But um, and I will say that Paul is one of them. I don’t know why his wife gets called doctor and their last name and he gets called Paul. My guess is that he he has a doctor is gonna break like, whatever. I just think it’s a weird choice.
11:31
Just maybe she comes across as more professional than he does. And so he’s just naturally Yeah, so listen, you guys, I, I just like, he comes off as inept, like not not inept, intellectually, but physically, and mentally incapable of being here. from the get go. And I’m sitting here going, this guy is so intense, and they do call him intense. At one point, they call that out, they lampshade it or whatever. But he seems like the kind of intense that is not healthy. From the moment we meet him. And I’m sitting here going, why? Why is he allowed to be here?
12:18
Yeah, this is this is not somebody who cracked under the pressure. This is somebody who was clearly unhappy to be here at all. Literally, the first shot that we ever get of him, is him kind of freaking out in the rocket landing. He’s He’s like, kind of hyperventilating and she reaches over and grabs his hand. He’s like, I’m okay. I’m okay. It’s like, if you’re stressed out about a rocket landing. What are you doing going to Mars? Yeah. Like, you shouldn’t be working back from Earth and just telling them what to do. Yeah,
12:43
the whole, like, if we’re at the point where we’re going to start, you know, doing the rotating people in and out. Your wife did not need you here. And you could have done this work from from Earth.
12:55
And it seems like you would have preferred it.
12:57
And he’s like, loudly, creepy. Yeah. Because the way that he talks about things, like talks about his plants is obsessive. And I find it disturbing. Like it’s disturbed from the get go. And I thought it was very weird that Javier was like, finally I don’t have to do everything on my own. And I’m sitting here going, dude, watch out. This guy might murder you in your sleep.
13:27
Yeah, you snip the wrong leaf. And he’s gonna freak out in a jealous rage. Yeah,
13:30
so I don’t know, I just, I mean, there’s a lot more about him as we move through these episodes. But I just need to put it out there now that he freaks me out from the very beginning. And I don’t know why he’s allowed to be here, where the psychologists,
13:46
I did think there was an interesting thing in the writing. Which is, and I may be bringing something to this because this definitely has echoes of the expanse in my mind. But you know, a lot of hard sci fi, that features a Mars with its own population, there quickly becomes this sense that they are no longer beings of Earth, they are Martians, they have their own identity and that sort of stuff. And so there’s language that develops around, you know, calling, calling people from Earth earthers. And there’s kind of an us versus them thing that happens. And I wonder if this was conscious in the writers mind, but Dr. Richardson keeps referring to the Mars base as up here. She keeps talking about, you know, how things are done up here. And what you guys have done up here, and it establishes her as not being of here. It’s it establishes her as having an earth based perspective on what’s going on here. Right and everybody else is just talking about here. It’s just the place that we live. It’s what we need to do. It’s how we’re going to survive and she keeps Talking about what we’re going to do up here. Like it’s not?
15:04
Well, and I think that that, yeah, I think that there’s something really insightful about that. Because what I think one of the ways that I know we are good travelers too, especially together is because every time we go somewhere, it could be for a weekend, it happened this weekend, we celebrated our anniversary. So we took a little road trip. And the first night we’re out to dinner, and at the end, he said, was it time to go home? Everything becomes home, wherever we are together is home, it’s fine. It doesn’t need to be our place. Yeah, in LA. And I think that there’s something important about being able to feel comfortable wherever. And she obviously doesn’t.
15:51
Yeah, I will say this in in, not in defense of the show, but you know, sort of advocating for the show. I do appreciate that. While there’s too much drama in this show. I do recognize that. Like, I wish that this kind of clash of egos, you know, pulling rank kind of stuff wasn’t realistic, but it is realistic. And I will say, I don’t think that in a realistic scenario that Paul would be sent because I don’t think he would have passed the psychological screening. But I do think that Dr. Richardson is exactly the kind of person who’s going to make her way into a Martian outpost before too long, and she’s going to start pissing people off. And that is very realistic. And similarly, later in the episode, we realize that two of the original crew members have started a romantic relationship. And again, it’s kind of soapy. But at the same time, that’s very realistic, you can’t send three, three men and three women who are presumably mostly heterosexual, and not expect some of them to hook up at some point over the years and years and years that they’re going to be there. And so I did appreciate that from a realism standpoint. So
17:02
I want to jump back to something you’ve said, because we’ve hit the the narrative portion of Episode Four. A lot. Yeah. So tell me what your beef is with the Antarctic stuff. Antarctica stuff.
17:15
Alright. So for those of you who follow our YouTube channel, you may have seen I have a video on that channel called Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson are wrong. And it’s basically a half hour rant that I will summarize now, because it’s about McMurdo Station, and you can 100% tell that they talked to Neil deGrasse Tyson, and probably Bill Nye as they were making this show. And they told them something that informed this episode of the show, and it drives me nuts. Andy, Andy Weir actually says the same thing. A lot of these people wait, he
17:53
says the same thing as those two
17:55
as those two? Yeah. Okay. A lot of these people who hold themselves up as sort of the the arbiters of how it would really work, argue that any city on Mars is going to be fundamentally similar to McMurdo Station. That’s like their talking point. If you ask, you know, it’s it’s kind of weird, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye two of the biggest futurists around, neither of them believe that there are going to be cities on Mars. They just don’t think that humans will ever live on Mars, the way we live on Earth. They think that all humans on Mars forever, will be like McMurdo Station. It’ll just be a scientific outpost that a few weeks ago. So. So here’s why that’s ridiculous. Because McMurdo Station is like an hour’s flight from South America. And if you get appendicitis, they don’t treat you there. They met a vacu. And if you run out of food, or if a building burns down, they bring you supplies. And whatever goes wrong, you don’t address it there. You get flown somewhere true, because you can’t get in and out of there all year round.
19:01
But for most of the year, it is depopulated. There are a couple of people who live there year round, but for most for a significant portion of the year, all the scientists go home, because it’s not safe. And they don’t have a big permanent presence there. Whereas on Mars, you are at least nine months away from Earth. Like if the crisis happens right at exactly the right time, you are nine months away from Earth, if it happens at exactly the wrong time. You’re like three years away from Earth. So whatever happens, you have to fix it there. If you have a medical emergency, it needs to be addressed. On Mars. If a woman gets pregnant, she’s too far away from Earth to come home. She’s having that baby on Mars. If something breaks, you have to be able to fix it on Mars. Whatever happens, it happens on Mars. What that means is and I actually talked about this in the episode, you have to aim for self sufficiency. You cannot rely on Earth, because if something goes wrong, you have to be able to to address it. There. But here’s the key. As soon as you have a situation where people don’t have to come back to Earth, people won’t, there will be people who will want to come back to earth and they won’t have to come back to Earth. So they will stay on Mars. And as soon as you have people who stay on Mars forever, as soon as you have medical facilities, and entertainment and food and every, you know, industrial production and everything that you need for a community on Mars, that’s a city. That is a population that is going to grow, the people who don’t leave Mars are going to have kids and those kids are going to grow up on Mars. And then it just keeps growing. You have the industrial capacity to repair a hab, which means you by definition, had the industrial capacity to build a hab. So why wouldn’t you build a new hab for your new family? It will automatically grow?
20:48
I think I think that having kids there is like pretty far off. I think that the likelihood is a woman gets pregnant, and however you feel about it doesn’t really matter. There would be an abortion, because like you just could be Yeah, I mean, because they are not ready to deal with that medically.
21:07
Yeah, so but it’s also one of those things where, you know, unless she’s Catholic, like, you’re certainly not going to force it on her. Now, to be fair, a lot of proposals of Martian outposts have required, sort of you don’t have the option. But to be on the pill, like men and women, you get a vasectomy, before you go to Mars kind of thing. So that might be a factor. But even aside from the childbirth thing, as soon as you have a situation where medical where you know, medical emergencies, industrial emergencies, agricultural emergencies can all be handled locally, which they would have to be, some people won’t want to leave, and then more people will come and they might not want to leave. And that’s not McMurdo, that’s not the reality of McMurdo, you won’t have a McMurdo Station, if it is self sufficient. And it has to be self sufficient. So that’s why I always kind of chafe at the idea of these people talking about how McMurdo Station is how it’s going to be, because it can’t be. It’s either going to be a city on Mars before too long, obviously, they’re not going to be self sufficient immediately. It’s going to be McMurdo Station for a little bit. But as soon as they reach self sufficiency, it’s either going to be a city on Mars that is effectively permanent. Or it’s going to be like the Martian, where they just land and then they’re there. And then they leave, and there is no permanent, like installation.
22:30
I really like him. I really, really like my husband.
22:37
I appreciate that.
22:38
So my thoughts on the Antarctic stuff. Yeah, I whatever. I like the landscapes. I mean, I know it’s just it’s such a basic thing. But I’ve never really seen the landscapes of Antarctica and the rock, you see the ice all the time, just flat plains of ice, but they went to really cool places,
22:59
I was really surprised by all of it. I loved seeing them do the work. And I, you know, was wishing that we got to see that a little bit more and the story. The seeing lacrosse, really put me off, there’s a moment where you get this shot of like, you know how, in the US, at least, you’ll just see like, in someone in some ones, farmland. They’re just like, there’s a cross or three crosses, and you’re just driving down the highway and you’re like over there. Right? Okay, there it is. And that happens in a shot and Antarctica. And it it just kind of took me out of the show. Interesting. And I surprising considering you’re a Christian.
23:50
Right. But that doesn’t mean I think it needs to be everywhere, right? I feel like Antarctica is such a global community that I don’t want to if if I’m going to see something that’s faith based I want to see more than just one faith rather represented. However, it took me a minute because I guess it’s you know, they they kind of talked about how the hunt for life is like, believing in God. It’s a type of faith. And I was like yeah, okay, so I guess I understand why you put it the shot in there. It just I harbored a little bit of I don’t know this taste for seeing it there because I just kind of bumped on it well, because I think it’s because it’s such a hard difference between what everything else we’ve seen there which is so this is the science and then just seeing that pop of faith next to it that is that is specifically not based on science.
Um Well, speaking of faith and sort of pilgrims, I did have to chuckle because we get some shots of isn’t Marta, is the scientist searching for life, I am terrible at picking up character names. That is the there’s a shot of her in Episode Four. That is cool. And it’s sort of carried through five and six of her searching for life. And she’s out on the surface in these very desert scenarios, and I was getting strong echoes of Anne Claiborne from the Mars trilogy.
This is the the character who represents the Reds in the Mars trilogy, who don’t believe in terraforming because she has fallen in love with Mars itself as it exists right now. And she’s often out on the surface going on these long hikes. And it was just funny because it’s this very and Claiborne image, but it’s the exact opposite of an Claiborne’s. She’s looking for life, instead of enjoying the barren sort of environment. So we get to episode five, and they’re having a power crisis because Richardson is a dumb ass. Well, and
26:00
because we have the fakest storm I’ve ever seen.
26:03
Yeah. Very happy. Oh, my goodness, the art.
26:06
Yeah, I
26:07
didn’t like it. It looked like something out of like a Percy Jackson film or something, you know, just like,
26:12
more mythological than scientific. Yeah.
26:15
It was like, yeah, this is the storm that happened before Noah’s Ark. Like,
26:20
I don’t know. It’s just it’s not a dust storm on Mars. This is you have angered Zeus.
26:26
I mean, it was it was beautiful. It was just so ridiculous. Yeah,
26:30
that’s not what dust storms look. Yeah. I mean, of course, both the Martian and this, you got to play up the drama of a dust storm because dust storms are fundamentally super boring, especially on Mars, because the The atmosphere is so thin that it can’t actually hold a ton of dust. So if you were on a, if you were in a Martian dust storm in real life, it would not be like, you know, sort of pushing your way through the fog. And you can’t see the rover that you just left a couple of minutes ago that it would be like a slightly foggy day, like you would be able to see the thing clearly it would not be pushing you around. I mean, it would just be the horizon that fuzzes
27:07
right. And now, you said that dust storms are boring, and I will tell you that they are not. And so well one of them. I mean, on Mars, yes.
27:17
But well, that’s what I mean on Mars. They’re there.
27:19
I don’t know if any of you guys have ever been in like a true dust storm. When I was in Malta, studying abroad. There you guys this? One of the coolest things and most terrifying was a dust storm came up from Northern Africa and came across the Mediterranean. And it rained through the dust storm. It was raining mud. It felt like revelations, it was biblical weather.
27:46
Oh my god, I was standing at a bus stop going, oh my god. Like, is this Are these the end times like what is happening? I had a mean it. But it was it was a phenomenal experience. And one of the you know, one of the scientists talks about it, how I don’t remember where he’s from in Africa. But he talks about the dust storms and how people would get very lost. Yeah. And they bring that to this show. And I don’t think that they needed to. I think that it could have to me it would be really cool to see it played out the way that it would actually look. Because it gives us a sense of the real danger rather than this. heightened.
28:37
Yeah, in a way it would almost feel more hopeless. Because it would instead of like huddling in the dark against the storm raging outside, which we’ve seen plenty of times in stories set on Earth. It would be like you walk outside and everything kind of looks okay. Except you look up and it’s just dark. It’s just like the night that wouldn’t end.
28:59
And that would be more depressing. Yeah. Really hard on people mentally.
29:04
Yeah. Because it’s like there’s nothing to fight against. It’s just dark. And it’s so simple. And yet so unsolvable. Yeah, I feel like that would be better drama.
29:15
And what it does is they talk about how they are one complication away from total power, like, failure and stuff. Yeah. And I’m sitting here going, Oh, my God. You let a woman come in here and make some decisions that put you in this position to have zero redundancies. This is insane, terrible plan then, immediately after we hear that because we know that the full storm protocol like the it takes five to nine weeks for the storm to pass. And so we learn all of this stuff, and then we get Paul being like, about his plants. They were only babies. Yeah, and I’m sitting here going. He’s such a creep. The way that he has anthropomorphized his lab is just
30:14
Yeah, he’s, I mean, clearly this is this guy is not neurotypical like he’s clearly, you know, they don’t go into exactly what he’s got, but he’s got a and that’s and that’s fine.
30:24
That doesn’t mean you can’t be mentally resilient but exact guy isn’t that
30:28
that’s the problem to me is that they equate he’s weird with He’s scary. And those two things should not be equated like. Like, for example, if they had just swapped his storyline with his wife storyline, and you had somebody who like, came in all full of piss and vinegar, and she’s gonna throw her weight around. And then when everything started going wrong, she just started started kind of gripping harder and harder, and she wasn’t handling it that well. And eventually, she snapped. That would make sense. And then Meanwhile, her husband, who is, you know, a little weird, and a little too attached to his plants just gets depressed the way she does, that would have made way more sense. But instead, we have frickin Dolores Umbridge coming into this to this out. And just making everybody mad do making every wrong decision. She’s never shown to do the right thing. Never in the show, is she shown doing something that is just unequivocally clearly right. And then going on these bitter rants about how nobody could have expected this even though she was warned by everybody to expect this. And like I did everything right? No, you clearly did not like it’s just a weirdly sort of polarized character. Yeah. And then we cut to her husband, the plant guy ranting Shakespeare quotes at his plants,
31:49
that the writers really like to use the biblical and the Shakespearean, and the philosophical, like they go overboard and a way that I just, you know, Alex and I bonded over Shakespeare,
32:03
yeah, we love what we love, good Shakespeare quote.
32:05
And we do not just toss them around, toss those quotes around all the time,
32:11
especially not in dramatic moments. Like, we’ll toss those quotes around when it’s funny, but when, when the shit is hitting the fan, when lives are in danger, you get to work, you don’t quote Shakespeare,
32:22
and I, you know, I went to theater school, and the theater nerds didn’t do this. And listen, I went to school with a gal who had a tattoo that said, untimely ripped, from what from his mother’s family ripped.
32:37
Thank you. And I mean, it was a huge tattoo, and she’s not quoting this stuff. And yet here is a whole group of people that all they do is like, quote, philosophy, and will heiresses and Shakespeare in each other. And it just like, it kind of drove me crazy. Because it took me out. I was like, No, this is not how normal people talk.
32:57
Yeah, let’s bring some scientific realism into the human interactions here, something bring it in somewhere.
33:03
But of course, the way this world is written, this is how people talk. Because even when they’re not quoting things, they use phrases like, finally, when we thought it could only get darker, there was light. That’s not a quote, that’s just Hannah talking. Like, that’s not how people talk. That’s not these kind of things. You know, one of the things that jumped out at me in the first few episodes, and I, if I talked about this in the last episode, forgive me, I don’t think I did. But there are these sort of categories of stories, right? They’re often represented as man versus something or humanity versus something. So it’ll be like, you know, man versus man is a story where two people are fighting. You know, man versus man versus God is somebody struggling against fate? You know, they’re all these things. One of the oldest and most core narratives is man versus nature. And that’s what a lot of the things we’ve talked about the synthesis are that’s what I think, actually, probably everything we’ve talked about the synthesis is, is it fighting against your environment, Apollo 13, gravity, the Martian Mars, like all of these things are fighting against the environment. But here’s what a lot of these writers didn’t get the memo on, is that man versus nature stories don’t need deeply flawed characters. Man versus nature stories are best paired with not like perfect Paragons, but people who are fundamentally capable and optimistic things like Apollo 13 things like the Martian. These stories work best when the hero is doing everything that the audience wishes they would try. You know, it’s it’s like in horror movies where everybody’s sitting there going don’t go beyond the closet like you know, don’t die. Tom Hanks is so good in those movies. Exactly. Because he seems like somebody who is trying everything that you would want him to try and isn’t making stupid, he’s capable
34:57
and he’s cheerful and he’s optimistic. I mean,
35:00
Exactly the one with Wilson. Castaway,
35:02
Castaway. Like. He’s He’s perfect for those kinds of roles because he has that. That buoyant personality
35:11
the way it is, it’s not all of these depressing characters. And here’s the thing, when you
don’t have leads like that, it actually works against you, when you try to do the stereotypical screenwriter thing of having deeply flawed characters who had to grow over a journey. The audience ends up feeling cheated. Because why would I care about this person, they’re an idiot, you know, like, you watch gravity, you watch these shows where the person is freaking out. And whether or not that’s realistic. Spoiler alert, we would all be freaking out if we were in gravity. But even though it’s realistic, we, as an audience are looking at these characters going, why are you doing that? And it pulls us out of the story, it makes the story less impactful than it would have been if they were sort of unrealistically perfect. And that is something that Mars keeps getting hit with over and over and over, because like, I don’t care about Richardson, cuz she’s doing everything wrong. She’s a very realistic person. I’ve known many Dr. Richardson’s in my life. But she’s doing everything wrong. And so I don’t care. You know,
36:21
I’m with you. Yeah, one of the things that I do like about this episode are they talk, they do a couple of things that it’s not many. Okay. But you know, they talk about how dust storms can go global. And they’re not just regional, which I had never really considered that that could happen, and then they can get charged, and then there can be lightning on top of it. And all of that was just kind of fascinating to hear for, you know, my perspective is the regional that’s what it is here. Right. So like, why would it be any different elsewhere, the fact that it can cover an entire planet, it’s why it’s why you don’t have to make these dust storms, more like crazier than then they actually already are, if they can go global and
37:11
be 30 kilometers high. And, and and have
37:13
lightning, you’re, it’s you don’t have to work any harder for it.
37:19
It’s been handed to you just do that.
37:20
Exactly. And then the fact that it’s like talcum powder, it’s so fine. It’s not even like sand. That means that it can get in anywhere. And that’s terrifying. And they tell us, you know, you can’t get this stuff in your lungs. Of course, then they turn around and they show it as being in the cafeteria, like on the tables. And
37:40
I was like gentle dusting over a pile of books. And it’s like, everybody’s dead. Right? Yeah. That’s how that works. We just we were just told that if you get this stuff in your lungs, you die. Yeah, yeah. So at the end of Episode Five, we do get the very dramatic moment of Paul having his hallucination, which plays out over the course of about half an hour,
38:06
we have completely skipped so much of this episode, go for it. We’ve got the high seas is, and I want to talk about it. Because they talk they talk about this, like, okay, so NASA has its outpost where they send people to, you know, essentially pretend like it’s Mars.
38:28
Yeah. And they in Hawaii,
38:30
then they turn around, and they talk about how Russia did this. And they put people in his space craft. And they, they simulated all of this. And they had to shut it down because people went crazy. And like only two of the people like, you know, after all of the psychological review, two of the nine, or was it seven, whatever? Well, I don’t know total number Oh, nine or seven. But what I’m is that only two of them managed to not mentally break. And then they do this awful thing where they show all of the men coming out of the simulation, and everyone’s smiling and waving and it feels like super awkward because you just heard what went down in there, like someone’s wandering around in a spacesuit acting like a dog or a cow. And then if you look into it more, someone tried stabbing somebody else in their fistfights all the time. Like, this is insane. Yeah. And so that’s why that’s why it’s so bizarre to me that Paul is on this show, this character is written this way, because that person would have been not allowed from the get go because they can’t actually tell who’s going to be resilient enough to handle this. Yeah. And there are markers for it. You know, Emotional markers and all of that stuff. But they can’t promise anything.
And I, I loved seeing the bits and pieces of that when we get to the documentary side, and we talk about high seas,
40:15
yeah. And just not representing it in the narrative. This, it’s kind of a repeated theme in the show is talking about a really cool thing, and then not integrating it into the narrative.
40:25
And they talk about how if you talk to people about the stress of prison, it’s a pretty good analogy, because they don’t get to make any of their own choices about what they do, when they do it. They don’t get to have their own schedule, like,
40:39
cannot leave
40:40
cannot leave that the stress of present. I mean, I have always thought that sounds like the loss of freedom, I think it would totally, completely mentally change you and rewire you. And a way that, you know, there are people that go back on purpose, because they can’t make it in the real world anymore, because they don’t have the support to do it. Because their brains have changed.
41:08
They know how to live in this world.
41:09
Yeah. And so I thought it was really cool that they talk about how mental resiliency is the biggest risk to the mission is that human aspect, and that you’d have to talk to people about the stress of prison. And as I thought, I thought that the documentary aspects of these episodes were the most fun, like, and I like I actively enjoyed them.
41:36
Yeah, it’s you know, it’s funny that we’re coming right off of the Martian because they talk in the Martian about how Mark Watney was a catalyst for this in his crew that he, the role he filled in the Aries three team was that he sort of kept everyone’s spirits up, even in stressful times. And obviously, he was very capable. But they they sort of hint a little bit in the book that like, this is why he got the job, you know, that like we had other botanists, but he’s such a good effect on morale, that that was the deciding factor. And one of the things that was, again, just another sort of symbol of how the narrative side of this show kind of doesn’t match up to what the documentary side is talking about. In Episode Five, when they’re trying to conserve power, there are so many things that they don’t do, like it’ll cut to an exterior shot of the of the outpost, and there are all these lights on, on the exterior of the building. Why do those lights even exist? But especially if they exist? Why are they on right now, when you’re trying to conserve power? You know, they show everybody kind of huddled up and freezing and very clearly, like the heater isn’t working, but they’re all alone in separate rooms. They’re not like huddling up. And most importantly, nobody is trying to keep anybody’s spirits up. And that, to me is sort of the most damning thing in this episode is it’s a whole episode about your mental state, and what you have to do to get along in this environment, and nobody is saying, Hey, guys, let’s break out the vodka like, this sucks. Let’s tell stories. Let’s get a fire going or whatever, you know, like, just Hey, I brought a guitar, let’s sing some songs. Just all that kind of campfire stuff that people do to get along. nobody’s doing. And
43:23
Hannah’s not doing quite specifically, which is weird. I yeah, we see in this episode, specifically, the number of ways she fails. But
43:32
I you think it would be a mandate like you think that the Elan musk guy back on Earth would be like getting on the radio being like, I don’t care if you don’t want to sing, you’re gonna sing. Yeah, that’s what we’re doing today. It’s on the schedule,
43:44
right. Um, one of the things that I noticed about this, so you know, the two guys go out in the rover, they’re going to try and fix the reactor. And this is one of my favorite moments. And they have this, this moment where they say, one of them says we’re gonna be okay.
And the other one says, Well, you know, I hope so. And then they laugh, and it’s a little bit hysterical, they’re starting to crack just a little bit together. And I feel like that’s what really close friends are going to do. And it when they’re going through trauma together, and it felt very real. It felt I was like, Oh, this is like, I want to live in this moment. But um,
44:26
I will say all of the original crew did a good job of feeling like they’ve known each other for years now. And there was this subtle sense of we’re the sort of the originals and then there are these new people.
44:39
So one of the things that I really like is you know, the guy goes out he tethers himself to the rover, he untethered himself, which I don’t enjoy, but and then doesn’t communicate like doesn’t even attempt to communicate with Javier, which just drives me crazy. It’s like the lack of communication as well. But what I want to know is what’s, what is the difference between the risks that Watney takes, and the risks that these people take? Because when Watney took risks, I enjoyed it. And when these people take risks, I get really mad.
45:17
Oh, I think it’s I think it’s a very simple and straightforward thing, which is our trust in His capability. That when Mark Watney takes risks, we have already established at this point that whatever happens, he’ll deal with it. And he has probably already tried every other option other than this, and done the math on why it’s not going to work. But if he does this, if it goes wrong, here’s what I’ll do. We know like the story of Mark Watney is handling problems, whereas this gang, it’s just not like this. The story of these astronauts is stuff going wrong and then being bummed puzzled. Yeah, like it’s just any any crisis is met with long worried looks, which is exactly what happens in the next scene. They get the reactor up. And then you have Paul, clearly clearly out going crazy.
46:12
And he full on hallucination, like yeah, just stressed. He’s actually having a psychotic break.
46:17
And Hannah does nothing. She watches it from a screen they call Dr. Richardson down. But yeah, nobody goes in there to check on him to restrain him. There’s no announcement over the PA of Hey, everybody get out of that wing. And apparently that
46:36
they do try to evacuate the wing. But it’s after this has already happened. That’s what I’m saying
46:40
is it takes a long time for them to do that. Yeah, she doesn’t make any choices to start with
46:46
the hurt Richards and literally stands in the doorway with the evidence of what is about to happen and a grief stricken look on her face, and then turns and runs away without conveying the critical information of what is about to happen. Well, and but the thing is, is even without her knowledge, Hannah should have done something. Yeah. And she does nothing. And that’s absolutely bizarre to me. And what’s even more bizarre is that this entire portion of the hab is itself an air lock, there’s a wide open, there’s a door straight to the outside.
47:20
If I can’t open a door on a passenger airline, that door should not be able to open like First off, it should be like welded, shut. Second, it should be locked. And third, it should be remotely controlled from the room that Hannah is in. Even if somebody wanted to open it and could open it, she ought to be able to hit one button that just locks it down. Yeah. And it’s bizarre that they that that isn’t a thing. Like that’s probably the single least realistic thing. And his entire show is the idea that the guy who is who is exhibiting mental stress, like clear signs of mental distress is in the room with an exterior door that he can just open.
48:05
Yeah, why?
48:07
And there are no other you know, like you were saying it’s that whole like wing of the outpost that gets depressurized, it’s not just his room. That’s
48:16
totally bizarre. And I and I can’t stand it and it makes me very angry. And so when I talk about hating someone more than commander Ben, I’m talking about Dr. Richardson. And so anyway,
48:31
I will say this before we move on to episode six because it’s, you know, we’re time is moving on, but I will say this about the end of Episode Five. One thing I really liked about the depressurization sequence is it’s finally what depressurization would look like. I’ve talked before on this show about the problem that I have with depressurization in science fiction is often depicted as a hurricane. And like you open a thing and all of a sudden this air is whooshing out over the course of minutes. And people are like holding on to a steel beam as they get blown like a flag in the wind and the air just keeps flying out. You’re like where’s all this air coming from? And I think the analogy that I used in an earlier episode is if you had a if you had a depressurization like that, it wouldn’t feel like a hurricane, it would feel like you were inside a balloon that popped. And all of a sudden, everything would just go boom, straight toward the exit. And then it would be over all the air would be gone. There would just be a blast that direction and everything would get sucked out.
49:33
Exactly. And so that is what we see in this moment. He opens the door and the instant that it is even like a crack open, it flies open his body is sucked out all the furniture in the room moves toward the door, and then it settles. And we’re done.
49:48
Yeah, yeah.
49:49
I really appreciate it.
49:50
I so there’s something in here that I mean, we’ve completely skipped over the CEO and how just terrible He is weirdly reckless he is. Yeah,
50:01
again, sort of upsettingly realistic, but still dumb.
50:07
So but I’m going to continue skipping over him because I could I could probably speak to most of an episode on all of the things he does wrong.
50:18
Yeah, as as business owners, we have a unique take on him. And everything else.
50:23
Yeah. Yes, in addition to everything else, but um, I, I have. This is like more of a philosophical thing rather than to the episode specifically. So we see that, uh, you know, I’m going to kind of jump to the end. Is that okay? Yeah. Okay. So like, Brandon commented, you know, the convenient plot devices, they’re going to be, they’re going to be brought back home. And because people have died, there, there is loss of, of political will to continue being on Mars. Again, this
51:03
is one of those upsettingly realistic things. Yes. I 100% believe that if somebody killed themselves on Mars, that people would want to shut down the whole program. It’s stupid as hell but yes,
51:12
it is. It’s very, it’s very dumb, because like the Hannah character, she has, she has made her peace with dying on Mars, but her sister can’t handle it. And I just like, and so she’s like, bring them home. So anyway, I feel like there’s another convenient plot device is Oh, Marta finds life,
51:39
just in the neck just in the nick of time. And we keep seeing this just in the nick of time stuff. Except for when people die. But I hate this. I hate that she finds life on Mars. And I think to me, and I’d love to hear what you guys have to say about it. But to me, finding life is not the point of going into space. There are so many good reasons to go into space. And this is not high on my priority list.
52:12
Yeah, it would be an incredible discovery but reducing it down to the Savior moment. This is the pivot point. This is the binary world where as soon as you find life Everything is fine. misses the point. Yeah, like there’s so much else to do on the lesson.
52:29
NASA brings so much back for us I mean, I think I think most people know that cat the fact that CAT scans exist that’s because of NASA but like insulin Patil much more dust busters. Like the the soles on your tennis shoes, fire fire fighters, and their and their insulation, the insulation of those insulation in your homes like all of this is because of NASA, all of it. There are so many reasons to go into space, we do so much work to be able to stay there and to learn new things. And they bring so much back for us. It propels our society forward in a way that we would otherwise be a little bit slower about or maybe not come up with ever because, listen, if we’re not willing to bring down the prices of insulin, who say that we would have ever come up with insulin pumps, like there are all of these capitalism makes a lot of makes us fail a lot. And I this is not like a political rant. It’s just the fact that science is so important to progress. Yeah. And why is it that life is the only thing that would keep us on Mars? Yeah. And I would even just
53:54
even just within the context of the show, like Paul was a creep and ultimately not well adjusted on Mars, but he was developing super crops. Like, why is that on its own not worth continuing to fund.
54:07
Exactly. I would be very interested in what everybody else thinks of like, what their if you’re interested in, in humans being a spacefaring civilization. Why, what what is your number one priority? If you if you were part of a Martian outpost? Would you put the search for life at the top? Or would you put scientific advancement at the top or would you put economic investment?
54:35
And I’m not saying that, if your priority is finding life that that’s, you know, wrong. That’s wrong. I’m not I’m saying it’s wrong for this story. Yeah. I just felt like it was it was an odd. I mean, it’s not an odd choice because it’s highly melodramatic TV. So I guess it’s predictable, but Me, I just felt like it was, it was an overblown choice.
55:03
Yeah, I did think within the context of the story, I thought this was what they needed to save the day they did it, they did a decent job of like, everything’s gone wrong, of course, they’re going to end it. I genuinely bought the fact that it was going to be over. And that the show was going to end with sort of like, Don’t let this happen. We have to go to Mars Don’t let it fail. And then this turned and then all of a sudden Of course, yes. Now they’re going to stay that Yeah, that was the the turn that they needed.
55:32
And you know that the that the CEO guy, I don’t know what his neither know what his name nor his actual title is The Ilan musk analogy, analog sorry. He, like they do in the documentary side of this show, you know that that guy is going to get the credit for launching a new civilization and it? Yeah, that bothers. I had like a whole rant about this. Because at one point, someone says, you know, Elon Musk is going to to launch a new civilization. And I was like, No, he’s not. June, Space X might be you want to know what SpaceX encompasses all of the scientists who work to get everybody there. I’m sorry. It’s not just the money that launches a new civilization. It’s the engineers. It’s Oh, oh, yeah. This is the part where I get a little red because I just I am so tired of seeing the credit given to one person,
56:33
and especially the financier. Yeah, like, at least in the space race with the Soviets. The rock stars were often the scientists, you know, Verner von Braun. And, and these sorts of people were front and center, but like, Can you name a single scientist at SpaceX chime chime in, in the comments if you can name one scientist who works at SpaceX on on these reusable
rockets that are going to take us to Mars? I can’t. I’m a pretty big space nerd and I can’t name any Okay. What it’s it’s it’s this dichotomy that you know, back in the day, people knew names like Verner von Braun. These days, we only know the financier. We know Elan musk. That’s
57:12
and I get it. He has a vision and the his vision people have latched on to and that’s important that has done great things that helps us propel the program, I get it. And I don’t want to diminish that. However, it is I the idea that he would get sole credit for starting a new civilization made me want to rip my hair out. And, you know, but
57:41
and by the way, up there in the least realistic things in this entire show, is the fact that June gets to make the announcement that there’s life on Mars, the Elon Musk analog was standing quietly to the side on the podium, like on the stage, it was her at the podium and him like six feet away from her just looking down with his hands crossed. Bull shit. Yeah, that guy is absolutely grabbing the microphone. Yeah, they’ve established that.
58:12
I do have to say that watching the success of the, in the documentary side, watching the success of the rocket returning and landing on the launch pad had me seriously choked up. I
58:26
that was some really powerful stuff.
58:28
It was a I just I think that it’s amazing that humans can do something that incredible it is, you know, we could diminish it by thinking of it as like reversing a car. No, absolutely not. It’s a whole other thing. It’s not like flying a plane. It’s none of it’s, it’s nothing we’ve ever seen before. And again, you see a room full of people who have been working on it. And and that’s not even the number. There are so many more people who have been working on it. And I just I loved it for them for humans in general. Yeah, but I loved it for them as well. And yeah, inspiring.
59:19
I will say to like, you know, Ilan musk should not get the exclusive credit for taking us to Mars. But he does. He has done things that nobody else has done before. He definitely gets some credit. And I will say part of that SpaceX sequence that really got to me was his personal elation. He starts shouting it standing up and standing up. Like he’s personally freaking out. Well, I want to I kind
59:41
of wanted to know, because you know, he’s watching it come in, and he’s like, Oh, that looks this looks bad. This looks bad. Yeah. And I want to know what they thought was going wrong.
59:51
I think my read of the scene was that he thought that it should be burning already. Because there’s a while that it just falls. It’s just falling from the sky and Everybody’s freaking out and he goes, something’s wrong, something’s wrong and it cuts to the people inside and they’re all kind of like getting tense. And then finally fire shoots out the bottom of it and it starts decelerating and everybody freaks out so I think it was that it was supposed to fire off earlier. Yeah, well, but yeah, very powerful sequence. It was a powerful
1:00:20
sequence and I and I enjoyed watching it. I know that we kind of jumped all over with this episode.
1:00:30
But it’s it’s this episode. To be honest, I don’t have as many notes about this episode. It doesn’t have as much going on. Well, everybody’s just kind of getting ready to go home and sad about it.
1:00:40
I mean, that’s true. I have a lot kind of notes on the on the documentary side because it’s the part that I enjoyed so much. I really like this quote from Verner von Braun, where he says, if something blows up in your face, you have to try again try again try again. And as like that’s that’s the that’s why this man specifically managed so much is he has the perseverance to make this to make space programs work. And I
1:01:16
and it’s worth mentioning Verner von Braun does not have like he is not clean. He did some terrible things. Now, a lot of people hate Verner von Braun and they’re not wrong. Yeah. Absolutely. Verner von Braun is actually one of the examples that I often reach for when talking about the difference between immoral and amoral. I would characterize Verner von Braun as pretty much the definition of amoral Verner von Braun wanted to land on Mars. And he didn’t really care if that meant helping Hitler to do it. Like he he wasn’t out to do evil things. He just didn’t care if his work was used for evil things as long as it was advancing the mission. And that’s kind of messed up. Like that’s pretty much just kind of Yeah, that’s that is quite messed up, he made the v2 rockets that reigned fear on on England, there’s actually a quote, when when the first v1 rocket, I think, was first used to kill people, because that was not his original intention. He wanted to build a space program from the Nazis. But the the quote is, the rocket performed perfectly. It just landed on the wrong planet. Which I feel like there’s something kind of heartbreaking about that quote, because you can hear in that sentiment, that even he feels like this is being perverted. You know, this is not what he wanted to be building. But he kept building it. You know, he just was that obsessed with rockets. And with getting to space, he’s not a perfect guy. But at the same time, he is representative of this drive to explore this absolute refusal to stay put on one world. And that is not just evil, you know, like there is there is value in that as well. And, yeah, he’s you know, there’s a there’s a thing that happens in this episode, where they talk about Apollo 13. And Apollo 13 was very clearly the inspiration for this episode. Because what happened with Apollo 13 was everything went wrong, it scared a whole bunch of people specifically, it scared Nixon, and then they kind of said, No more space. Let’s not do that anymore. Like we don’t want to really, which is freaking bizarre, which is stupid, I don’t know. Go ahead,
1:03:31
well, just just to wrap up for anybody who hasn’t seen. So what they did instead was they invested in the space shuttle, and the space shuttle is great for getting to orbit and coming back. It’s a space plane and you can go up and you can repair Hubble and you can visit the International Space Station and nothing else, the space station, the space shuttle will not take you to the moon, it will not take you to Mars, it was a commitment to go as far as we had gone and no further. And so even though the space shuttle is held up as this sort of great symbol of space exploration, a lot of space exploration, people hate it, because it’s the symbol of the death of the space program.
1:04:04
And my thing, ultimately, is I don’t know why the lives of the astronauts are more important than other lives, we are constantly putting lives at risk for various reasons. And why are astronauts the exception to the rule? Well, especially because you know, there’s so Lacey and I, along with anybody in popular culture these days, watch a lot of superhero stuff. And I in particular, really enjoy superhero stuff. But
1:04:32
there are several things that if you watch a lot of superhero stuff you get tired of and one of them is my God. Everybody needs to stop saying don’t put yourself at risk. I will. That’s like every superhero and every single TV show every single episode, they’re saying, No, no, no, you don’t do this. I’ll do it. And then the other person will respond. You don’t have to do that. I’ll take care of it. And it’s like what somebody just do it like it’s okay. Everybody’s willing to risk their lives. Let’s go risk our lives together and save the day and That’s how I feel about these astronauts. They’re willing to risk their lives,
1:05:04
let them and CEO guy does that. He says that, you know, they they knew what they were getting into. They’ve made their peace with this. We all
1:05:14
knew what they were getting into. And that’s surprising. Yeah, you could die on Mars. And you know what, if you have regrets, that sucks.
1:05:22
But you signed up for it. Yeah. And, you know, if there’s a chance that you can go home, and that can be made to happen, you’ll be on the you’ll be on the list. Yeah. But for everybody else. They know what the hell they’re doing and what they’re getting into. I’m sorry, but it’s like saying, I’m going to go be in the military. Yeah,
1:05:42
we don’t, you don’t get to join the army, and then raise objections because you might die. That’s what the army is man. And like you do trust that they won’t waste your life, that there is a certain assumption that if you die for the cause, that that will be necessary. But at the same time, you might die for the cause. So like, he
1:06:02
doesn’t feel callous to say, they knew what they were getting into. Yeah.
1:06:06
And yes, you don’t want to waste and they’re Heroes for it. Like, there’s a certain point at which if you saved every soldier, in all sorts, in every circumstance, if you prevented anybody from ever dying for the country, and you gave up whatever it took to keep them from dying, you’re actually preventing their heroism, like they are willing to sacrifice themselves for their country. And we should let them because the fight needs to agree. Like we don’t want to we don’t want to over blow No, but like, that’s an overblown argument, because but if the choice is lose a bunch of American soldiers to defeat the Nazis, or don’t defeat the Nazis, right, the answer is, you let some of them die to defeat the Nazis, because it’s worth it. And that’s just that’s what this feels like, yeah, you’re going to lose people because of the science and they want to be a part of it.
1:06:56
They’re volunteers. And I don’t I don’t know why we don’t have the political will to handle that. It’s, it’s the, it’s the downside of humanism is we as a society have decided that the most important thing is human lives, which is generally good, we won’t trade lives for, you know, resources, or for equipment or whatever, that’s a good thing. But what that means is that anything that threatens human life is bad. There’s nothing in this world that causes death. That is good. And you know what, there just are sometimes, like, sometimes it’s worth dying for people’s lives for a lot less. Yeah. And in earlier eras, when exploration was still a thing on this planet. I actually have written in my notes, no one cried for the Cowboys. You know, if you went west, in America, you might die. And nobody, like, wrung their hands over the great tragedy that was all the people dying on the frontier. No, that’s just what happens on the frontier and like, you might survive, or you might not, and if you survive, you might not live as long as you had, as you might have if you lived in New York, but that’s what it means to live on the frontier. And it’s it, it is especially, I feel like it is a betrayal that June is the one arguing that they need to shut us down. I feel on that infuriated. I feel like Hannah would kick your ass. Yeah, you know, your sister would beat the shit out of you if she knew what was happening in these meetings. Yeah,
1:08:22
absolutely. There would be a rift when she gets home.
1:08:24
Absolutely. I mean, there I feel like they’re kind of already is one brewing and the episode, she talks about how, you know, I was crying when I woke up because the dream was over. Do you hear me? You know? Yeah. Yeah. So that I will say, unless you have just kind of wrap up. Okay. I have a moment that spoke to me, on the documentary side spoke to me more than probably anything else in the show. And I don’t really know why it wasn’t a new sentiment. But I think it was just the passion with which it was delivered. And it came from Robert Zubrin, who is, you know, he does good work, he advances the cause of Mars. He’s a little bit of a kook. And sometimes I feel like he kind of needs to step out of the spotlight because you’re giving space people a bad name. Because you’re just a little weird.
But Lord knows he’s devoted his life to the pursuit of getting humans to Mars. And a lot of what he says is sort of cheesy, or it’s sort of cliche, he definitely leans into that just sort of spirit of discovery that is too abstract to really motivate a lot of people. But he has a quote in this episode that really kind of got me which is, look up, look up. There’s everything out there. And I feel like that is so broad, that it kind of comes back around to being specific. There’s everything out there. And of course, you could take that literally to mean there are planets and stars. There’s the whole rest To the universe. But to me what it what it made me think of is potential. Like there’s, there’s music out there, they’re stories out there, their families out there, there’s history out there, there are going to be wars out there. But then there are going to be peace treaties out there, there’s going to be discovery, yes, on a scientific level. But there’s also going to be, you know, parties among friends who love each other they’re going to be, there’s everything that is life out there. And that’s why we go to space, we don’t go to space to discover if there are microbes under rocks, and we don’t go to space to refine equations, we go to space, because there’s everything out there. And it just, it just got me.
1:10:52
Yeah, it did not do all of that for me. But I love what it inspired. any of that is very sweet. I think ultimately, what we can say is that we enjoyed the documentary side of this show that the narrative aspect was a trash fire. And hey,
1:11:14
very well intentioned, trash fire. They were aiming for the right thing. They just didn’t hit the mark.
1:11:24
But I think that there, there was value to just, I would like to just see this as a straight up documentary. Yeah. And I, you know, I’m interested in seeing someone else pick up this, this way of storytelling. Yeah, it’s documentary and a narrative and not just documentary and recreation.
1:11:44
Yeah, the sound is hybrid storytelling is cool. I’d like to see more of it in different contexts. I like to see a version of this for like ancient Rome. Yeah.
1:11:51
So I mean, they’ve they’ve hit on something interesting. I don’t think it was perfected the first time out of the gate. But I’m, I’m curious to see. I’m not curious to see where this show goes. But I’m curious to see where another show goes that similar to this. So hopefully, we will enjoy the next thing more than our last couple of weeks. Because we love to enjoy things. Yes.
1:12:16
So it is not our mode to criticize. Yeah. So
1:12:22
I think that’s it.
1:12:23
I think that’s it.
1:12:25
So before we wrap up, be sure to you know, thank you for watching. This has been fun to go through National Geographics Mars, and it’ll be fun to move on to the next thing. Be sure to more fun, move on to the next thing. Be sure to check out our Patreon page at patreon cloud.com slash edge works entertainment, where you can get tons of cool extras and rewards for supporting us both for the show and for our other shows. And then also for terrigenesis you can get some cool in game rewards. And a special thank you to everybody who already supports us. Seriously, it makes this possible. We are we are growing our podcast network and the support of people who are here now are making that possible.
1:13:10
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1:13:18
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1:13:20
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