Mars (2016–…): Season 1, Episode 1 - Novo Mundo - full transcript
In 2033, the first human mission to Mars enters the planet's atmosphere, but the Daedalus crew faces a life-threatening emergency when the ship's landing system goes offline. The crew's commander risks his life to fix the problem as Mission Control monitors back on Earth. Interwoven within the drama, in current day, SpaceX is attempting to land the world's first reusable rocket to pioneer the critical technology that will help humans reach Mars.
_
Retro rockets are about to fire in.
1, 2, 3, breathe. 1, 2, 3, breathe.
We dream.
It's who we are.
Down to our bones, our cells.
That instinct to build.
That drive to seek beyond what we know.
It's in our DNA.
We crossed the oceans,
we conquered the skies.
And when there were no
more frontiers on Earth
we launched ourselves among the stars.
We choose to go to
the Moon in this decade
and do the other things,
not because they are easy,
but because they are hard.
The heavens beckoned a new generation
of innovators and explorers,
seeking to take human kind even further.
We can push out into the solar system.
Not just to visit but to stay.
That was when Mars
became real for all of us.
And for those of us who were around
to see the first days, it was...
electrifying.
The world's leading space agencies
united as the International
Mars Science Foundation.
And joined with private industry
to accomplish one shared goal.
To build a home for humankind on Mars.
People weren't just talking
about the red planet,
they were making plans to go there.
And after years of training
in the Astronaut Corps
I was chosen to command the
first human mission to Mars.
Wonder,
- wonder.
- _
For as long as we've
looked up at the night sky
that is what we felt.
We named the planets
that hang among the stars
after our gods.
And gave them the same
power to control our fate.
With the support of the
space-going nations of the IMSF
the Mars Mission Corporation
has overcome the most
daunting engineering challenges
our species has ever faced.
This allows the brave pioneers
standing before you today,
to bring humanity
into a new era.
We will no longer stare
and wonder at those planets
we named for our gods.
But take our place among them.
Ed Grann could sell anything,
but he was more than a salesman.
He was brilliant.
_
She's 14 stories base to nose.
That's a fancy jacket you got today Ed.
_
_
_
And as much as any of us,
he was a believer.
He promised the world he
would give us the technology
we needed to leave our home,
and build a new one.
And he delivered.
This is it.
Daedalus.
Take good care of her,
she'll take good care of you.
She's your ship now.
Drives better than a Cadillac.
But that shine isn't gonna last.
Over the next 7 months your
bodies are gonna be exposed
to nearly 200 times the
dose of a normal year's
worth of radiation exposure on Earth.
Calcium will leach from your bones
which will lose nearly 10% of their mass
before you even get to Mars.
There is no test that can
tell you whether or not
the notion of being 60
million kilometers away
from the planet on which you were born
can shatter your mind in so many pieces.
Some of us if not all of us
will almost certainly
die on this mission.
Might be in takeoff,
might be in landing,
might be in the new world itself.
Now you all are the bravest group
of women and men I have ever met.
I'm damn proud to be here with you.
But right now I want you
to stop and ask yourself
what really is important
to you about this mission.
And if the answer to
that question is not
the most important thing in your life
then I'm gonna invite
you to walk out that door
and go pursue whatever that thing is.
And don't ever look back, because no one
will ever have the right
to hold it against you.
Daedalus, you're a go for launch
in T-minus 17 seconds and counting.
Mission analytic executor,
you have primary control of
all the critical functions.
Mae, the ship is yours.
I am in control.
The launch of Daedalus
was the beginning of our
historic 7-month journey to Mars.
But it wasn't easy to
reach the red planet.
We needed visionaries to guide the way.
Mars and Earth are sister planets.
The young Mars had rivers and lakes,
it even had an ocean.
If there was water on Mars,
couldn't there possibly be life?
Is it habitable?
If you really want to understand,
we want to, need to, go to Mars.
We need to go to Mars
because it protects us from extinction.
There's all sorts of things
that could happen on Earth
that can kill all the
humans on the planet.
But once humans are on
two different planets
the odds of extinction
drop to nearly zero.
Getting to Mars will be risky,
dangerous,
uncomfortable.
But it will be the
greatest adventure ever.
Ever in human history.
This is hallowed ground,
it's called Launchpad 39A,
and it's the place that
the first humans left Earth,
then went to another heavenly body.
So this is um, I think, probably,
I think it's the greatest
launchsite on Earth.
Buzz Aldrin, Mike
Collins, Neil Armstrong
get into the transfer van to Pad 39A.
Pad 39A was used for
the Apollo 11 mission,
and then with the space shuttle.
So it's a place with incredible
historical significance.
Now NASA has given Launchpad 39A
to SpaceX to use.
The long term goal of SpaceX
is to develop the technology
necessary to establish a
self-sustaining city on Mars.
SpaceX's primary mission is absolutely
to make life interplanetary.
We can explore the universe,
we can put a colony on Mars.
People can be interplanetary
and it's just an engineering
problem like any other.
It just takes a group
of people who care a lot,
and are happy to work really
hard to make that happen.
When Elon Musk decided
"I'm gonna go off and build
my own rocket company",
everyone thought he was crazy.
Everyone laughed at him.
Now SpaceX has a better
record launching things
than practically any
rocket company in the world.
They have a contract
from NASA to deliver
very essential supplies
to the space station.
Dragon spacecraft now the first-ever
commercial spacecraft to visit
the International Space Station.
They have investors, they
have to have revenues,
they want the business of
launching billion dollar satellites.
At the same time, they're
focused on launching
a new civilization on Mars.
So the stakes for every
rocket launch are huge.
I think it's important
for us to try to get
to a self-sustaining situation
on Mars as soon as possible.
SpaceX, Falcon9 and
Dragon are go for launch.
T-minus 30 seconds.
Because either we're gonna become
a multi-planet species and
a space-faring civilization,
or we're gonna be stuck on one planet
until some eventual extinction event.
T-minus 20.
In order for me to be
excited and inspired about the future,
it's gotta be the first option.
It's gotta be: We're gonna be
a space-faring civilization.
T-minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6,
5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0.
What am I ready for?
I'm ready to be one of
the first human beings
to go to Mars. I mean,
could you imagine that?
That's like a dream.
I think Amelia Earhart
once said that "adventure
is worthwhile in itself."
Uh, it could be that.
If we don't succeed
we still paved the path
for people after us to come,
and follow our lead.
Becoming an interplanetary species is,
it's our best chance to guarantee
humankind's long-term survival.
And, getting to be
part of that it's just.
I mean it's...
It's everything.
Yeah it is.
We've got the opportunity to
ensure that humankind continues.
You know, we've been training
for this half our lives.
And we've been dreaming
about it even longer.
We're ready to give
everything for thismission
you know, all of us are.
We are coming to you
from the International Mars
Science Foundation headquarters,
in Vienna, Austria.
With live coverage from the
Mars Mission Corporation's
mission control center in London,
and an optical feed
from the Daedalus itself,
at a 10 minute, 20 second delay.
We had survived a 209-day journey
through deep space.
But landing a 14-story ship safely,
upright, and on target
on the surface of Mars?
That was a whole different
kind of challenge.
Um,
by the time this message reaches you,
whatever is about to happen already has.
If all went as planned then we are
touched down at the
base camp, we are docked
and we're ready to begin
the most exciting phase
of scientific exploration
in human history.
And if we haven't,
we went into the darkness
so that you could find the light.
This is for you, Dad.
On my mark.
Begin entry sequence.
Mark.
EDL sequence engaged.
You ready for this?
Are you?
Put your helmets on and seal your kits.
Daedalus descent to the surface
has been initiated at
425 kilometers altitude.
By the time this message reaches you,
whatever is about to happen already has.
If all went as planned,
we are touched down at the base camp,
we are docked and we're ready to begin
the most exciting phase of scientific
exploration in human history.
And if we haven't...
9 minutes 30 seconds till landing.
... know that we went into the darkness
so that you could find the light.
Vector is good.
.05 G's,
.1 G's.
- Warning.
- Pyros didn't fire.
Reaction control system error.
Lift vector requires correction.
RCS thrusters are offline.
Check the backup computer.
Backup also showing RCS is offline.
This thing is real.
RCS thruster electrical board offline.
Propellant valves have
not been commanded to open.
The thrusters can't fire.
Recommend immediate manual
replacement to 40 circuits.
- I'll get down there and check it out.
- No, this is mine.
Do a fault tree and talk
me through it on comm.
You're going to have to work fast.
I got it.
Warning seat belt harness released.
Failure identified.
- Found it.
- Talk to me.
It's a failure in bus 4-15-48,
aft-starboard terminal.
4-15-48, copy that.
It's the pyro initiation circuit,
4-3-6-double-bravo.
Moving out of micro-G.
Woah, OK, we got a bit of gravity here.
Ah, wow.
The failure must have
affected the whole bundle.
71 seconds before
we're outside the window
for guidance to correct.
I'm gonna need you to
give me the number again.
4-3-6-double-bravo.
There we go.
Warning thrust still inactive,
60 seconds remaining to
restore reaction control system
before landing is compromised.
Ah, the short cooked
all four connections,
I'm going to have to
cannibalize a replacement.
Mae, identify a PCB
with matching electronics
to board 4-36-double-bravo.
Cruise altitude control thruster pyro
initiation circuit
board Mike-Sierra-5-15-48
- is identical.
- Mike-Sierra-5-15-48,
Roger that.
15 seconds left to correct.
I'm switching the board now.
Come on, come on, come on, come on.
There you go.
Warning, window for
correction is closing in 10.
Thrusters are still
offline! What are we missing?
- Talk to me.
- 9, 8, 7, 6.
- What am I looking for?
- 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Landing on Mars is really tough.
We can put a one-ton
rover down on the ground,
but that's all we can do right now.
And for humans to be able to go to Mars,
we're gonna need 40 ton.
Our big challenge is indeed
what it takes to get
down to the surface.
Mars has an atmosphere,
but it's not enough to really stop you
so consequently you have
to really use retro-rockets,
parachutes, bladed shields,
you have every tool in the arsenal
that we can throw at it
is what it's going to take
to get humans down on the ground.
One of the most radical ideas
that SpaceX has to lower
this horrendous cost
of getting into space is reusability.
Elon Musk wants to be able
to fire a rocket into orbit,
launch a payload into space
and then fire retro rockets,
and bring that rocket down to
land vertically and reuse it.
And part of this whole
idea of reusability
is to develop a system
where you can leave Earth orbit,
go to Mars and actually physically land
the rocket on Mars.
3, 2, 1, liftoff!
This is a very hard problem
because you better enter
the Mars atmosphere at
an incredibly blazing fast speed.
Mars atmosphere is so thin that
by the time you hit the ground
if you didn't start the engines,
you'd still be supersonic,
so you've got to basically point
the engines into the wind at Mach 3,
you gotta fire the rockets into
the supersonic airstream,
zero out your blast speed,
deploy landing gear and land.
And you got one shot.
But rockets there really
don't want to work,
like there's a thousand
ways that a rocket can fail
and one way it can succeed.
Who is Joon Seung?
She's my twin,
she's cap comm at mission control.
It wouldn't be easy for
me to do this mission
without her having
my back on the ground.
Mae ID'd a faulty pyro circuit,
they're working it now.
You mean they were working it
10 minutes and 20 seconds ago.
Delay or no, RCS status
is still negative.
I have Ben below deck.
Found it.
- Talk to me.
- Mae found him a match.
- There's something else.
- Communications are in and out.
Initial failure was mitigated,
but thrusters are still not operational.
I got it,
the RCS temperature
reading is incorrect;
The sensor isn't showing as faulty.
By the time they receive a transmission
it will be too late.
We just have to hope they found it too.
If this goes to hell
on the live broadcast,
IMSF may never give us another shot.
If they missed that window
by more than a few seconds,
they're going to shoot
right past the landing site.
- I'm switching the board now.
- Without thrusters,
they won't be able to
re-orient for retropropulsion.
They'll have no way to
slow down for landing.
Thrusters are still offline.
Eyes and ears, Hana.
What are we missing?
Eyes and ears.
What am I looking for?
Mae hasn't found it.
We're outside the window for correction.
Reporting all systems nominal.
- I don't see anything.
- Nothing.
- Listen!
- 4 minutes 4 seconds.
- Board is in.
- It's the RCS temp sensor.
Backup system is offline.
The backup sensor is
reading near nominal, Ben,
permission to switch
from primary to backup.
- We're too close to SRP!
- Do it.
Ben you won't make it back
to the flight deck for orientation!
We have to abort!
- I said do it!
- Warning, landing hazard.
- Go.
- Recommend engaging abort.
Engaged.
RCS thrust is engaged,
three minutes 48 seconds.
If Ben isn't back on deck soon
he's going to lose
consciousness from the G's;
he could end up down
there during landing.
That's it Ben, your
blood pressure is good.
You know the
countermeasures. Do the drill.
OK.
I'm watching your vitals, Ben.
You can do this.
His blood pressure is stable,
but his heart rate and
breathing are climbing fast,
he's not getting enough
blood to his head.
The G's are climbing too fast!
You're doing great Ben,
tell me what you see.
My periphery is closing in.
5.0.
- Tighten your abdomen.
- 5.1.
That's it Ben, blow it out hard.
1, 2, 3 breathe!
Again!
1, 2, 3, breathe, again.
Guidance can't sufficiently compensate.
We don't have enough control authority.
Prepare for retropropulsion!
1, 2, 3, breathe, again,
1, 2, 3, breathe.
1, 2, 3, breathe, again,
- 1, 2, 3, breathe!
- Counter thrusters are about to fire!
10, 9.
Ben has lost consciousness!
- 8, 7.
- I'm going down.
- 6, 5.
- There's nothing you can do!
4, 3, 2, 1.
Fore and aft jets firing.
Beginning reorientation maneuver!
- Hang on!
- SRP in 3, 2, 1.
Ben's vitals went offline,
- I'm not getting any feedback!
- Radar acquisition.
Terrain relative navigation initiated.
Divert maneuver initiated.
Constant velocity descent.
Still offline.
Begin throttle down,
prep for final descent.
We're coming in too fast!
Angle is off.
All systems to compensate.
We have to correct. Throttle down,
throttle down now!
Come on.
Opticals are all offline;
I've got nothing on audio either.
We should have heard from them by now.
Hana, what is it that you'll miss
most about Earth?
I'll miss my sister.
My mother raised us on her own
and she was army so we
were constantly moving
from place to place and
never really had much of a
concept of what home meant.
Come on, sis.
I think for me and Joon,
I think for us it's
more about what happens
after we get there.
What about you Dr. Kamen,
can you talk a little
bit about the things
you'll miss about home?
What will I miss if I don't go?
It's hard just to leave your family,
I'm gonna miss their voices but,
I know what I'm doing
and I know what I'm leaving behind.
There is a beach in
Victoria Island, Lagos.
I used to sleep on the sand
and wake up with salt around my nose.
We are going to be breathing
recycled air for a long time,
I have a feeling I would trade
my last thermos-stabilized
tapioca pudding
for a taste of that ocean air.
If humankind find a
way to come together and
move toward a healthy evolution,
this mission will have been
about more than just finding
another place to live.
When did you first know you wanted
to become an astronaut?
As far back as I can remember.
I wanted to go into space.
I used to lay out under the sky
when I was a child and just
memorize the stars.
Right from then I always wanted to
be up there, you know?
Mission Control, this is Daedalus.
We're looking at a red planet.
The Daedalus crew has done it,
humankind is on Mars.
Ben.
His vitals are readable, but
he's still unconscious,
I'm going down,
I'll check on Ben.
Confirm our position,
I'll go save the ship.
Woo!
I'm getting off nominal ratings
up and down the engine systems.
Gyro circuits are offline.
Tell me what you see.
What do you see?
It's not good.
How far did we overshoot?
Ben?
We are coming, come on.
Javier, hurry!
_
So the long term goal is how fast can we
establish a self-sustaining
city on Mars.
Do we focus on just trying
to get the ship there
and then maybe send
people some other time?
I think we'd send a ship,
make sure it could land OK.
Assuming that lands OK
and it seems to be working,
on the next Mars mission
we would send people,
and additional equipment.
You just need a lot of equipment to
keep people alive on Mars.
And so we're gonna want to assemble
as much of a base as we possibly can.
So some of that will
have to be landed first,
may have to be robotically put together,
and we may have to do it in stages.
Prepositioning a base
camp is really the only
plausible way to do a
manned mission to Mars,
let alone a colony.
You would need oxygen,
you would need water,
then you would need food,
a source of calories.
How do you generate power on Mars,
we're gonna pre-position solar panels,
but you can only generate so
much energy from solar panels,
what if you're caught in a dust storm?
We can pre-position a reactor
to make power, to make propellant,
maybe even additional habitats.
You would send machines to make oxygen,
machines that suck water
out of the atmosphere.
You really need to send 3d printers
so people can build
their own things on Mars.
And then we'd land a crew
near those facilities.
I think the first few missions
people would live in the ship
so that the most important
thing really would be
just to make sure that we land OK,
and don't damage the ship.
But you can't live there very long,
cosmic radiation is
gonna penetrate the ship.
And what happens if your landing
is off course?
That is a real problem.
There are so many things
that could go wrong,
and there's no help.
There's no emergency supply rocket
that's coming right away.
_
Our biggest challenge on this mission
is gonna be everyday survival you know.
Ben, Ben, can you hear me?
His respirator is damaged.
We got to get his helmet off.
Secure his spine, we're gonna move him.
Yeah, OK, buddy.
OK.
Ugh.
You OK, buddy?
You passed out during the landing.
We need to check on you.
I'm OK,
I'm OK.
Hey, we made it.
Telemetry indicates
the RCS remained offline
for the first 91 seconds of entry.
I've got Daedalus position back online.
How bad?
Put sat on the board.
How far are they from base camp?
How far?
75.3 kilometers.
We're cross checking
all remaining life
support resources now.
But unless Daedalus can tether
to the infrastructure at base camp,
it's only a matter of time.
There has to be a way
to make a suborbital
flight to get Daedalus to base camp.
There's barely enough fuel
to get them off the ground.
They're all alone up there,
what are we telling them guys?
Showing enough residual propellant
in the system to make a single burst,
but they're going to come down hard.
Even harder as they just did.
Landing loads were off the chart.
She's right,
Mae is showing engine damage
from the off-nominal landing.
If they can't make any repairs,
fuel won't make a difference anyway.
What is Ben's status?
I can see substantial
blunt trauma from impact.
I want to do a full battery of scans
as soon as the equipment
is prepped and calibrated.
I said I'm fine.
It's just the transition
from micro-G's.
Ben, I need to run proper tests.
I understand,
I need to know our status first.
How long do we have?
Life support status says
we've got three more
days of breathable air.
Daedalus isn't supposed to operate
independently from base camp.
It's just not viable.
Come on, let's fix this,
it's our guys up there.
Engines are still offline.
Robert, did you troubleshoot
the propellant flow control?
Nothing I do to the electronics
will fix the engines.
I can't get the ship moving
without a resupply from home.
I can't get the ship moving
without a resupply from home.
No chance of bunny hopping
Daedalus to base camp.
There's no fix.
I could fix this if I had the 3D printer
from the Russian workshop.
I could fix this if I had the 3D printer
from the Russian workshop.
The Russian workshop module.
It has independent
environmental systems.
And it was pre-positioned for
access to candidate lava tubes.
It'd be tight, but...
What if we call that the new base camp?
If they upgrade the
environmental control systems
and air and water recycling.
They'd have a chance.
That doesn't solve the
transportation problem.
Can we get the rover to them?
- Checking the route.
- I'll check max payload.
The terrain approaching
Daedalus is complex,
a fair amount of subsidence,
portions that may not be stable.
Can they do it, or not?
Their satellite view is in and out,
we have to hand off
rover command and control
and let Daedalus navigate
the local topography.
Do they have an option?
Initiating override,
transferring remote
rover control to Daedalus.
You're lost,
you must be lost.
You sound like my ex-wife.
You're lost,
you must be lost.
You sound like my ex-wife.
Show me their progress.
Maneuvering that last
kilometer of terrain
from here will be painfully slow.
You should have let me drive.
Nothing on the externals.
I told you,
I'm not lost.
Daedalus.
Daedalus!
That's our girl.
It's such a beautiful thing.
About time something goes right.
We trained for every eventuality
that it started to feel like
we'd already landed on Mars,
like we'd already
succeeded in our mission,
but we hadn't.
We were leaving the ship
that was supposed to have sustained us
for our first two years on Mars.
The mission to find a
new home in this place
was going to be hard.
Harder than any of us had imagined.
Ben, I need to run a
full body scan on you.
Listen,
priority is getting the crew
to base camp, you understand?
After that I'm all yours.
It's time.
Great,
I'll see you down there.
Are you OK?
Yeah, yeah, I'm fine.
For that brief moment,
our pain and worries were gone,
there was no speech, no theater,
there was only awe that we had arrived.
And the acceptance that
we were just beginning.
If I could talk to the first people
to stand on the surface of Mars,
I would ask them to remember
that everything they're about to see,
they'll be seeing for our whole species,
they'll be experiencing,
living a dream that
our recent ancestors would
have deemed impossible.
And it's not just
science fiction anymore,
there are people on this
planet right this moment
that are actually planning
and working to perfect
the machinery that's necessary
to make that possible.
_
T-minus 4 minutes.
We've reached a tipping point.
Thousands of years from now,
whatever we become,
whoever we are,
we'll look back at
these next few decades
as the moment in time
that we are moving off this planet
as a multi-planetary species.
VC and DC verify F9
- and Dragon are in startup.
- F9 is in startup.
And SpaceX stands as nothing less
than a massive game changer.
Stage one,
stage two, pressing for flight.
Elon Musk says the only reason
that I have founded this company
is to get human beings to Mars.
LC LD go for launch.
The key
to making Mars economical
is the reusability of rockets.
T-minus 1 minute.
I just don't
think there's any way to have
a self-sustaining Mars
base without reusability.
Getting the cost down
is really fundamental.
If wooden sailing ships in
the old days were not reusable,
I don't think the United
States would exist.
T-minus 30 seconds.
And if they nail this ability
to land a rocket anyway
they want on Earth,
then they can nail doing it on Mars.
T-minus 15.
This flight is a huge deal.
We haven't yet landed the rocket.
So this is gonna be hopefully
our first successful landing.
T-minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6,
5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0.
We have lift off.
Vehicle has reached maximum pressure.
Stage one propulsion
is still not working.
Altitude 32 kilometers, speed
at 1 kilometer per second,
down range distance 13 kilometers.
Space is defined by the strange
relationship between
failure, risk, and innovation.
Which is you can take risks,
you can try something very innovative,
but you're more likely to fail.
Some people say that
the challenges of a Mars mission
are excessively formidable.
I entirely disagree.
I believe that far from being
the weak link in the chain,
human ingenuity, and the human psyche
is gonna be the strongest
link in the chain.
There's a
segment of people in this world
that live on the edge.
The talent of these people
is evaluating the risk
and always the rewards.
If you figure that the
reward is worth the risk.
That yeah, it's risky,
I know I could get killed doing this,
but it's doing something
that man had not done before.
So is it worth it? Mhm, it's worth it.
Mission control confirmed the rover
is 2000 kilos over maximum payload
with all of us aboard.
I ran the numbers,
the odds are we won't make it.
Yeah,
but someone will.
Come on...
Let's get to work.
We had 75 kilometers ahead of us.
Over brutal terrain,
and a rover thousands
of kilos over capacity.
Even if we made it that far,
our new base camp was a workshop
that would barely hold us all.
Temperatures would drop to minus
70 degrees before nightfall,
and the only help we had
was somewhere up there
on a little blue dot.
Retro rockets are about to fire in.
1, 2, 3, breathe. 1, 2, 3, breathe.
We dream.
It's who we are.
Down to our bones, our cells.
That instinct to build.
That drive to seek beyond what we know.
It's in our DNA.
We crossed the oceans,
we conquered the skies.
And when there were no
more frontiers on Earth
we launched ourselves among the stars.
We choose to go to
the Moon in this decade
and do the other things,
not because they are easy,
but because they are hard.
The heavens beckoned a new generation
of innovators and explorers,
seeking to take human kind even further.
We can push out into the solar system.
Not just to visit but to stay.
That was when Mars
became real for all of us.
And for those of us who were around
to see the first days, it was...
electrifying.
The world's leading space agencies
united as the International
Mars Science Foundation.
And joined with private industry
to accomplish one shared goal.
To build a home for humankind on Mars.
People weren't just talking
about the red planet,
they were making plans to go there.
And after years of training
in the Astronaut Corps
I was chosen to command the
first human mission to Mars.
Wonder,
- wonder.
- _
For as long as we've
looked up at the night sky
that is what we felt.
We named the planets
that hang among the stars
after our gods.
And gave them the same
power to control our fate.
With the support of the
space-going nations of the IMSF
the Mars Mission Corporation
has overcome the most
daunting engineering challenges
our species has ever faced.
This allows the brave pioneers
standing before you today,
to bring humanity
into a new era.
We will no longer stare
and wonder at those planets
we named for our gods.
But take our place among them.
Ed Grann could sell anything,
but he was more than a salesman.
He was brilliant.
_
She's 14 stories base to nose.
That's a fancy jacket you got today Ed.
_
_
_
And as much as any of us,
he was a believer.
He promised the world he
would give us the technology
we needed to leave our home,
and build a new one.
And he delivered.
This is it.
Daedalus.
Take good care of her,
she'll take good care of you.
She's your ship now.
Drives better than a Cadillac.
But that shine isn't gonna last.
Over the next 7 months your
bodies are gonna be exposed
to nearly 200 times the
dose of a normal year's
worth of radiation exposure on Earth.
Calcium will leach from your bones
which will lose nearly 10% of their mass
before you even get to Mars.
There is no test that can
tell you whether or not
the notion of being 60
million kilometers away
from the planet on which you were born
can shatter your mind in so many pieces.
Some of us if not all of us
will almost certainly
die on this mission.
Might be in takeoff,
might be in landing,
might be in the new world itself.
Now you all are the bravest group
of women and men I have ever met.
I'm damn proud to be here with you.
But right now I want you
to stop and ask yourself
what really is important
to you about this mission.
And if the answer to
that question is not
the most important thing in your life
then I'm gonna invite
you to walk out that door
and go pursue whatever that thing is.
And don't ever look back, because no one
will ever have the right
to hold it against you.
Daedalus, you're a go for launch
in T-minus 17 seconds and counting.
Mission analytic executor,
you have primary control of
all the critical functions.
Mae, the ship is yours.
I am in control.
The launch of Daedalus
was the beginning of our
historic 7-month journey to Mars.
But it wasn't easy to
reach the red planet.
We needed visionaries to guide the way.
Mars and Earth are sister planets.
The young Mars had rivers and lakes,
it even had an ocean.
If there was water on Mars,
couldn't there possibly be life?
Is it habitable?
If you really want to understand,
we want to, need to, go to Mars.
We need to go to Mars
because it protects us from extinction.
There's all sorts of things
that could happen on Earth
that can kill all the
humans on the planet.
But once humans are on
two different planets
the odds of extinction
drop to nearly zero.
Getting to Mars will be risky,
dangerous,
uncomfortable.
But it will be the
greatest adventure ever.
Ever in human history.
This is hallowed ground,
it's called Launchpad 39A,
and it's the place that
the first humans left Earth,
then went to another heavenly body.
So this is um, I think, probably,
I think it's the greatest
launchsite on Earth.
Buzz Aldrin, Mike
Collins, Neil Armstrong
get into the transfer van to Pad 39A.
Pad 39A was used for
the Apollo 11 mission,
and then with the space shuttle.
So it's a place with incredible
historical significance.
Now NASA has given Launchpad 39A
to SpaceX to use.
The long term goal of SpaceX
is to develop the technology
necessary to establish a
self-sustaining city on Mars.
SpaceX's primary mission is absolutely
to make life interplanetary.
We can explore the universe,
we can put a colony on Mars.
People can be interplanetary
and it's just an engineering
problem like any other.
It just takes a group
of people who care a lot,
and are happy to work really
hard to make that happen.
When Elon Musk decided
"I'm gonna go off and build
my own rocket company",
everyone thought he was crazy.
Everyone laughed at him.
Now SpaceX has a better
record launching things
than practically any
rocket company in the world.
They have a contract
from NASA to deliver
very essential supplies
to the space station.
Dragon spacecraft now the first-ever
commercial spacecraft to visit
the International Space Station.
They have investors, they
have to have revenues,
they want the business of
launching billion dollar satellites.
At the same time, they're
focused on launching
a new civilization on Mars.
So the stakes for every
rocket launch are huge.
I think it's important
for us to try to get
to a self-sustaining situation
on Mars as soon as possible.
SpaceX, Falcon9 and
Dragon are go for launch.
T-minus 30 seconds.
Because either we're gonna become
a multi-planet species and
a space-faring civilization,
or we're gonna be stuck on one planet
until some eventual extinction event.
T-minus 20.
In order for me to be
excited and inspired about the future,
it's gotta be the first option.
It's gotta be: We're gonna be
a space-faring civilization.
T-minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6,
5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0.
What am I ready for?
I'm ready to be one of
the first human beings
to go to Mars. I mean,
could you imagine that?
That's like a dream.
I think Amelia Earhart
once said that "adventure
is worthwhile in itself."
Uh, it could be that.
If we don't succeed
we still paved the path
for people after us to come,
and follow our lead.
Becoming an interplanetary species is,
it's our best chance to guarantee
humankind's long-term survival.
And, getting to be
part of that it's just.
I mean it's...
It's everything.
Yeah it is.
We've got the opportunity to
ensure that humankind continues.
You know, we've been training
for this half our lives.
And we've been dreaming
about it even longer.
We're ready to give
everything for thismission
you know, all of us are.
We are coming to you
from the International Mars
Science Foundation headquarters,
in Vienna, Austria.
With live coverage from the
Mars Mission Corporation's
mission control center in London,
and an optical feed
from the Daedalus itself,
at a 10 minute, 20 second delay.
We had survived a 209-day journey
through deep space.
But landing a 14-story ship safely,
upright, and on target
on the surface of Mars?
That was a whole different
kind of challenge.
Um,
by the time this message reaches you,
whatever is about to happen already has.
If all went as planned then we are
touched down at the
base camp, we are docked
and we're ready to begin
the most exciting phase
of scientific exploration
in human history.
And if we haven't,
we went into the darkness
so that you could find the light.
This is for you, Dad.
On my mark.
Begin entry sequence.
Mark.
EDL sequence engaged.
You ready for this?
Are you?
Put your helmets on and seal your kits.
Daedalus descent to the surface
has been initiated at
425 kilometers altitude.
By the time this message reaches you,
whatever is about to happen already has.
If all went as planned,
we are touched down at the base camp,
we are docked and we're ready to begin
the most exciting phase of scientific
exploration in human history.
And if we haven't...
9 minutes 30 seconds till landing.
... know that we went into the darkness
so that you could find the light.
Vector is good.
.05 G's,
.1 G's.
- Warning.
- Pyros didn't fire.
Reaction control system error.
Lift vector requires correction.
RCS thrusters are offline.
Check the backup computer.
Backup also showing RCS is offline.
This thing is real.
RCS thruster electrical board offline.
Propellant valves have
not been commanded to open.
The thrusters can't fire.
Recommend immediate manual
replacement to 40 circuits.
- I'll get down there and check it out.
- No, this is mine.
Do a fault tree and talk
me through it on comm.
You're going to have to work fast.
I got it.
Warning seat belt harness released.
Failure identified.
- Found it.
- Talk to me.
It's a failure in bus 4-15-48,
aft-starboard terminal.
4-15-48, copy that.
It's the pyro initiation circuit,
4-3-6-double-bravo.
Moving out of micro-G.
Woah, OK, we got a bit of gravity here.
Ah, wow.
The failure must have
affected the whole bundle.
71 seconds before
we're outside the window
for guidance to correct.
I'm gonna need you to
give me the number again.
4-3-6-double-bravo.
There we go.
Warning thrust still inactive,
60 seconds remaining to
restore reaction control system
before landing is compromised.
Ah, the short cooked
all four connections,
I'm going to have to
cannibalize a replacement.
Mae, identify a PCB
with matching electronics
to board 4-36-double-bravo.
Cruise altitude control thruster pyro
initiation circuit
board Mike-Sierra-5-15-48
- is identical.
- Mike-Sierra-5-15-48,
Roger that.
15 seconds left to correct.
I'm switching the board now.
Come on, come on, come on, come on.
There you go.
Warning, window for
correction is closing in 10.
Thrusters are still
offline! What are we missing?
- Talk to me.
- 9, 8, 7, 6.
- What am I looking for?
- 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Landing on Mars is really tough.
We can put a one-ton
rover down on the ground,
but that's all we can do right now.
And for humans to be able to go to Mars,
we're gonna need 40 ton.
Our big challenge is indeed
what it takes to get
down to the surface.
Mars has an atmosphere,
but it's not enough to really stop you
so consequently you have
to really use retro-rockets,
parachutes, bladed shields,
you have every tool in the arsenal
that we can throw at it
is what it's going to take
to get humans down on the ground.
One of the most radical ideas
that SpaceX has to lower
this horrendous cost
of getting into space is reusability.
Elon Musk wants to be able
to fire a rocket into orbit,
launch a payload into space
and then fire retro rockets,
and bring that rocket down to
land vertically and reuse it.
And part of this whole
idea of reusability
is to develop a system
where you can leave Earth orbit,
go to Mars and actually physically land
the rocket on Mars.
3, 2, 1, liftoff!
This is a very hard problem
because you better enter
the Mars atmosphere at
an incredibly blazing fast speed.
Mars atmosphere is so thin that
by the time you hit the ground
if you didn't start the engines,
you'd still be supersonic,
so you've got to basically point
the engines into the wind at Mach 3,
you gotta fire the rockets into
the supersonic airstream,
zero out your blast speed,
deploy landing gear and land.
And you got one shot.
But rockets there really
don't want to work,
like there's a thousand
ways that a rocket can fail
and one way it can succeed.
Who is Joon Seung?
She's my twin,
she's cap comm at mission control.
It wouldn't be easy for
me to do this mission
without her having
my back on the ground.
Mae ID'd a faulty pyro circuit,
they're working it now.
You mean they were working it
10 minutes and 20 seconds ago.
Delay or no, RCS status
is still negative.
I have Ben below deck.
Found it.
- Talk to me.
- Mae found him a match.
- There's something else.
- Communications are in and out.
Initial failure was mitigated,
but thrusters are still not operational.
I got it,
the RCS temperature
reading is incorrect;
The sensor isn't showing as faulty.
By the time they receive a transmission
it will be too late.
We just have to hope they found it too.
If this goes to hell
on the live broadcast,
IMSF may never give us another shot.
If they missed that window
by more than a few seconds,
they're going to shoot
right past the landing site.
- I'm switching the board now.
- Without thrusters,
they won't be able to
re-orient for retropropulsion.
They'll have no way to
slow down for landing.
Thrusters are still offline.
Eyes and ears, Hana.
What are we missing?
Eyes and ears.
What am I looking for?
Mae hasn't found it.
We're outside the window for correction.
Reporting all systems nominal.
- I don't see anything.
- Nothing.
- Listen!
- 4 minutes 4 seconds.
- Board is in.
- It's the RCS temp sensor.
Backup system is offline.
The backup sensor is
reading near nominal, Ben,
permission to switch
from primary to backup.
- We're too close to SRP!
- Do it.
Ben you won't make it back
to the flight deck for orientation!
We have to abort!
- I said do it!
- Warning, landing hazard.
- Go.
- Recommend engaging abort.
Engaged.
RCS thrust is engaged,
three minutes 48 seconds.
If Ben isn't back on deck soon
he's going to lose
consciousness from the G's;
he could end up down
there during landing.
That's it Ben, your
blood pressure is good.
You know the
countermeasures. Do the drill.
OK.
I'm watching your vitals, Ben.
You can do this.
His blood pressure is stable,
but his heart rate and
breathing are climbing fast,
he's not getting enough
blood to his head.
The G's are climbing too fast!
You're doing great Ben,
tell me what you see.
My periphery is closing in.
5.0.
- Tighten your abdomen.
- 5.1.
That's it Ben, blow it out hard.
1, 2, 3 breathe!
Again!
1, 2, 3, breathe, again.
Guidance can't sufficiently compensate.
We don't have enough control authority.
Prepare for retropropulsion!
1, 2, 3, breathe, again,
1, 2, 3, breathe.
1, 2, 3, breathe, again,
- 1, 2, 3, breathe!
- Counter thrusters are about to fire!
10, 9.
Ben has lost consciousness!
- 8, 7.
- I'm going down.
- 6, 5.
- There's nothing you can do!
4, 3, 2, 1.
Fore and aft jets firing.
Beginning reorientation maneuver!
- Hang on!
- SRP in 3, 2, 1.
Ben's vitals went offline,
- I'm not getting any feedback!
- Radar acquisition.
Terrain relative navigation initiated.
Divert maneuver initiated.
Constant velocity descent.
Still offline.
Begin throttle down,
prep for final descent.
We're coming in too fast!
Angle is off.
All systems to compensate.
We have to correct. Throttle down,
throttle down now!
Come on.
Opticals are all offline;
I've got nothing on audio either.
We should have heard from them by now.
Hana, what is it that you'll miss
most about Earth?
I'll miss my sister.
My mother raised us on her own
and she was army so we
were constantly moving
from place to place and
never really had much of a
concept of what home meant.
Come on, sis.
I think for me and Joon,
I think for us it's
more about what happens
after we get there.
What about you Dr. Kamen,
can you talk a little
bit about the things
you'll miss about home?
What will I miss if I don't go?
It's hard just to leave your family,
I'm gonna miss their voices but,
I know what I'm doing
and I know what I'm leaving behind.
There is a beach in
Victoria Island, Lagos.
I used to sleep on the sand
and wake up with salt around my nose.
We are going to be breathing
recycled air for a long time,
I have a feeling I would trade
my last thermos-stabilized
tapioca pudding
for a taste of that ocean air.
If humankind find a
way to come together and
move toward a healthy evolution,
this mission will have been
about more than just finding
another place to live.
When did you first know you wanted
to become an astronaut?
As far back as I can remember.
I wanted to go into space.
I used to lay out under the sky
when I was a child and just
memorize the stars.
Right from then I always wanted to
be up there, you know?
Mission Control, this is Daedalus.
We're looking at a red planet.
The Daedalus crew has done it,
humankind is on Mars.
Ben.
His vitals are readable, but
he's still unconscious,
I'm going down,
I'll check on Ben.
Confirm our position,
I'll go save the ship.
Woo!
I'm getting off nominal ratings
up and down the engine systems.
Gyro circuits are offline.
Tell me what you see.
What do you see?
It's not good.
How far did we overshoot?
Ben?
We are coming, come on.
Javier, hurry!
_
So the long term goal is how fast can we
establish a self-sustaining
city on Mars.
Do we focus on just trying
to get the ship there
and then maybe send
people some other time?
I think we'd send a ship,
make sure it could land OK.
Assuming that lands OK
and it seems to be working,
on the next Mars mission
we would send people,
and additional equipment.
You just need a lot of equipment to
keep people alive on Mars.
And so we're gonna want to assemble
as much of a base as we possibly can.
So some of that will
have to be landed first,
may have to be robotically put together,
and we may have to do it in stages.
Prepositioning a base
camp is really the only
plausible way to do a
manned mission to Mars,
let alone a colony.
You would need oxygen,
you would need water,
then you would need food,
a source of calories.
How do you generate power on Mars,
we're gonna pre-position solar panels,
but you can only generate so
much energy from solar panels,
what if you're caught in a dust storm?
We can pre-position a reactor
to make power, to make propellant,
maybe even additional habitats.
You would send machines to make oxygen,
machines that suck water
out of the atmosphere.
You really need to send 3d printers
so people can build
their own things on Mars.
And then we'd land a crew
near those facilities.
I think the first few missions
people would live in the ship
so that the most important
thing really would be
just to make sure that we land OK,
and don't damage the ship.
But you can't live there very long,
cosmic radiation is
gonna penetrate the ship.
And what happens if your landing
is off course?
That is a real problem.
There are so many things
that could go wrong,
and there's no help.
There's no emergency supply rocket
that's coming right away.
_
Our biggest challenge on this mission
is gonna be everyday survival you know.
Ben, Ben, can you hear me?
His respirator is damaged.
We got to get his helmet off.
Secure his spine, we're gonna move him.
Yeah, OK, buddy.
OK.
Ugh.
You OK, buddy?
You passed out during the landing.
We need to check on you.
I'm OK,
I'm OK.
Hey, we made it.
Telemetry indicates
the RCS remained offline
for the first 91 seconds of entry.
I've got Daedalus position back online.
How bad?
Put sat on the board.
How far are they from base camp?
How far?
75.3 kilometers.
We're cross checking
all remaining life
support resources now.
But unless Daedalus can tether
to the infrastructure at base camp,
it's only a matter of time.
There has to be a way
to make a suborbital
flight to get Daedalus to base camp.
There's barely enough fuel
to get them off the ground.
They're all alone up there,
what are we telling them guys?
Showing enough residual propellant
in the system to make a single burst,
but they're going to come down hard.
Even harder as they just did.
Landing loads were off the chart.
She's right,
Mae is showing engine damage
from the off-nominal landing.
If they can't make any repairs,
fuel won't make a difference anyway.
What is Ben's status?
I can see substantial
blunt trauma from impact.
I want to do a full battery of scans
as soon as the equipment
is prepped and calibrated.
I said I'm fine.
It's just the transition
from micro-G's.
Ben, I need to run proper tests.
I understand,
I need to know our status first.
How long do we have?
Life support status says
we've got three more
days of breathable air.
Daedalus isn't supposed to operate
independently from base camp.
It's just not viable.
Come on, let's fix this,
it's our guys up there.
Engines are still offline.
Robert, did you troubleshoot
the propellant flow control?
Nothing I do to the electronics
will fix the engines.
I can't get the ship moving
without a resupply from home.
I can't get the ship moving
without a resupply from home.
No chance of bunny hopping
Daedalus to base camp.
There's no fix.
I could fix this if I had the 3D printer
from the Russian workshop.
I could fix this if I had the 3D printer
from the Russian workshop.
The Russian workshop module.
It has independent
environmental systems.
And it was pre-positioned for
access to candidate lava tubes.
It'd be tight, but...
What if we call that the new base camp?
If they upgrade the
environmental control systems
and air and water recycling.
They'd have a chance.
That doesn't solve the
transportation problem.
Can we get the rover to them?
- Checking the route.
- I'll check max payload.
The terrain approaching
Daedalus is complex,
a fair amount of subsidence,
portions that may not be stable.
Can they do it, or not?
Their satellite view is in and out,
we have to hand off
rover command and control
and let Daedalus navigate
the local topography.
Do they have an option?
Initiating override,
transferring remote
rover control to Daedalus.
You're lost,
you must be lost.
You sound like my ex-wife.
You're lost,
you must be lost.
You sound like my ex-wife.
Show me their progress.
Maneuvering that last
kilometer of terrain
from here will be painfully slow.
You should have let me drive.
Nothing on the externals.
I told you,
I'm not lost.
Daedalus.
Daedalus!
That's our girl.
It's such a beautiful thing.
About time something goes right.
We trained for every eventuality
that it started to feel like
we'd already landed on Mars,
like we'd already
succeeded in our mission,
but we hadn't.
We were leaving the ship
that was supposed to have sustained us
for our first two years on Mars.
The mission to find a
new home in this place
was going to be hard.
Harder than any of us had imagined.
Ben, I need to run a
full body scan on you.
Listen,
priority is getting the crew
to base camp, you understand?
After that I'm all yours.
It's time.
Great,
I'll see you down there.
Are you OK?
Yeah, yeah, I'm fine.
For that brief moment,
our pain and worries were gone,
there was no speech, no theater,
there was only awe that we had arrived.
And the acceptance that
we were just beginning.
If I could talk to the first people
to stand on the surface of Mars,
I would ask them to remember
that everything they're about to see,
they'll be seeing for our whole species,
they'll be experiencing,
living a dream that
our recent ancestors would
have deemed impossible.
And it's not just
science fiction anymore,
there are people on this
planet right this moment
that are actually planning
and working to perfect
the machinery that's necessary
to make that possible.
_
T-minus 4 minutes.
We've reached a tipping point.
Thousands of years from now,
whatever we become,
whoever we are,
we'll look back at
these next few decades
as the moment in time
that we are moving off this planet
as a multi-planetary species.
VC and DC verify F9
- and Dragon are in startup.
- F9 is in startup.
And SpaceX stands as nothing less
than a massive game changer.
Stage one,
stage two, pressing for flight.
Elon Musk says the only reason
that I have founded this company
is to get human beings to Mars.
LC LD go for launch.
The key
to making Mars economical
is the reusability of rockets.
T-minus 1 minute.
I just don't
think there's any way to have
a self-sustaining Mars
base without reusability.
Getting the cost down
is really fundamental.
If wooden sailing ships in
the old days were not reusable,
I don't think the United
States would exist.
T-minus 30 seconds.
And if they nail this ability
to land a rocket anyway
they want on Earth,
then they can nail doing it on Mars.
T-minus 15.
This flight is a huge deal.
We haven't yet landed the rocket.
So this is gonna be hopefully
our first successful landing.
T-minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6,
5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0.
We have lift off.
Vehicle has reached maximum pressure.
Stage one propulsion
is still not working.
Altitude 32 kilometers, speed
at 1 kilometer per second,
down range distance 13 kilometers.
Space is defined by the strange
relationship between
failure, risk, and innovation.
Which is you can take risks,
you can try something very innovative,
but you're more likely to fail.
Some people say that
the challenges of a Mars mission
are excessively formidable.
I entirely disagree.
I believe that far from being
the weak link in the chain,
human ingenuity, and the human psyche
is gonna be the strongest
link in the chain.
There's a
segment of people in this world
that live on the edge.
The talent of these people
is evaluating the risk
and always the rewards.
If you figure that the
reward is worth the risk.
That yeah, it's risky,
I know I could get killed doing this,
but it's doing something
that man had not done before.
So is it worth it? Mhm, it's worth it.
Mission control confirmed the rover
is 2000 kilos over maximum payload
with all of us aboard.
I ran the numbers,
the odds are we won't make it.
Yeah,
but someone will.
Come on...
Let's get to work.
We had 75 kilometers ahead of us.
Over brutal terrain,
and a rover thousands
of kilos over capacity.
Even if we made it that far,
our new base camp was a workshop
that would barely hold us all.
Temperatures would drop to minus
70 degrees before nightfall,
and the only help we had
was somewhere up there
on a little blue dot.