Thursday, May 07, 2015
"Journey to Space": from Space Shuttle to Mars
The IMAX 3-D museum film “Journey to Space” (2015, 47 min.),
directed by Mark Krenzien, and narrated in part by Patrcok Stewart, does convey
a real experience of what it “looks like” to live on a space shuttle, space
station, and what it is going to be like eventually to journey to Mars,
including what the planet will look like when landing. For an average person, it’s the closest thing
possible to this kind of experience.
The film does trace the history of the space shuttle and
various stations, and at midpoint covers the 1986 Challenger explosion. Then it gets interesting, trying to show how
to pull off the logistics of a journey to Mars.
The best idea is an inflatable nylon module, a cylinder maybe 50 feet
across and 200 feet long, broken into living, sleeping, recreation and exercise
areas. The best guess is that a round trip would take three years, with a six
month “flight” each way. The film
mentions the call for volunteers to go live on Mars and never return.
The film also covers the medical problems of prolonged
weightlessness or lower gravity (on Mars it is 38% of Earth’s) and wonders
whether two hours of vigorous exercise a day will be enough counter-measure. Another
big issue will be radiation from solar storms and even cosmic rays.
At the end, the film shows some spectacular scenery, including
the Twin Peaks Garden (homage to David Lynch), and the carbon dioxide snow cap
at the poles.
Some of the historical scenes in the early are shown in just
a portion of the full Imax screen, cropped to wide anamorphic.
Here’s a link on travel times of light in the Solar
System. So a Facebook post could get to
Mars in about 13 minutes.
I saw the film today at the National Air and Space Museum
before a very fully crowd with school field trips.
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