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Watching The First<\/i>, Beau Willimon’s new TV series, for New Scientist, 3 November 2018<\/a><\/p>\n FOR reasons that remained mysterious by the end of episode one, veteran astronaut Tom Hagerty (Sean Penn) has been grounded. This left him watching helplessly as a launch accident wipes out his former crewmates, bound for Mars on a rocket bankrolled by prickly space visionary Laz Ingram (Natascha McElhone). By the episode\u2019s end, the disaster has taken a huge psychological toll, not least on Ingram herself.<\/p>\n Welcome to the future \u2013 don\u2019t expect it to be easy. Set 15 years from now, the world of\u00a0The First<\/i>\u00a0is not very different from our own. Some cars drive themselves. Media gadgets proliferate. The women who currently hold high executive positions in private space companies are now public figures.<\/p>\n The First<\/i>\u00a0is not your typical fictional voyage to Mars. \u201cIt would have been safer to just get into space in the first episode,\u201d says series creator Beau Willimon, best known for his stylish US remake of political thriller\u00a0House of Cards<\/i>. \u201cBut space exploration, with all of its excitement, doesn\u2019t happen overnight. A Mars project will take years of planning.\u201d<\/p>\n Virtually the whole of the first season of this intriguing Martian epic will be set on Earth. It is a risky approach, but one that persuaded Charles Elachi, a former director of NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, to be a consultant for the show. \u201cOnly one organisation has successfully landed something on Mars,\u201d he tells me with relish, \u201cand I used to head it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat attracted me,\u201d says Elachi, \u201cwas Willimon\u2019s desire to look at the Mars project in the round, taking in the scientific aspects, but also all the technical and personal and political challenges. How do you convince people to commit to these amazing projects? Important as the science is, exploration is a human endeavour.\u201d<\/p>\n Elachi has seen the truth of this at first hand, having witnessed the decades of effort and sacrifice required to land rovers on Mars, and he is impressed that the series, although it accelerates events tremendously, still reflects the likely scale of a Mars mission.<\/p>\n \u201cThe series starts 15 years in the future, but for me, as the show\u2019s technical consultant, it\u2019s really a story of the next 15 years,\u201d says Elachi. \u201cIt\u2019s about all the things that come before that first flight: the power sources, the vehicles, all the equipment that needs to be developed and deployed before a human ever boards a rocket.\u201d<\/p>\n Building the backstory to the series was essential. And according to Willimon, it was cool: \u201cA lot of the questions we had were questions that researchers themselves are asking,\u201d he says. \u201cEvery design element on the screen has a clear function and a precise reason for being there. We don\u2019t want this to be an 8-hour science lecture, but it\u2019s important for the audience that we can explain everything in the frame.\u201d<\/p>\n It takes thousands of people to get one astronaut into space. Engineers, scientists, the medical team, the ground-support team: people bring thousands of years of combined experience to the business of making several minutes tick by without failure.<\/p>\n Willimon, whose father served months at a time on nuclear submarines, also knows the sacrifices families make. While his father was away, he says, \u201cI used to make these drawings and maps and plans, trying to figure out where he was, under what ice shelf, in what ocean? And I\u2019d try to work out what he was doing.\u201d<\/p>\n This makes\u00a0The First<\/i>\u00a0a very personal project. \u201cWe all ask ourselves, What does it all mean? Is there a God? Where\u2019s my place in the universe?\u201d Willimon reflects. If we asked these things of ourselves all the time, we\u2019d go mad. \u201cBut space travel,\u201d he says, \u201cliterally travelling into the heavens, forces your hand.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Watching The First, Beau Willimon’s new TV series, for New Scientist, 3 November 2018 FOR reasons that remained mysterious by the end of episode one, veteran astronaut Tom Hagerty (Sean Penn) has been grounded. This left him watching helplessly as … Continue reading \nTo hit the next launch window, Ingram and thousands of others \u2013 in government, in industry, in NASA and in space agencies across the world \u2013 are going to have to figure out how they are going to get a second stab at Mars. And what\u2019s more, they are going to have to convince their paymasters, their employees, their constituents, their families and themselves, that all the time and sacrifice and renewed risk will be worthwhile.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n