The upcoming sci-fi movie "The Martian" is based on the novel by Andy Weir and is directed by Ridley Scott (known for Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, Prometheus and countless other movies). The Martian will hit theaters mostly on early October 2015 (see full list of release dates here). Plot in brief: "During a manned mission to Mars, astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is presumed dead after a fierce storm and left behind by his crew. But Watney has survived and finds himself stranded and alone on the hostile planet. With only meager supplies, he must draw upon his ingenuity, wit and spirit to subsist and find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive. Millions of miles away, NASA and a team of international scientists work tirelessly to bring “the Martian” home, while his crewmates concurrently plot a daring, if not impossible rescue mission. As these stories of incredible bravery unfold, the world comes together to root for Watney’s safe return."
My first thoughts - Awesome! If the movie will be as good as the trailers The Martian will become the BEST MARS MOVIE EVER, overthrowing Total Recall from that throne. The Martian will hit theaters mostly on early October 2015 (see full list of release dates here).
The Martian is based on the novel by Andy Weir and is directed by Ridley Scott (known for Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, Prometheus and countless other movies). Plot in brief: "During a manned mission to Mars, astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is presumed dead after a fierce storm and left behind by his crew. But Watney has survived and finds himself stranded and alone on the hostile planet. With only meager supplies, he must draw upon his ingenuity, wit and spirit to subsist and find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive. Millions of miles away, NASA and a team of international scientists work tirelessly to bring “the Martian” home, while his crewmates concurrently plot a daring, if not impossible rescue mission. As these stories of incredible bravery unfold, the world comes together to root for Watney’s safe return."
In a recent article "Traffic around Mars gets busy" the NASA/JPL summed up some facts about spacecraft currently orbiting Mars. The most interesting is the provided graphic of their orbits around Mars (together with planet's two natural satellites Phobos & Deimos):
So there are 5 active Mars orbiters currently orbiting the planet:
Picture of the Day 25/4/15 - Spaceship taking off from Mars (1990) by space illustrator Pat Rawlings. His description about this drawing you can read here.
4 part video interview with Robert Zubrin, the president of The Mars Society, around the main subject - Why we should go to Mars? The interview was done by moonandback.com in 2012. Zubrin's and The Mars Society's efforts towards the manned mission to Mars was depicted in details in The Mars Underground documentary.
1. part - about Zubrin's career in space and the path that led to the founding of the Mars Society.
Picture of the Day 23/2/15 - Spaceship in Mars orbit by Tim Flattery from his concept art for Mission to Mars. More of his concept art for movies here.
Stranded (original title in Spanish: Náufragos) is a 2001 low budget Spanish movie about struggle for survival of 5 astronauts stranded on Mars. Not all of them survive till the end.
Story
The movie starts with Mars landing craft crashing on the surface of the planet along with 6 astronauts. The captain of the crew is dead and the remaining 5 are trying to figure out how to survive till the rescue mission could hopefully arrive 26 months later. The resources of food, water, oxygen and energy is limited and the only "solution" seems to be to let survive only 2 of them. So the 3 "expendable" ones are going for a "walk". They reach the edge of the Valles Marineris and descend down. When only 2 of them are left they discover a cave which unexpectedly turn into ancient Martian tunnels with oxygen in them. An unfortunate step into "wrong" tunnel kills 1 of 2 remaining ones. The last surviving women discovers the dead bodies of local Martians and their somehow pressurized (with no visible roof) oasis / ghost town into the depths of Valles Marineris. So she calls the other 2 which had stayed in the landing craft to come and join her. Hopefully they will survive till the rescue comes.
Verdict: 5/10
If the best Mars movie - Total Recall - would be about 1 point short of being "the ideal Mars movie", Stranded is 4 more points bellow that level because of these huge drawbacks:
the movie is low budget and it definitely feels like being low budget;
the acting is very poor. You don't get the feeling that characters are actual top-level astronauts/scientists which had been carefully chosen to be the first humans on Mars. Dialogues are clumsy and, despite the movie being quite depressive, the actors don't believably act as being hopelessly stranded millions of miles from Earth with possible rescue coming only years away at best.
Despite that, the concept of the movie is quite interesting (unlike some recent Mars-zombie movies like The last days on Mars with a bigger budget) and Stranded is worth watching for Mars fans.
The Mars Underground is a documentary about the dream to get to Mars.. about the disappointment of "space era" kids/youth for NASA not going further after the human landing on Moon on 1969. One of such kids was visionary rocket scientist, the president of The Mars SocietyRobert Zubrin who with his team has developed his own plan for getting humans to Mars and back - Mars Direct (with updated mission architecture called "Mars Semi-Direct"). They are confident the mission could be carried out in a decade if only NASA would dare to try. It would be the first step for colonizing Mars and thereby making humanity a multi-planet civilization.
As the documentary was released in May, 2007 it doesn't cover the more recent plans for Mars colonization/exploration by SpaceX.
You can watch the most recent version (labeled as "Updated edition/Director's cut") of the film here:
Picture of the Day 15/6/14 - Mars habitat module entering Mars atmosphere with Low Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) by French sci-fi artist Manchu(Philippe Bouchet).
Picture of the Day 27/4/14 - "Olympos station" (2007) by Sean Brady from United Kingdom.
Author's description of the scene: Setting up an automated weather station on the lower slopes of Olympus Mons.
.jpg "Take off from Mars by Pat Rawlings")
.jpg "Spaceship in Mars orbit by Tim Flattery")
.jpg "Setting up a Mars base by Pat Rawlings")
.jpg "Mars base by John J. Olson")
.jpg "Astronauts exploring Mars by Sean Brady")
.jpg "Spaceship in Mars orbit by deckard01")
.jpg "Astronauts exploring Mars by Ren Wicks")
