AMELIE AVA BEN ED FLIGHT_DIRECTOR GRANN HANA INTERVIEWER JAVIER JOON LOUISE_VARDA MAE MARTA MCC_EMPLOYEE MISSION_CONTROL MMC_EMPLOYEE MMC_MEMBER OLIVER ROBERT SAM ST_JOHN_FKENNEDY ST_OBAMA VO_ANDY_WEIR VO_ANNOUNCER VO_ANN_DRUYAN VO_CASEY_DREIER VO_ELON_MUSK VO_JAMES_ALOVELL VO_JENNIFER_TROSPER VO_JIM_GREEN VO_JOHN_GRUNSFELD VO_LARS_BLACKMORE VO_MISSION_CONTROL VO_NARRATOR_BEN VO_NEIL_DEGRASSE_TYSON VO_PETER_DIAMANDIS VO_ROBERT_ZUBRIN VO_SHANA_DIEZ VO_SPACEX_EMPLOYEE VO_SPACEX_MISSION_CONTROL VO_STEPHEN_PETRANEK ROBERT Retro rockets are about to fire in. AMELIE 1, 2, 3, breathe. 1, 2, 3, breathe. VO NARRATOR BEN 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. VO NARRATOR BEN We crossed the oceans, we conquered the skies. And when there were no more frontiers on Earth we launched ourselves among the stars. ST JOHN FKENNEDY 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. VO NARRATOR BEN The heavens beckoned a new generation of innovators and explorers, seeking to take human kind even further. ST OBAMA We can push out into the solar system. Not just to visit but to stay. VO NARRATOR BEN That was when Mars became real for us. VO NARRATOR BEN And for those of us who were around to see the first days, it was electrifying. VO NARRATOR BEN The world’s leading space agencies united as the International Mars Science Foundation. VO NARRATOR BEN And joined with private industry to accomplish one shared goal. VO NARRATOR BEN To build a home for humankind on Mars. VO NARRATOR BEN People weren’t just talking about the Red Planet, they were making plans to go there. VO NARRATOR BEN And after years of training in the Astronaut Corps I was chosen to command the first human mission. VO NARRATOR BEN To Mars. GRANN 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. GRANN 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. GRANN 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. VO NARRATOR BEN Ed Grann could sell anything, but he was more than a salesman. He was brilliant. GRANN She’s 14 stories base to nose. JAVIER That’s a fancy jacket you got today Ed. ED I’ll trade you but then I’d have to take your spot. AMELIE Not even in a dream. ED But I must dream. VO NARRATOR BEN 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. GRANN This is it. VO NARRATOR BEN Daedalus. GRANN Take good care of her, she’ll take good care of you. She’s your ship now. BEN It’s like a brand new 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. BEN 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. BEN 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. BEN 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. MISSION CONTROL 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. MAE I am in control. VO NARRATOR BEN 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. VO ROBERT ZUBRIN Mars and Earth are sister planets. The young Mars had rivers and lakes, it even had an ocean. VO JENNIFER TROSPER 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. VO ANDY WEIR 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. VO ANDY WEIR But once humans are on two different planets the odds of extinction drop to nearly zero. VO ELON MUSK Getting to Mars will be risky, dangerous, uncomfortable. But it will be the greatest adventure ever. Ever in human history. VO ELON MUSK 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. VO ELON MUSK So this is um, I think, probably, I think it’s the greatest launchsite on Earth. VO ANNOUNCER Buzz Aldrin, Mike Collins, Neil Armstrong get into the transfer van to Pad 39A VO ELON MUSK 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. VO ELON MUSK The long term goal of SpaceX is to develop the technology necessary to establish a self-sustaining city on Mars. VO SHANA DIEZ SpaceX’s primary mission is absolutely to make life interplanetary. We can explore the universe, we can put a colony on Mars. VO SHANA DIEZ 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. VO STEPHEN PETRANEK When Elon Musk decided I’m gonna go off and build my own rocket company everyone thought he was crazy. Everyone laughed at him. VO STEPHEN PETRANEK 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. VO SPACEX MISSION CONTROL Dragon spacecraft now the first-ever commercial spacecraft to visit the International Space Station. VO STEPHEN PETRANEK 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. VO ELON MUSK I think it’s important for us to try to get to a self-sustaining situation on Mars as soon as possible. VO MISSION CONTROL SpaceX, Falcon9 and Dragon are go for launch. VO MISSION CONTROL T-minus 30 seconds. VO ELON MUSK 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. VO MISSION CONTROL T-minus 20. VO ELON MUSK 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. VO MISSION CONTROL T-minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0. ROBERT What am I ready for? I’m ready to be. ROBERT One of the first human beings. ROBERT To go to Mars. I mean, could you imagine that? That’s like a dream. MARTA I think Amelia Earhart once said that adventure is worthwhile in itself. Uh, It could be that. HANA If we don’t succeed we still paved the path for people after us to come, and follow our lead. AMELIE 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. AMELIE I mean it’s. JAVIER It’s everything. AMELIE Yeah it is. BEN We've got the opportunity to ensure that humankind continues. BEN You know, we’ve been training for this half our lives. ROBERT And we’ve been dreaming about it even longer. BEN We’re ready to give everything for this mission you know, all of us are. LOUISE VARDA 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. VO NARRATOR BEN 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. BEN 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. BEN On my mark. Begin entry sequence. JAVIER Mark. HANA Edl sequence engaged. BEN You ready for this? HANA Are you? BEN Put your helmets on and seal your kits. MAE Daedalus descent to the surface has been initiated at 425 kilometers altitude. FLIGHT DIRECTOR 9 minutes 30 seconds till landing. BEN Know that we went into the darkness so that you could find the light. ROBERT Vector is good. AMELIE Point-o-five G’s, point-one G’s. MAE Warning. HANA Pyros didn’t fire. MAE Reaction control system error. Lift vector requires correction. ROBERT Rcs thrusters are offline. MAE Pyro electronics registering multiple circuits compromised. BEN Check the backup computer. HANA Backup also showing RCS is offline. This thing is real. MAE Rcs thruster electrical board offline. JAVIER Propellant valves have not been commanded to open. The thrusters can’t fire. MAE Recommend immediate manual replacement to forty circuits. ROBERT I’ll get down there and check it out. BEN No. This is mine. Do a fault tree and talk me through it on comm. HANA You’re going to have to work fast. BEN I got it. MAE Warning seat belt harness released. MAE Failure identified. ROBERT Found it. BEN Talk to me. ROBERT It’s a failure in bus four-fifteen-forty-eight, aft-starboard terminal. BEN Four-fifteen-forty-eight. Copy that. ROBERT It’s the pyro initiation circuit, four-three-six-double-bravo. HANA Moving out of micro-G. BEN Woah. Ok, we got a bit of gravity here. Ah, wow. ROBERT The failure must have affected the whole bundle. MARTA Seventy-one seconds before we’re outside the window for guidance to correct. BEN I’m gonna need you to give me the number again. ROBERT Four-three-six-double-bravo. BEN There we go. MAE Warning thrust still inactive, 60 seconds remaining to restore reaction control system before landing is compromised. BEN Ah. The short cooked all four connections, I’m going to have to cannibalize a replacement. HANA MAE, identify a PCB with matching electronics to board four-thirty-six-double-bravo. MAE Cruise altitude control thruster pyro initiation circuit board mike-sierra-five-fifteen-forty-eight is identical. BEN Mike-sierra-five-fifteen-forty-eight, Roger that. MARTA 15 seconds left to correct. BEN I’m switching the board now. Come on, come on, come on, come on. There you go. Nice and easy. MAE Warning, window for correction is closing in 10. BEN Thrusters are still offline! What are we missing? Talk to me. MAE 9, 8, 7, 6. BEN What am I looking for? MAE 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. VO JIM GREEN 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 forty ton. Our big challenge is indeed what it takes to get down to the surface. VO JIM GREEN 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. VO STEPHEN PETRANEK One of the most radical ideas that SpaceX has to lower this horrendous cost of getting into space is reusability. VO STEPHEN PETRANEK 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. VO STEPHEN PETRANEK 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. VO MISSION CONTROL Three, two, one. Liftoff! VO ELON MUSK This is a very hard problem because you better enter the Mars atmosphere as 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. VO ELON MUSK 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. INTERVIEWER Who is Joon Seung? HANA 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. OLIVER Mae ID’d a faulty pyro circuit, they're working it now. AVA You mean they were working it ten minutes and twenty seconds ago. MCC EMPLOYEE Delay or no, RCS status is still negative. JOON I have Ben below deck. ROBERT Found it. BEN Talk to me. SAM Mae found him a match. OLIVER There’s something else. JOON Communications are in and out. SAM Initial failure was mitigated, but thrusters are still not operational. OLIVER I got it, the RCS temperature reading is incorrect; the sensor isn't showing as faulty. AVA By the time they receive a transmission it will be too late. MCC EMPLOYEE We just have to hope they found it too. GRANN If this goes to hell on the live broadcast, IMSF may never give us another shot. OLIVER If they missed that window by more than a few seconds. BEN Mike-Sierra-Five-Fifteen-Forty-Eight, Roger that. OLIVER They’re going to shoot right past the landing site. BEN I’m switching the board now. SAM Without thrusters, they won’t be able to re-orient for retropropulsion. They’ll have no way to slow down for landing. BEN Thrusters are still offline. JOON Eyes and ears, Hana. BEN What are we missing? JOON Eyes and ears. BEN What am I looking for? HANA MAE hasn't found it. ROBERT We’re outside the window for correction. HANA Reporting all systems nominal. JAVIER I don't see anything. AMELIE Nothing. BEN Listen! MARTA Four minutes four seconds. BEN Board is in. ROBERT It's the RCS temp sensor. MAE Backup system is offline. ROBERT The backup sensor is reading near nominal, Ben, permission to switch from primary to backup. AMELIE We’re too close to SRP! BEN Do it. AMELIE Ben you won’t make it back to the flight deck for orientation! AMELIE We have to abort! BEN I said do it! MAE Warning, landing hazard. ROBERT Go. MAE Recommend engaging abort. ROBERT Engaged. MAE Rcs thrust is engaged, three minutes 48 seconds. BEN Oh no. HANA 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. AMELIE That’s it Ben, your blood pressure is good. You know the countermeasures. Do the drill. BEN Okay. AMELIE 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. BEN The G’s are climbing too fast! AMELIE You’re doing great, Ben tell me what you see. BEN My periphery is closing in. ROBERT Five point 0. AMELIE Tighten your abdomen. ROBERT Spike on one. AMELIE That’s it Ben, blow it out hard. One, two, three, breathe! Again! One, two, three, breathe, again. JAVIER Guidance can’t sufficiently compensate. ROBERT We don’t have enough control authority. HANA Prepare for retropropulsion! AMELIE One two three, breathe, again, one two three, breathe. One two three breathe, again, one two three breathe! ROBERT Counter thrusters are about to fire! 10, 9. AMELIE Ben has lost consciousness! ROBERT 8, 7. HANA I’m going down. ROBERT 6. MARTA There’s nothing you can do! ROBERT 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Fore and aft jets firing. MARTA Beginning reorientation maneuver! AMELIE Hang on! ROBERT Srp in 3, 2, 1. Explosion. AMELIE Ben’s vitals went offline, I’m not getting any feedback! ROBERT Radar acquisition. JAVIER Terrain relative navigation initiated. ROBERT Divert maneuver initiated. MARTA Constant velocity descent. AMELIE Still offline. HANA Begin throttle down, prep for final descent. ROBERT We’re coming in too fast! JAVIER Angle is off. HANA All systems to compensate. We have to correct. Throttle down, throttle down now! OLIVER Opticals are all offline; I’ve got nothing on audio either. MMC MEMBER We should have heard from them by now. INTERVIEWER Hana, what is it that you'll miss most about Earth? HANA 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. JOON Come on, Sis. HANA I think for me and Joon, I think for us it's more about what happens after we get there. INTERVIEWER What about you Dr. Kamen, can you talk a little bit about the things you'll miss about home? MARTA What will I miss if I don't go? AMELIE 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. ROBERT 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. JAVIER 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. INTERVIEWER When did you first know you wanted to become an astronaut? BEN As far back as I can remember. I wanted to go into space. BEN 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? HANA Mission Control, this is Daedalus. We’re looking at a red planet. LOUISE VARDA The Daedalus crew has done it, humankind is on Mars. HANA Ben. AMELIE His vitals are readable, but he’s still unconscious, I’m going down, I’ll check on Ben. HANA Confirm our position, I'll go save the ship. JOON Woo! MARTA I'm getting off nominal ratings up and down the engine systems. ROBERT Gyro circuits are offline. MARTA Tell me what you see. What do you see? ROBERT It’s not good. MARTA How far did we overshoot? AMELIE Ben? We are coming, come on. AMELIE Javier, hurry! VO ELON MUSK So the long term goal is how fast can we establish a self-sustaining city on Mars. VO SPACEX EMPLOYEE Do we focus on just trying to get the ship there and then maybe send people some other time? VO ELON MUSK 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. VO ELON MUSK You just need a lot of equipment to keep people alive on Mars. VO JIM GREEN 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. VO ANDY WEIR Prepositioning a base camp is really the only plausible way to do a manned mission to Mars, let alone a colony. VO NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON You would need oxygen, you would need water, then you would need food, a source of calories. VO CASEY DREIER 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? VO ROBERT ZUBRIN We can pre-position a reactor to make power, to make propellant, maybe even additional habitats. VO STEPHEN PETRANEK You would send machines to make oxygen, machines that suck water out of the atmosphere. VO JOHN GRUNSFELD You really need to send 3D printers so people can build their own things on Mars. VO ROBERT ZUBRIN And then we’d land a crew near those facilities. VO ELON MUSK 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. VO STEPHEN PETRANEK But you can’t live there very long, cosmic radiation is gonna penetrate the ship. VO ROBERT ZUBRIN And what happens if your landing is off course? That is a real problem. VO STEPHEN PETRANEK 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. BEN Our biggest challenge on this mission is gonna be everyday survival you know. AMELIE 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. JAVIER Yeah. Ok, buddy. AMELIE Ok. BEN Ugh. JAVIER You ok, buddy? AMELIE We need to check on you. BEN I’m okay, I’m okay. AMELIE Hey. We made it. OLIVER Telemetry indicates the RCS remained offline for the first ninety-one seconds of entry. AVA I’ve got Daedalus position back online. MMC EMPLOYEE How bad? GRANN Put SAT on the board. JOON How far are they from base camp? JOON How far? SAM 75.3 kilometers. HANA 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. GRANN There has to be a way to make a suborbital flight to get Daedalus to base camp. SAM There’s barely enough fuel to get them off the ground. JOON They’re all alone up there, what are we telling them guys? OLIVER Showing enough residual propellant in the system to make a single burst, but they’re going to come down hard. AVA Even harder as they just did. Landing loads were off the chart. SAM 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. JOON What is Ben’s status? AMELIE 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. BEN I said I’m fine. It’s just the transition from micro-G’s. AMELIE Ben, I need to run proper tests. BEN I understand, I need to know our status first. HANA How long do we have? MARTA Life support status says we’ve got three more days of breathable air. GRANN Daedalus isn't suppose to operate independently from base camp. It's just not viable. Come on, let's fix this, it's our guys up there. MARTA Engines are still offline. HANA Robert. Did you troubleshoot the propellant flow control? ROBERT Nothing I do to the electronics will fix the engines. I can’t get the ship moving without a resupply from home. HANA No chance of bunny hopping Daedalus to base camp. There’s no fix. ROBERT I could definitely fix this if I had the 3D printer from the Russian workshop. JOON The Russian workshop module. It has independent environmental systems. And it was pre-positioned for access to candidate lava tubes. SAM It’d be tight, but. JOON What if we call that the new base camp? AVA If they upgrade the environmental control systems and air and water recycling. OLIVER They’d have a chance. SAM That doesn’t solve the transportation problem. JOON Can we get the rover to them? OLIVER Checking the route. SAM I’ll check max payload. OLIVER The terrain approaching Daedalus is complex, a fair amount of subsidence, portions that may not be stable. GRANN Can they do it, or not? SAM Their satellite view is in and out we have to hand off rover command and control and let Daedalus navigate the local topography. JOON Do they have an option? MAE Initiating override, transferring remote rover control to Daedalus. MARTA You’re lost. You must be lost. ROBERT You sound like my ex-wife. GRANN Show me their progress. SAM Maneuvering that last kilometer of terrain from here will be painfully slow. MARTA You should have let me drive. JAVIER Nothing on the externals. ROBERT I told you, I’m not lost. ROBERT Daedalus. Daedalus! JAVIER That’s our girl. It’s such a beautiful thing. About time something goes right. VO NARRATOR BEN 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. VO NARRATOR BEN 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. BEN Harder than any of us had imagined. AMELIE Ben, I need to run a full body scan on you. BEN Listen, priority is getting the crew to base camp, you understand? After that I’m all yours. HANA It’s time. BEN Great, I’ll see you down there. HANA Are you ok? BEN Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. VO NARRATOR BEN 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. VO ANN DRUYAN 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. VO ANN DRUYAN 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. VO MISSION CONTROL T-minus 4 minutes. VO PETER DIAMANDIS 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. VO MISSION CONTROL Vc and DC verify F9 and Dragon are in startup. VO MISSION CONTROL F9 is in startup. VO PETER DIAMANDIS And SpaceX stands as nothing less than a massive game changer. VO MISSION CONTROL Stage one, stage two, pressing for flight. VO STEPHEN PETRANEK Elon musk says the only reason that I have founded this company is to get human beings to Mars. VO MISSION CONTROL Lc LD go for launch. VO STEPHEN PETRANEK The key to making Mars economical is the reusability of rockets. VO MISSION CONTROL T-minus 1 minute. VO ELON MUSK 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. VO ELON MUSK If wooden sailing ships in the old days were not reusable, I don’t think the United States would exist. VO MISSION CONTROL T-minus 30 seconds. VO STEPHEN PETRANEK And if they nail this ability to land a rocket anyway they want on Earth, then they can nail doing it on Mars. VO MISSION CONTROL T-minus 15. VO LARS BLACKMORE This flight is a huge deal. We haven’t yet landed the rocket. So this is gonna be hopefully our first successful landing. VO MISSION CONTROL T-minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0. We have lift off. VO MISSION CONTROL Vehicle has reached maximum pressure. Stage one propulsion Altitude 32 kilometers speed at 1 kilometer per second, down range distance 13 kilometers. VO CASEY DREIER 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. VO ROBERT ZUBRIN Some people say that the challenges of a Mars mission are excessively formidable. I entirely disagree. VO ROBERT ZUBRIN 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. VO JAMES ALOVELL 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 during this, but it’s doing something that man had not done before. VO JAMES ALOVELL So is it worth it? Mhm, it’s worth it. ROBERT Mission Control confirmed the rover is 2000 kilos over maximum payload with all of us aboard. HANA I ran the numbers, the odds are we won’t make it. BEN Yeah, but someone will. Come on. Let’s get to work. VO NARRATOR BEN 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.