The Mars Generation Page #2

---

It would be amazing to construct engines

for a mission to Mars.

When you enter the base

and turn on the emergency power,

it turns to red lighting.

[instructor] That's what we're wanting...

[Jace] The base that they've designed

up there is fascinating.

The base is all powered down.

They have to turn on

the communications array,

set up the solar panels,

set up all of the ECLSS systems,

and also set up a greenhouse

because somebody

might want to eat up there.

-[camper] Activate the power.

-Hey, guys. The hydro popo is in here.

The fact that people

are now even teaching children,

16 year-olds, 15 year-olds,

saying, "Hey, we're going to Mars"

and simulating how it would work out,

means they'll grow up and we'll grow up

to believe:
hey, we're going to Mars.

So let's go to Mars.

[camper] I'll go there in a minute.

Well, good luck.

[chatter]

[male voiceover]

Of all the planets in the solar system,

Earth and Mars, the third and fourth

planets from the Sun,

are the most similar.

But despite the similarities,

Mars is essentially like no other planet.

[Jeffrey Kluger] One of the greatest

allures of Mars is that Mars is nearby.

Mars is a planet,

and it's a planet with potential.

It once had water. It once had oceans.

Surely, we tell ourselves,

it once had life.

[male voiceover] Science fiction writers

populated the cities

with terrible creatures of heroic size,

with skills beyond earthman's dreams.

[Kluger] This is a place that touches us

in a very basic way.

Another thing is that

it's always had the power

to scare the daylights out of us.

[laser fire]

[screams]

[Kluger] It was always the blood red world

that was just nearby,

that, through telescopes,

appeared to have canals,

which presumed people

or some kind of organisms.

And since the only model we know

for intelligent organisms

is organisms that eventually try to

grab land and resources and go to war,

Mars used to frighten us.

[robot] Welcome to Mars.

[Bill Nye] There's a whole endless string

of movies and television shows and stories

about aliens, alien life.

Now, this is the plan:

get your ass to Mars.

[Urban] When people hear the word "Mars",

they think of science fiction,

of geeks talking about Martians and Mars.

And as soon as we go there

and there's humans there, that changes.

This is not science fiction.

This is now something we do.

This is part of life. This is real.

[Andy Weir] I had no idea that The Martian

would have mainstream appeal.

It never even occurred to me.

I thought I was writing it for this tiny

niche audience of hardcore space dorks.

[shouts for joy]

[Kluger] We fell in love with Mars

a long, long time ago

and our goal now is to be a part of Mars,

is to live on Mars.

[Urban] Doing something as hard

as going to Mars doesn't just happen.

You need like a perfect storm

in many ways.

You need the right moment

with the right funding,

with the right people or person.

[brass band plays celebratory music]

[cheering and applause]

[Nye] Wernher von Braun

is a famous German scientist

and he took these ideas

about how to operate liquid-fueled rockets

and he made these extraordinary spacecraft

that went on to put humans on the Moon.

[music and cheering continue]

[Charles Bolden] Wernher von Braun,

when he designed

and built the Apollo program,

in the back of his mind already,

he was way past Apollo.

He and his team were talking about:

how do we get to Mars?

[music and cheering continue]

We knew that the city of Huntsville

was solidly behind us,

and with your continued support

I will see you back in orbit

with that new space station,

to which we will all ride

in the reusable launch vehicle,

and maybe one day

we'll have a man on Mars.

Thank you.

Gather round while I sing you

Of Wernher von Braun

A man whose allegiance

Is ruled by expedience

Call him a Nazi

He won't even frown

"Nazi-schmatzie"

says Wernher von Braun

[Annie Jacobsen] Von Braun was a Nazi.

Von Braun was in the SS,

which is the dreaded element

of the Nazi party.

And von Braun was

Hitler's top weapons maker.

[Kluger] From a man who held

a dark and hateful cause,

came a missile that gave America

one of its greatest

historical inspirations.

So Wernher von Braun is...a mixed bag.

[in German accent]

"Once the rockets are up

Who cares where they come down?"

[laughter]

That's not my department",

Says Wernher von Braun

[applause]

-[camper] You tightened the valves?

-[camper] It works.

[Raj] Dude, wherever I cut one

I should cut the other, right?

[camper] Yeah.

[Raj] So what do you say?

One, two, three, four, five, six.

How about six runs up and six runs up?

So it's one, two, three four.

So it's the fourth one down.

If you could combine nerdy and cool,

I hope you could get something like me.

How's it going?

It's a little rough. The X-Acto knife

slipped twice, as you can see.

-Just got little duct tape bandages.

-Here, use better duct tape.

Yeah, that's a good point.

Nerdiness has kind of taken

a bad rap over the years.

And nerdy is the new cool.

But that doesn't mean you have to

start wearing Jordans or anything.

But I feel like the egg should be

standing up in the compartment, though.

-[camper] It will.

-Like standing vertically.

-[camper] I know.

-[Raj] All right, cool.

I'm hoping one day to run for office

and work my way up in Washington,

and ultimately get NASA

the funding it needs

to, you know, do these great things

like go to Mars.

We usually just, I think we should fold it

in a way that it will definitely deploy.

The model rockets

is a good challenge for the group.

Of course, rocketry is

directly connected with NASA.

[Josh] So the awesome thing

about rockets, I'd say,

is that they're handing explosives

and a whole bunch of, like,

firing power to teenagers.

And they're like,

"Here, go make it, go up into the air

and if it explodes, have fun with it."

So it's, like, yeah,

I'm definitely going to do this.

We're gonna have to find

a way for it to disconnect

while keeping the shot cord

inside of the body...

-Oh yeah, definitely.

-Somehow...

[Victoria] I enjoy building rockets.

Later today we are launching our rocket

with our eggstronaut Egbert in it.

And it has been so much fun

just building it and tossing around ideas.

[project chatter]

Put the hot glue

on the edges of these and stick it down.

[Jace] The two things you're learning

from these model rockets

is crew survivability and aerodynamics.

Everything else is intact.

We just can't get this stuff tangled up.

As soon as this gets tangled,

we're kind of done.

-[Raj] Let's see how this drop goes.

-[camper] High check, science geeks.

[instructor] Very nice.

[Jace] You have to keep

your precious payload alive,

and you want it to pierce through the air

in a beautiful parabolic trajectory.

Ooh!

That fits there really well.

It's really important

that we see the big picture.

It's important that the whole system,

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes