Author Topic: Ron Howard Mars Miniseries  (Read 106718 times)

Offline rpapo

Re: Ron Howard Mars Miniseries
« Reply #40 on: 11/17/2016 10:10 am »
From where I sit, the spacesuits they use in this series rather strongly resemble the spacesuit pictures we've seen leaked from SpaceX in the past year or so, and which we saw on L2.  Which makes me wonder if those designs were more focused on the needs of the miniseries than on needs in real exploration.
Following the space program since before Apollo 8.

Offline mike robel

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Re: Ron Howard Mars Miniseries
« Reply #41 on: 11/17/2016 12:03 pm »
I noticed the Rover had a very similar look and looks much like a German Fuchs APC.

« Last Edit: 11/17/2016 12:05 pm by mike robel »

Offline Borklund

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Re: Ron Howard Mars Miniseries
« Reply #42 on: 11/17/2016 05:12 pm »
From where I sit, the spacesuits they use in this series rather strongly resemble the spacesuit pictures we've seen leaked from SpaceX in the past year or so, and which we saw on L2.  Which makes me wonder if those designs were more focused on the needs of the miniseries than on needs in real exploration.
I find it astonishing that you think that because the spacesuits in this series resemble the spacesuit pictures we've seen leaked from SpaceX, you assume that this must be because SpaceX made the suits for the TV show, and that they were never intended to be real spacesuits, rather than the more likely scenario that the costume designers working for the production company doing the show did a lot of research and took their inspiration from Mars spacesuits in other fiction and real life prototypes being developed.

Occam's razor, anyone? I love this forum, but whenever the subject invariably turns to SpaceX, a lot of inane assumptions get thrown around by armchair experts.

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Re: Ron Howard Mars Miniseries
« Reply #43 on: 11/17/2016 07:31 pm »
If you look at the spacesuits, they're not realistic at all. They're not pressurized, for starters. That's pretty typical of spacesuits in movies and TV (including "The Martian").

Offline Borklund

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Re: Ron Howard Mars Miniseries
« Reply #44 on: 11/18/2016 01:49 am »
If you look at the spacesuits, they're not realistic at all. They're not pressurized, for starters. That's pretty typical of spacesuits in movies and TV (including "The Martian").
I think those are supposed to be mechanical counterpressure suits, but that's probably more of an excuse for not wanting to bother with doing all that work on the set to make suits look pressurised, having the actors in them all day etc.

Offline neoforce

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Re: Ron Howard Mars Miniseries
« Reply #45 on: 11/18/2016 03:25 am »
Fun fact:  I had closed captioning on when watching. And they goofed. One of the astronauts characters is named  Robert Foucault  And whenever he spoke the closed captioning listed the character as Robert Zubrin. Since Zubrin was one of the documentary interviewees, I guess whoever did the captions thought it was also the name of the fictional character.

Online MP99

Re: Ron Howard Mars Miniseries
« Reply #46 on: 11/20/2016 01:55 am »
Interesting comment from Elon, that for the first few missions the crew would be expecting to live in the ship on the ground.

I thought this was a substantial insight, and am surprised not to have seen this posted earlier (unless I missed it?)

Cheers, Martin


Offline laszlo

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Re: Ron Howard Mars Miniseries
« Reply #47 on: 11/20/2016 02:24 am »
I just saw the first episode and am not impressed. It's all Hollywood hokum, typical Ron Howard s--t, about as poorly done as Apollo 13. In this case they completely ignored accepted engineering practice, some of it over 50 years old, to get a cheap plot device. For example, even though field repairable electronics were shown to be less reliable than hermetically sealed redundant units decades ago, guess what the commander is attempting to do during the entry? He's swapping circuit boards to fix the RCS. The rest of the show is similarly contrived weak unrealistic situations mixed with nauseatingly saccharine hoorah and choral music, not to mention a totally Hollywood spacecraft. Don't waste your time.

Offline MATTBLAK

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Re: Ron Howard Mars Miniseries
« Reply #48 on: 11/20/2016 02:48 am »
Well, I wouldn't be as harsh on it as Laszlo (for the most part, Apollo 13 was excellent - don't understand the problem there), but I too are a bit underwhelmed by the series. A bit too much melodrama. But at least the overall sentiment of the show is for a good cause, so to speak. The trying to fix something during high-gee, hypersonic retropropulsive atmospheric entry was a bit cringe-worthy. However; I concede that us 'Space Cadets' are a hard-to-please lot! ;)
« Last Edit: 11/20/2016 02:49 am by MATTBLAK »
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Re: Ron Howard Mars Miniseries
« Reply #49 on: 11/20/2016 11:58 am »

Offline cebri

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Re: Ron Howard Mars Miniseries
« Reply #50 on: 11/20/2016 08:45 pm »
First episode was kind of OK. Is not focusing too much on technical aspects which is understandable but kind of sucks.

Why didn't they end with one of the landings instead of CRS-7?

That was a bit of a downer.
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Offline ThereIWas3

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Re: Ron Howard Mars Miniseries
« Reply #51 on: 11/20/2016 09:24 pm »
for the most part, Apollo 13 was excellent - don't understand the problem there

Its a bunch of small technical errors.

Much added melodrama between crew members that did not happen.  They had Gunter Wendt in the suit-donning room joking with Tom Hanks, when he would have been out at the pad.  (Even though they did have an actor who looked like the real Gunter Wendt out in the White Room, he had no lines.  The HBO series "Earth to the Moon" got this correct.)   They did not show any of the mid-course corrections except the final one, though you did hear mention of the "PC+2" burn.   Then that final correction was much more dramatic than the real one, and they had the spacecraft pointing 90 degrees away from where it should have, with the internal shots not matching at all with the CGI external view.

Offline MATTBLAK

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Re: Ron Howard Mars Miniseries
« Reply #52 on: 11/20/2016 09:37 pm »
Yes - I know all those; I noted most of them 21 years ago. But dramatic license is sometimes necessary. 'The Right Stuff' had it - But I was annoyed by the Gus Grissom portrayal. We Space Fans or 'Space Cadets' if you like, will probably never get a film that is completely free of technical errors - never. I also remember rolling my eyes at the brief scene in Apollo 13 when the LM and CM finally separate just before re-entry: I'm fairly certain the docking probe mechanism is not supposed to still be attached to the top of the CM docking tunnel. Also, they show the Saturn V rolling out to the Pad seemingly only days before launch. And unless I'm wrong; Ken Mattingly should not have been shown at KSC watching the launch. Also; Ken Mattingly was bald - Gary Sinise had curly hair! ;)
« Last Edit: 11/21/2016 10:54 am by MATTBLAK »
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Offline QuantumG

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Re: Ron Howard Mars Miniseries
« Reply #53 on: 11/20/2016 09:45 pm »
Yes - I know all those; I noted most of them 21 years ago.

Thanks for reminding us how old we all are.

In related news, I finally watched Saving Private Ryan yesterday.
Human spaceflight is basically just LARPing now.

Offline Rocket Science

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Re: Ron Howard Mars Miniseries
« Reply #54 on: 11/20/2016 09:50 pm »
It's "edutainment" for the ADD generation, so I go easy on it. Folks that watch it may actually learn something during the interview portions. ;) If you don't like it flip the channel to "Dancing with the Stars" or to the usual trash-TV on the tube...

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Offline MATTBLAK

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Re: Ron Howard Mars Miniseries
« Reply #55 on: 11/20/2016 10:50 pm »
Yes - I know all those; I noted most of them 21 years ago.

Thanks for reminding us how old we all are.

In related news, I finally watched Saving Private Ryan yesterday.

"Saving Private Ryan" is amazing - It's virtually the 'Apollo 13 of War Movies'. It's not without it's own flaws, of course; but that goes with the territory.
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Re: Ron Howard Mars Miniseries
« Reply #56 on: 11/20/2016 11:05 pm »
First episode was kind of OK. Is not focusing too much on technical aspects which is understandable but kind of sucks.

Why didn't they end with one of the landings instead of CRS-7?

That was a bit of a downer.

Er... as a cliffhanger to bring you back next week?

More egregious: why did they only mention SpaceX and not, say, an organization that has actually landed on Mars?

Offline Rocket Science

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Re: Ron Howard Mars Miniseries
« Reply #57 on: 11/20/2016 11:45 pm »
Yes - I know all those; I noted most of them 21 years ago. But dramatic license is sometimes necessary. 'The Right Stuff' had it - I was annoyed by the Gus Grissom portrayal. We Space Fans or 'Space Cadets' if you like, will probably never get a film that is completely free of technical errors - never. I also remember rolling my eyes at the brief scene in Apollo 13 when the LM and CM finally separate just before re-entry: I'm fairly certain the docking probe mechanism is not supposed to still be attached to the top of the CM docking tunnel. Also, they show the Saturn V rolling out to the Pad seemingly only days before launch. And unless I'm wrong; Ken Mattingly should not have been shown at KSC watching the launch. Also; Ken Mattingly was bald - Gary Sinise had curly hair! ;)
The crew arguing about who's fault is was and "not go bouncing off the walls comment" never happened in 13. They needed to create tension for the movie... Creative license for entertainment and film art puposes...
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Offline Ben the Space Brit

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Re: Ron Howard Mars Miniseries
« Reply #58 on: 11/21/2016 10:51 am »
I've got to say that the Kerbal Space Program player in me keeps on wincing about how narrow the transfer vehicle/lander's landing strut base is relative to its height above the surface. There would be very little slope tolerance in that configuration!
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Offline woods170

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Re: Ron Howard Mars Miniseries
« Reply #59 on: 11/21/2016 02:31 pm »
First episode was kind of OK. Is not focusing too much on technical aspects which is understandable but kind of sucks.

Why didn't they end with one of the landings instead of CRS-7?

That was a bit of a downer.

Er... as a cliffhanger to bring you back next week?

More egregious: why did they only mention SpaceX and not, say, an organization that has actually landed on Mars?
Because to the target audience NASA equates to "boring".
« Last Edit: 11/21/2016 02:32 pm by woods170 »

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