THE NO-WIN SCENARIO IN A NEW AGE

Riding the Number Two slot on Netflix this week is a star-studded science fiction film about a trip to Mars that goes horribly wrong. The premise of STOWAWAY may be unlikely (we’ll get to that later), but the moral dilemma it presents to the human crew of the spaceship on its way to the Red Planet is a fascinating one. It’s a question, in fact, that has been explored many times in SF since writers have been contemplating taking on the challenges of space.

In this version of the story, written and directed by Joe Penna (ARCTIC) and starring Anna Kendrick, Toni Collette, Daniel Dae Kim and Shamier Anderson (RACE, Wynonna Earp), a three-person crew is on its way to Mars on a vital research/colony restocking mission when they discover a launch engineer (Anderson) was injured and stowed away aboard the ship by mistake. (Actually, how this happens is not clear. They find him unconscious aboard the large main ship in orbit when they dock from their smaller capsule. How did he get there? How long was he unconscious in orbit before they found him? Yeah, big plot holes here.)

ANYWAY, now we have the dilemma. By the time the regular crew finds the guy, they are too far out from Earth to return. Resources on the long trip to Mars would be limited in any case, but adding an unplanned-for fourth person puts all their lives at risk, not to mention those of the colonists on Mars, who are depending on the supplies and experiments the ship carries. Add to that the damage done to the crucial carbon dioxide scrubber when the stowaway falls out of the ceiling. For some reason I will never understand, there is only one of these absolutely vital units on board, and it can’t be repaired, even with the 3-D printer on the ship and all the ingenuity of the world’s engineers at Ground Control. (The same problem plagued the crew on the Hilary Swank Netflix vehicle about Mars Away.) So, the expanded crew is going to run out of oxygen long before they run out of food or water.

 Anderson and  Kendrick in Netflix's STOWAWAY.

Of course, all these more or less “artificial” elements have been put in place to create a moral quandary for the members of our crew. The faceless, voiceless powers-that-be back on Earth are insisting that the extra weight be jettisoned out the airlock, and the man who represents the voice of hard science on the ship, biologist David Kim (Daniel Dae Kim), reluctantly comes to the same conclusion, though he would give the engineer a kindler, gentler death by injection. The ship’s female commander, Marina Barnett (Toni Collette), is conflicted but ready to do what it takes to save her crew. Only the ship’s medical officer, young Dr. Zoe Levenson, is prepared to break the rules to save the man who is a guardian for his little sister back home and longs to be an astronaut himself.

I won’t spoil the film by telling you how the crew resolves this dilemma. You’ll have to see it yourself if you want to figure that out. I will say that the film does have some nifty tech ideas, though the first part of the film is better than the last third.

What’s more interesting is that this premise goes way back to the early days of SF, to a short story first published in 1954 by Tom Godwin called “The Cold Equations.”* I was reminded of this by an excellent article in Slate by Laura Miller which puts this film in the context of a long line of similar “no-win” moral dilemmas set in space.

Godwin’s version of the tale, written as it was in the male-centric, hard-science days of the Golden Age of Science Fiction, sets up the male pilot of an Emergency Dispatch Ship, with only enough fuel to make his run delivering medicine to save colonists on a distant planet, with a female teenage stowaway, ignorant of the rule that states: Any stowaway discovered in an EDS shall be jettisoned immediately following discovery.  Though the “hero” is conflicted, especially because the stowaway is a “girl” who knows little of the harsh realities of the frontier of space, the “cold equations” of mass, velocity, and fuel consumption cannot be denied. In the end, the girl walks into the airlock of her own volition. I guess that’s supposed to make up for her ignorance in the story earlier. (I mean, if you ask me, she really should have known the basic rules of physics if she was in space at all. But it was the Fifties and the assumptions about women were appalling. Miller has some terrific things to say about those assumptions in her article.)

Part of our generation’s collective resistance to the notion of the “cold equations” (that is, that nothing can be done, science is science) is due to what came after the Golden Age of SF. In the New Age, female authors and others more interested in human relationships took a different approach: less enamored with the formulas of hard science, more inspired by how humans manipulated science to their own needs. The optimism of the Sixties culminated in Star Trek and Enterprise captain James T. Kirk, who didn’t believe in the no-win scenario, who famously reprogrammed Starfleet Academy’s no-win Kobayashi Maru test so he could win it, and who constantly demanded his ship’s engineer bend the laws of physics.

Finally, that belief that there was always a solution to the “cold equations” spilled over into reality in April, 1970, when the astronauts and engineers of NASA’s Apollo 13 recovered from what could have been disaster with little more than duct tape and determination. So, forgive me if I’m skeptical when I watch a fictional spaceship crew fumble with a malfunctioning piece of equipment, especially when they have a 3-D printer at hand and seemingly plenty of storage for spare parts. No one really needs to go out an airlock when they just need to refuse to believe in the no-win scenario.

Cheers, Donna

*Information for this post provided by: 

"Netflix’s Latest Hit Continues an Argument Sci-Fi Fans Have Been Having for Decades," by Laura Miller, Slate, April 28, 2021. https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/wellness/netflixs-latest-hit-continues-an-argument-sci-fi-fans-have-been-having-for-decades/ar-BB1g76mZ?ocid=BHEA000&li=BBnbfcL 

**The story can be found in anthologies such as The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume I, Robert Silverberg, ed., Avon, 1970.  I've had my copy since high school, so it might even be in public domain by now.

 

 

ROOM FOR OPTIMISM IN TODAY'S SCIENCE NEWS

Time again for news from the world of science! (Yes, you remember science—the thing that depends on verifiable facts and repeated experimentation to prove logical theories?) Today’s news is genuinely exciting and, in addition to providing more plot bunnies than a patch of cerebral clover, these stories leave actual room for optimism!

Osiris-Rex loves Bennu. At least, judging by the kiss the NASA spacecraft gave the asteroid on Tuesday, the first step in its mission to collect dust and rock samples from the rugged bit of space voyager to bring back home in 2023. The rendezvous with the asteroid has been underway since launching from Cape Canaveral in 2016 and included a prolonged orbit of the asteroid for data collection. Though data sent from the spacecraft confirmed the sample collection was successful, it will be as long as a week before scientists at NASA will know for sure whether the samples actually made it onboard safely. If something went wrong, Osiris-Rex will have another chance to complete the collection before the sample capsule parachutes into the Utah desert on its return home. Even at this stage, however, NASA scientists were over the moon. As NASA administrator, Jim Bridenstine said, “We are on the way to returning the largest sample brought home from space since Apollo. If all goes well, this sample will be studied by scientists for generations to come.”

Osiris-Rex: One small step for machine-kind . . .

Cheap, clean and abundant energy? Wouldn’t that be the answer to everyone’s prayers? But scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) believe they may be well on the way to making good on that goal with a working prototype of a fusion reactor. They have developed a design for a compact fusion reactor that mimics the sun, smashing hydrogen atoms together to release energy, thus generating less radioactive waste and using less fuel than any conventional energy process.

The search for the dream of fusion, which does not generate planet-warming greenhouse gases, has so far taken decades, but the MIT team says in a series of peer-reviewed papers that construction on their tennis-court-sized reactor, SPARC, could begin as early as next spring. Construction might take three to four years, with a goal of beginning production of energy by 2035. This would be a leap forward over SPARC’s closest competitor, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor in France, which has been underway since 2013 and is not expected to produce any fusion reaction until 2035. The MIT improved design uses superconducting magnets to contain the extremely hot and high-pressure reactions going on inside the reactor, producing as much as ten times the energy it consumes. Martin Greenwald, co-lead scientist on the MIT team, is optimistic, but he does add one caveat: “If we can overcome the engineering challenges, this machine will perform as we predict.”

Goodbye to plastic? No matter how hard we all try to reduce, reuse and recycle, it seems there is just too much plastic for our planet to handle. It fills up our garbage cans, our landfills, our oceans. It strangles our sea creatures, settles at the bottom of the deepest ocean crevices, poisons even our tiniest humans through the milk they drink in their baby bottles. But what can we do? The corporations that rule our lives won’t stop putting their products in cheap plastic containers, and most of us have no choice but to buy what they sell.

But scientists at the University of Portsmouth in Hampshire, England have been working with a plastic-eating enzyme called PETase (a natural digestive substance discovered in a landfill in Japan in 2016). They have found a way to accelerate this chemical’s ability to break down the avalanche of plastic in our environment—by combining it with another enzyme called MHETase. The new “superenzyme” breaks down plastic six times faster than PETase alone. Better yet, the process dismantles the petroleum-based product, leaving behind the basic building blocks of the stuff so it can be used over and over again. Not that the superenzyme works superfast; it would still take days or weeks to recycle that soft drink bottle you just tossed in the trash. But researchers are looking for ways to speed the process and scale up operations. At this stage of the game, any progress is welcome.

Meanwhile, on Mars. First, we hear there may be exotic lifeforms flying (swimming?) around in the dense clouds of Venus. Now, it seems, Mars may be hiding an environment ripe for microscopic life in salty ponds below its barren surface. Italian scientists reported their findings last week, more than two years after identifying evidence of what they believe to be a network of underground lakes in data sent back from the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter.

The research team, led by Roma Tre University’s Sebastian Emanuel Lauro, used more than 100 radar observations from the orbiter from 2010 to 2019, analyzing the findings with a method similar to that used on Earth to detect buried lakes in the Antarctic and Canadian Arctic.  High concentrations of salt in the water likely kept the lakes from freezing as Mars, once warm and wet, gradually became dry, barren and cold. The surface temperature at the South Pole of Mars averages an estimated 172 degrees Fahrenheit but gets temperatures warm underground. The scientific team urged future missions to Mars to target this region, calling the area of potential biologic interest. Co-author of the paper outlining the team’s findings, Roberto Orosei, of Italy’s National Institute of Astrophysics, insists it’s possible the subsurface lakes may have been “a place where life could adapt and survive.”

And if that’s not a plot bunny, I don’t recognize a fluffy tail when I see one.

Cheers, Donna

*Information for this week’s post provided by:

“Nasa Osiris-Rex spacecraft lands on asteroid Bennu in mission to collect dust,” The Guardian, October 22, 2020. https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/nasa-osiris-rex-spacecraft-lands-on-asteroid-bennu-in-mission-to-collect-dust/ar-BB1ai20O

“MIT Researchers Say Their Fusion Reactor Is ‘Very Likely to Work,’” by Victor Tangermann, futurism.com, September 29, 2020. https://futurism.com/mit-researchers-fusion-reactor-very-likely-work

“A new ‘super enzyme’ that digests plastic waste six times faster, has been engineered, scientists say,” by Lynn Hasco, penn.live.com (PA Patriot News), September 29, 2020. https://www.pennlive.com/nation-world/2020/09/a-new-super-enzyme-that-digests-plastic-waste-six-times-faster-has-been-engineered-scientists-say.html

“Clouds of Venus could harbor life, new study shows,” by Andrea Leinfelder, Microsoft News, September 14, 2020. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/clouds-of-venus-could-harbor-tiny-floating-lifeforms-according-to-a-team-of-astronomers/ar-BB192inJ

“Salty lake, ponds may be gurgling beneath South Pole on Mars,” by Marcia Dunn, AP News, September 28, 2020. https://apnews.com/article/lakes-astronomy-archive-mars-91d5aa0a083db0d338ce5241560c02b1

 

AWAY: BIG NAMES CAN'T HIDE FLAWS

The international crew of Mars-bound Atlas on Away.

As an author of science fiction romance I’m always on the lookout for new television shows that depict character-driven science fiction, focusing on the people, not just the far-out ideas or the futuristic technology. So I was pretty excited when I saw the previews for Netflix’s original series AWAY, starring Oscar-winning actor Hilary Swank (BOYS DON’T CRY, MILLION DOLLAR BABY). The series, which just uploaded its first season on Netflix, follows the fictional drama of the first international crew mission to Mars, a premise that holds plenty of promise.

By setting the show in the near-future, the show’s creators got around a few obstacles, notably the current stumbling block of any trip to Mars—the fact that it’s a one-way trip, since we lack the technology to engineer a return. We also have no permanent base on the moon from which to launch the three-year round-trip. The show assumes we have solved those technical problems and have also achieved the high level of international cooperation which would be required to pool expertise and resources on a combined mission.

Anyway, the Atlas crew is what you’d expect for a mission of this great historical import (and dramatic flair). You have your representatives of the major space-faring nations—the grizzled Russian veteran Misha (Ukrainian Mark Ivanir, with an extensive character-acting resume and several languages to his credit), the tough Chinese astronaut and only other female member of the crew, Lu (Chinese-American actor Vivian Wu), the naïve Afro-British botanist and space newbie Kwesi (Ato Essandoh, lately seen in ALTERED CARBON) and the dewy-eyed Indian physician/second-in-command Ram (British actor, writer, producer and director Ray Panthaki). All are led by American Commander Emma Green (Swank), who has worked her way through NASA’s astronaut corps to be there.

Now, because this is character-driven SF, we learn quite a bit about the members of the crew as the episodes roll along, many times in flashback, but just as often as each person interacts with their family members back home via video chat or email.

Each of the characters gets an episode, or a significant portion of an episode, to reveal and develop his or her backstory. Some of the episodes are outstanding on an emotional level, particularly “Half the Sky,” which details the relationship between Lu and her secret lover Mei, and “Space Dogs,” in which Misha enlists the entire Atlas crew in helping him produce and perform a Christmas puppet show for his grandchildren via video.

Other attempts to pluck at our heartstrings fail, either because they are shoehorned into genuine scientific/technical crises occurring onboard the ship, or because they aren’t really based in believable emotion. Ram, for example, seems to have developed a crush on his commanding officer. But that emotion has come out of nowhere, not to mention it’s completely inappropriate. Fortunately, Commander Green shuts that nonsense down.

There are legitimate technical emergencies onboard which must be dealt with—the failure to deploy of a solar sail, the breakdown of a crucial water recycling system. But the show seems to use these as an excuse for more relational drama than the kind of scientific problem-solving SF fans are accustomed to.

In fact, the crew bickers, complains and pouts to the point of near-mutiny, leaving one to wonder what the hell has happened to the cool, calm and collected spacers we’re used to from the days of Mercury, Apollo and even the International Space Station.

The problem, as identified by the crew, is Commander Emma Green, and, so far, I’d have to agree with them. Captain James T. Kirk she is not. Green’s leadership style is hesitant, unsure, uninformed, distracted. And did I mention she’s got a shuttle-load of problems going on at home?

AWAY almost lost me in the first episode with its presentation of Green’s character. In that episode we see her as a loving mom who attends her teenage daughter’s soccer games and celebrates small triumphs with her family. We learn her husband, Matt (Josh Charles) is also a member of NASA’s astronaut corps, but he was grounded because of a serious genetic brain disease that makes him prone to strokes. And yet, NASA selects her as the commander of the first manned mission to Mars (unlikely) and she accepts this mission (even more unlikely). This means she will be away from her family for three years, unable to communicate intimately with her husband or teenage daughter, exposed to all the untold and unpredictable dangers of space. But, hey, hell yeah, sign me up!

The central problem here is that the writers didn’t set Green’s character up as a hard case, someone who never had time for her daughter’s games or concerns—which, by the way, is not inconceivable. Lots of busy parents exist out there all points of the gender continuum who can’t be bothered to leave work on time or have family dinners or participate in their kids’ lives. But they chose not to craft the character that way. She was supposed to be an ambitious astronaut with dreams of going to Mars and an involved, caring mom. Somehow, the writers didn’t see that three-year gap in the middle of her daughter’s high school life as a problem. As the mother of two daughters myself, I couldn’t help but view it as a disaster waiting to happen.

Then, of course, there is Green’s husband, whose brain disease acts up just as the Atlas crew prepares to launch from the moon to Mars, leaving him paralyzed on one side from a stroke. What woman would continue the mission under those circumstances? Who could leave their paralyzed husband and 15-year-old daughter at home and go off for three years with the very real possibility she wasn’t coming home at all? If NASA would even allow her to continue as commander under those conditions?

At the very least NASA would insist any crew members selected for this dangerous three-year mission would have a strong family backup system at home. Commander Green does not meet even that basic minimum. She leaves her husband and daughter on their own, with no grandparents or aunts and uncles and cousins but only a family friend as backup.

And the situation at home very obviously affects Green’s decision-making ability on Atlas. This is because the writers want it to, of course, not because it necessarily would in real life. But it demonstrates a weakness in the character they have created. Is Commander Green a sensitive, emotional type, in which case she should have stayed home? Or is she a clear-thinking, hard-driving astronaut commander, in which case she might have gone ahead, but wouldn’t have let things at home distract her to the extent they have on the show. This is a big flaw with AWAY, in my opinion, one they’d better fix before Season Two, if they hope to improve on the dismal 6.5 rating they’ve currently earned on Imdb. And, even more, if they hope to keep this science fiction fan watching.

Cheers, Donna