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James Cameron's Illustrated Mars Reference Design

Posted by michael on from the purty-picturez dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Terminator Director James Cameron commissioned renderings of the NASA Mars Reference Design [HTML, 4 PDFs]. The mission profile calls for a cargo ship sent ahead of a crew, a huge (Terminator-like?) rover, and inflatable habitats. It's not clear where Skynet and the T-800's hyper-alloy combat chassis fit in yet. Between now and then, the 5 Mars missions: 2005 Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter, 2007 Phoenix and Netlanders, 2009 Science Lab Rover, and 2011 Scout. Skynet comes in 2026."

2 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. Re:James Cameron explores the planets by silentbozo · · Score: 5, Informative

    James Cameron may have spawned the Terminator franchise, but he had no connection T3 (the film was directed by Jonathan Mostow.) Rumor has it that Cameron was planning to buy back the rights to the Terminator franchise, and then produce/direct his own script, but was outbid. When the guys who bought the Terminator rights tried to hire him for T3, Cameron turned them down.

  2. The Collier's Space Program, half a century later by Animats · · Score: 5, Informative
    Back in 1952, Collier's Magazine published a six-part series later called the Collier's Space Program. That series is credited with inspiring the US space program.

    Those pictures are famous, and there's even an animated Disney documentary from the period.

    The "Collier's space program" was far more ambitious than what's been done to date, or even what Cameron had drawn. The Collier's program had a big rotating space station in Earth orbit, a Mars rocket under construction in orbit, and heavy industrial traffic to and from orbit. Cameron has much lower ambitions.