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'Stranger In a Strange Land' Coming To TV (ew.com)
HughPickens.com writes: EW reports that Paramount TV and Universal Cable Productions are teaming up to develop Robert A. Heinlein's classic 'Stranger in a Strange Land' into a TV series on Syfy. The 1961 sci-fi book, set in the aftermath of a third world war, centers on Valentine Michael Smith, a human born on Mars and raised by Martians, who, as a young adult, has returned to Earth. The true driving forces of the novel are religion and sex, which Heinlein's publisher at the time wanted him to cut out. But as the author noted to his literary agent, if religion and sex were removed from the text, what remained would be the equivalent of a "nonalcoholic martini." "From my point of view, Stranger in a Strange Land isn't just a science fiction masterpiece [...] it also happens to be one of my favorite books ever!" says NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment Chairman Bonnie Hammer. "The story is timeless and resonates more than ever in today's world. As a fan, I can't wait to see it come to life as a world-class television event." A previous attempt at adapting Heinlein's novel came in 1995, when Batman Returns' Dan Waters penned a script designed for Tom Hanks and Sean Connery.
Stranger in a Strange Land is really like two novels. The first part is good, classical Heinlein. The second part is some kind of rambling political pamphlet that always manages to bore me. I read somewhere that they were written with several years difference, and it shows.
I hope they base it in the first part, really. Well, probably, if it's a typical TV product, they will take the basic idea and massacre all else, so why do I care?
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
I'd rather see Return from the Stars on TV. More pron.
Think of the films made of Puppet Masters and Starship Troopers. Perhaps TV will be kinder. Never Thirst.
I can see how, when the book was originally published, it would have been perceived as shocking, especially in the USA. These days though reality has cought up and overtaken it. Unless, of course, they decide to "up the stakes" but then it wouldn't only be loosly based on the novel.
Something else for Syfy to cancel prematurely.
I'm going to assume this is going to be a "Based On The Novel By" kind of thing, where they basically have a couple of plot elements from the book and nothing more. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy the book, nor that it's not an important book in science fiction history, but I'm not really sure the story holds up for the 21st century. Some of the themes that were controversial at the time, and which I'm sure Heinlein thought that by now would be the norm, kind of went the other direction, too.
It's one of those times where they should just call it something else rather than name it after a famous work.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
Do the people who write the blurbs actually read the book first? Aftermath of WWIII? WTF?
People rave about Stranger in a Strange Land but quite frankly, the book is a complete waste of time in my opinion. Unless you are enamored by the hippy movement of the sixties, the book is pretty tedious. The basic idea isn't bad. Would a human raised in a completely alien environment by aliens still think like a human? Heinlein's execution of it however, is juvenile at best. It's also not getting any better with age, quite the opposite in fact.
Never got Stranger. For me it is possibly not the worst Heinlein novel, but it far from being worth the read and has the biggest hype to quality ratio.
Other than it being edgy for its time, I cannot see any reason to enjoy it. Personally, I think it was more of a big F*** Y** to his past editors for censoring him than an actual novel.
And I do not see how you will adapt it to the screen. Like Heinlein said the novel is just religion and sex. You could adapt it to a porn film, but there is just not really a storyline. The biggest drama is a legal battle and the only choice any of the characters ever make is "Will I have sex with everyone, or nah?" and spoiler alert they all have sex with everyone.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I'm sure it'll be as true to the novel as Starship Troopers was!
I get the feeling from SyFy in the last few years, particularly with 12 Monkeys, that they seem to focus on using "safe" formulas for their shows, they try appeal to science fiction fans with the core premise of the show, but also try to keep the show appealing enough for more mainstream viewers.
10 years ago when we had the Stargate franchise and Battelstar Galactica, things were pretty cool on SciFi, but they followed those up with Warehouse 13 and then later 12 Monkeys which are entertaining enough, but not the same kind of cool science fiction in my opinion.
I haven't read the book (which I now plan to rectify soon), but my gut feeling based on how things have been recently, is that the SyFy TV show will likely just be "okay", but watchable enough.
If they grok the memes in the original.
I hope Campbell Soup is a sponsor.
As is most sci-fi. Sadly, many nerds grow up into Space Nutters because they think entertaining pulp sci-fi written by hacks in the 1960s is somehow the Guide To Humanity's Future...
egg
Waiting is
...they grok it rightly. SyFy can do justice to classic SF, if their Dune miniseries, which was surprisingly good, is any indicator. I remember reading twenty years ago, in alt.fan.heinlein, may it rest in peace along with the rest of USENET, that Tom Hanks had acquired the rights to both SiaSL and TMiaHM. Several current and future members of the board of the Heinlein Foundation were regulars in the group, along with Heinlein's wife Virginia, Heinlein's biographer Bill Patterson, and Heinlein's chief fan and fellow SF author Spider Robinson, who all independently confirmed the transfer of rights. The rumors never reached the level of casting a movie, though one thread was devoted to endless speculation about potential actors and actresses. I hope like hell SyFy repeats Dune's success with SiaSL; I think their decision with Dune to go with unknowns in the major roles (less money for acting => more money for writing, directing, costumes and scenery) was spot on and I hope they follow a similar decision process with SiaSL.
I don't know how Heinlen gets so much credit for this book...it's was a rambling, shambolic pulp thing with sex and politics wedged into it at every opportunity in a vain attempt to perk it up a bit. It's not a book that has "stood the test of time" at all. If there's money for classic SciFi, we need someone to get off their butts and make "RingWorld". It's time.
www.sjbaker.org
Should be on HBO as SCIFI will cut the sex
I'm not sure why this is modded down, but it is 100% correct. Most Space Nutters get their "knowledge" from scifi, not reality. The reality is that engineering is tough, very tough. I am not talking about programming either. Anyone who has engineered anything even moderately complex knows we are not going to be living on Mars.
Stranger in a Strange Land was, perhaps, groundbreaking for 1961 when it was written, but I'd say the "religion and sex" are quaint and tame fifty years later. What little sex there is, that is-- back in 1961, even hinting people were actually enjoying sex was apparently racy.
I suspect that it's the movie The Space Between Us that allowed this to get the green light for production-- Hollywood loves to latch on to an idea, once somebody else has broken the way.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
That's funny because at one time the same thing was said about flying. The engineering was too tough and there is no way humans would ever fly.
We'll get to, colonize, and live on Mars someday. Not in yours or my lifetime, maybe not even 100 years from now, but eventually.
I like the word "cought". Halfway between cough and caught.
Surprised to see all the hate (or lukewarm meh-ness) for Stranger in a Strange Land on here. Maybe it's younger folks that never understood the social shifts and conflicts occurring at the time, I don't know. But the novel actually had a major affect on culture when it came out. I found it to be incredibly insightful.
Updating it for current times might be a good idea for the series. Someone from Mars with no contact with human culture comes to earth. Religion has taken a backseat and sex has exploded into polyamorous and fluid gender orgies, with more labels than species of frogs. And group politics has divided humans into pools vying for elevated victimhood status while countries with world-ending nuclear arsenals fight proxy wars over energy pipelines. Could be quite entertaining.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
How is Stranger in a Strange Land like The Man Who Fell to Earth?! The plots have almost nothing in common.
Hey, don't knock nonalcoholic martinis. That's just a pile of olives, and it's one of my favorite things. No, it won't get you drunk, but it's got a satisfaction of its own.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
" to develop Robert A. Heinlein's classic 'Stranger in a Strange Land' into a TV series on Syfy."
On the Siffy channel? Then you can forget it. They are incapable of doing good adaptations or even mediocre ones.
That's funny because at one time the same thing was said about flying. The engineering was too tough and there is no way humans would ever fly.
That's a bogus comparison; there were already things flying, we just needed to figure out how to emulate them. There no things living on Mars that we can emulate.
Don't feed it. He keeps bringing up the Space Nutter topic even on threads that have nothing to do with it, then replies to his own rants patting himself on the back. He only waits for someone to actually reply to go on a tangent and jerk off in his own feces. Any moment now he'll pull an Elliot Rodger and go on a spree. I'm only worried about the stray shots, really: actually planning and executing (or even aiming) is beyond his abilities. He got himself thrown out of the high school computer club, for Christ's sake! How can you get any lower than that? Rejected by nerds?
"Hollywood to completely rewrite Robert Heinlein's Stranger In A Strange Land because they don't like most of the ideas put forth by the original author."
There, fixed that headline for you.
Well, you showed me! Clearly, this means that humanity will be living on Mars within weeks.
Friday would be a much better TV adaptation.
Promiscuous hot chick with super powers goes on secret missions for a vague private agency in a balkanized USA. And it resonate with a really divided country and current affairs - California was its own country in the book!
It engaged me emotionally, something which none other Heinlein novels did. I think the book expressed the zeitgeist very well, had believable/consistent characters and scenery, and dialogue. Personally, i think its a great piece of literature. Yes, it's not exactly "realistic", but it doesn't describe the world we live in... Somehow it reminds me of Hoffman's fairytales. The characters wouldn't make sense anywhere else, like. But it works.
The way it ends is also very nice. One can like or dislike Heinlein or perhaps the books overall message (if you notice it), but the craftsmanship is solid, imo.
Big question is, which parts are they gonna cut and how will the wonderful ideological message of the original text will be corrupted by making it into a movie?! :S
I'm not sure why this is modded down, but it is 100% correct. Most Space Nutters get their "knowledge" from scifi, not reality. The reality is that engineering is tough, very tough. I am not talking about programming either. Anyone who has engineered anything even moderately complex knows we are not going to be living on Mars.
There is no breakthrough technology needed to put a colony of humans on Mars. And I've been heavily involved in a lot of engineering. The questions are method, cost, and will to do it, not inventing new things.
This might be thought of as submarine level technology, not so much on the details, but on the concept of keeping humans alive and healthy in a hostile environment. In fact much of putting people long term on a planet like Mars is in many respects easier.
Questions of "should we?" are valid, and always worth discussing. Questions of "could we" have already been answered. We can.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Then you're not much of an engineer.
Philip Jose Farmer, Jack L Chalker and Larry Niven. You'll find you don't like half the material, but simply appreciate the half you do like.
For series, get the first book from your library. Don't buy the set (used or otherwise) until you've had a bash at the first. For example, you may like PJF's World of Tiers series and hate Riverworld, because the settings are completely different.
They were strangers in a strange land.
No longer at ease,
However, most of Heinlein's fiction could best be classified as "Young adult" fiction. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress was also good. His last books, like The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, were kind of incoherent, and apparently finished by someone else.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
because you mentally turned yourself off after seeing moral/philosophical points that you disagree with. It's okay, this happens.
I know some people who are quite intelligent and big SF fans who never got why Dune is so popular. Precisely for the same reason.
Personally, I hated the movie District 9. I thought it was very shallow, just a not-so-subtle vehicle for the writer/director to push his leftist views. Super intelligent alien beings that have interstellar spaceships and artificial gravity, and yet act like idiots? Really? Aside from their high-tech stuff, their behavior is exactly like that of prison inmates with an IQ of around 80. Ruins the story for me, the whole time I was watching it I was thinking, "Why don't these aliens just do _____?"
However in retrospect, it is possible that District 9 is not entirely worthless, it may contain some good parts that I overlooked due to my disagreement with the parts that were stupid.
Stranger in a Strange Land on the other hand is a masterpiece -- a towering achievement that stands out even among the greats of science fiction -- because it's so original.
Your statement is especially ironic, since many of the scientists and engineers of the space program of the 60s, that put men on the moon, were inspired by the science fiction of the 30s, 40s and 50s that they read as young people.
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
That's funny because we solved flying with late 19th century technology while working in a bicycle repair shack by two people with no engineering background, and it was done in a few years.
The technology and engineering used in the late 19th century would have seemed incredible to those who were just starting with manned heavier than air flight in the late 1600's early 1700s.
Give it 200 years and the people trying to solve the challenges of space flight of today will be the Burattini's to the Sir George Cayleys and then Wright Brothers in the future. Manned heavier than air flight wasn't something that just went *click* oh hey now we do this once the 1800s hit, people had to struggle through the challenges and build further theory and methodology from the mistakes and failures of those before them.
...then fire upon you all!
I'm with you and the parent 1e50% and watching you both go down in flames proves your point.
Then you're not much of an engineer.
You've decided to stop making sense? What technology needs to happen that does not exist already?
This isn't even a concept that we shouldn't incorporate new technology as it happens, merely that the whole thing could be accomplished today, without any new inventions.
Imagine the work that had to happen to create say, the F1 engine. This was applied science, but a lot of new things had to happen to pump out that much power from a single engine. And we've built on that since then.
So we can get into orbit and leave Earth's gravity well. We can build structures in space that can maintain human life indefinitely. We can move those structures. We can get to Mars, We can land things on Mars. Questions remain about growing food, but no deal breakers are seen so far. All with present day technology.
And as new technology is learned/developed, it can only get easier.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The book is way too R/X rated in parts to make a good Syfy movie, Childhoods End was reasonably good but this won't translate well to a PG/PG-17 movie but if it was done by HBO / Showtime / Cinemax it could be good.
Ahem...There are no things living on Mars THAT WE KNOW ABOUT....
You're wasting your time. To the GP, the only technological development that will ever matter to achieving space has already happened; the only engineering that will ever matter to achieving space has already been done. It's wholly loony, but it's not uncommon.
Eventually, we'll be all over the solar system. The available space, energy, manufacturing conditions and natural resources all better (and in some cases, dwarf) those we can achieve on earth. Market forces will make this happen. Assuming we don't get hit by a comet or an asteroid, or the ecology doesn't collapse, or we don't nuke each other into glowing dust, of course.
The tech to get into space is known. The tech to live in space is known too, although it is true that the engineering has yet to be done.
The "space nutters" are actually the ones that claim we'll be indefinitely planet-bound. It's a pretty clueless assertion.
Chemical rockets can bootstrap this, though the cost is high; something like a space elevator would change the entire picture, but we're still working on the material science for that, and again, no engineering has been done (because no materials as yet.)
Anyway, fear not the nay-sayers. They know not of what they speak. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Can we get them there? Sure. Will they survive the trip? Maybe. Will they survive long living on Mars? Coin-flip, at best. By the time we got anyone there and established, there'll be a thousand little problems that nobody thought of, or thought wouldn't be as serious as they turn out to be, any one of which will kill everyone. Anyone volunteering to be in the first wave of 'colonists' to Mars should consider it to be not only a one-way trip, but a suicide mission.
We'll soon make America Grrr. Ate again today; food still arguably mediocre.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
You want to do something with a Heinlein novel? Make The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress into a feature-length film!
I'd call for James P. Hogan on the one hand, for good SF with a strong human element, and Keith Laumer's "Bolo" series for machine intelligence / war stories, and also Keith Laumer's "Galactic Odyssey" for the best... well, galactic odyssey story.
For fantasy, I think I'd like to see Naiomi Novak's Temeraire books, and/or anything by Robin Hobb.
For simple awesomeness, I'd like to see John Birmingham's "Weapons of Choice" series done.
The problem, as has been observed, is that generally speaking Hollywood makes an utter hash out of the books it makes into movies. Soylent Green being the poster child for Hollywood wrecking a great story. And that is something I would not like to see happen to any of these.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The problem is not only technological. The problem is psychological and problem management.
Psychological, being in a submarine is a thing in itself. So much that even the russian navy put only volunteers into subs. Now imagine living in an enclosed space not for a few months, but for the rest of your life.
Problem management is going to be a biggie. Basically, no matter what goes wrong, you are on your own. Even in the most remote places on earth, if things go really, really bad, you can radio for help and if you can hold out for a few days, you will be ok. Not to mention that even the most hostile places on earth are several orders of magnitude more friendly to human life than Mars.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The science fiction of the 30s was inspired by the scientists of the 20s DOING THINGS. You monkeys ALWAYS get your cause and effect 180 degrees out of phase.
Your religion comes from Russian Cosmism. That's another thing common with you guys, a complete lack of understanding of history, and social and psychological forces. You mastered a few equations at school, built a few simple systems and now you think Star Trek is simple because someone built a plane a hundred years ago.
And you overlook the hundreds of thousands of failed ideas that ran aground against the shores of reality.
I'm not sure why this is modded down, but it is 100% correct. Most Space Nutters get their "knowledge" from scifi, not reality. The reality is that engineering is tough, very tough. I am not talking about programming either. Anyone who has engineered anything even moderately complex knows we are not going to be living on Mars.
Actually it is modded down for being bullshit. Adult SciFi fans tend to be the type to learn the science out of curiosity and to be annoyed when the shows get it wrong. Many scientists and engineers are what they are because of Sci Fi inspiring them.
Read Armageddon 2419 (the original Buck Rogers novel), it predicts telecommuting, 3D TV, teleoperated machinery and rocket guns (bazookas) just for a few things. It was published in 1928. Sure it got other things wrong like anti gravity metals and disintegration rays. But it INSPIRED a whole generation of scientists and engineers.
You naysayers are the modern day William Proxmire voting down everything you don't understand. Guess you will LOVE having Trump as your President.
That's funny because at one time the same thing was said about flying. The engineering was too tough and there is no way humans would ever fly.
That's a bogus comparison; there were already things flying, we just needed to figure out how to emulate them. There no things living on Mars that we can emulate.
We don't need to emulate anything on Mars. We already know how to live, on Earth. All we need is the engineering to bring what we need from Earth to Mars and sustain it.
And we will get there.
That's funny because at one time the same thing was said about flying. The engineering was too tough and there is no way humans would ever fly.
That's a bogus comparison; there were already things flying, we just needed to figure out how to emulate them. There no things living on Mars that we can emulate.
Ok, you think the flying one is bogus...fine. How about no one ever thought we'd go to space or to the moon? It was pure science fiction and the engineering was too tough. No way humans could survive in space. No way we could get people to the moon AND get them back. There was no blue print to follow.....no "things" to emulate.
... but expecting the worst. Since this is on a non-premium channel, the abundant sex and nudity will have to be watered down, and since that's one of the central themes (the other being religion), I fear a bland, pale shadow of a sci-fi masterpiece. This concern is made greater by the fact that they're planning a "series," rather than a movie or miniseries. Stranger is a big book, and I could see source material for 6-8 episodes, but moving beyond that will be difficult without going on tangents or "extending the story."
Casting will be key, especially for Jubal Harshaw. The man is basically mentoring a god; if that character isn't larger-than-life enough, I fear the whole thing will fall flat.
I hope that I'm wrong, that the writers and producers truly grok what they're dealing with, and the whole thing is brilliant. But right now, I've got a bad feeling about this.
Let's just hope they don't do to it what Verhoeven did to Starship Troopers.
As for "religion and sex", you're right the sex is downright quaint compared to modern levels of behavior, and it has nothing to do with religion. You might be able to stretch it's definition of "religion" to include any ill defined reference to things not covered by secular science, but that's a very soft and fuzzy definition of religion.
Don't worry, Syfy will treat it with the same respect and care they gave to A Wizard of Earthsea.
The technology that allows humans to survive in radiation fields that exist outside the Van Allen belts for more than a few days does not exist. The fact is that the combination of adequate shielding and power to boost ratio for moving that amount of mass is beyond what we can now accomplish with existing technology. Putting a structure in low earth orbit, where it is protected from the balance of solar radiation and moving that same structure outside the protective fields provided by the Earth's magnetic fields is not trivial. Nor do we know how to do the technology yet that will allow us to do so. A two week trip to the moon gave Apollo 14 astronauts 1.4 rem in 2 weeks. Exposure getting to Mars would be 15 times the allowed exposure, provided there were no unforeseen radiation events, such as a solar flare. On the planet itself perhaps we could build underground to prevent excess exposure, but that would still mean severely limiting time on the surface, perhaps so much so that little actual work could get done.
So no we don't have all of the know how we need to do Mars yet.
Right. And they're not going to have any nudity... which is sort of like filming The Old Man And The Sea in the desert.
mark
Not a book adaptation, but Dark Matter is a show I liked way more than I thought I would, and enjoyed a lot more than "The Expanse" (also produced by SyFy I think?).
Someone at SyFy seems to have figured out how to have them produce decent shows again. I think the free reign Netflix has been giving their own productions and the rewards they've reaped as a result, are affecting productions from other companies now...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's a satire of the hippy movement. That is, the author is making fun of anyone who could find any deep meaning in the ridiculous views and obvious Christlike suffering of the protagonist. The smile at the end? Ah, I guess some people don't get it. Heinlein was laughing all the way to the grave with this one.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
There are no things that ride around on wheels either.
" What technology needs to happen that does not exist already? "
Since we have not sent even a rat to Mars, the answer to your asinine question is: EVERYTHING. Until you've BUILT and DONE it, all you have is WISHFUL THINKING.
How is that an asinine question?
Make a list of the technology needed to send and land humans on the moon.
Make a list of the technology needed to send and land the Curiosity rover to Mars.
Make a list of the technology needed to support humans in the ISS for the last 18 years.
You've just made a list of almost all of the technology needed to send humans to Mars.
So the next question is exactly, " What technology needs to happen that does not exist already? "
I think that the radiation problem, that is, how to lift how much shielding is going to be a big one.
That's funny because at one time the same thing was said about flying. The engineering was too tough and there is no way humans would ever fly.
That's a bogus comparison; there were already things flying, we just needed to figure out how to emulate them.
No, what you just claimed was a bogus comparison, because flapping your wings didn't work.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
How long have you Space Nutters been drawing up your plans for living in space? Just the *plans*. You haven't even put a single bolt in orbit for any of your delusional twaddle.
We've been putting things in space since 1957. Everything is a step and every step has been taking us towards the goal of leaving Earth and colonizing elsewhere.
"We'll get to, colonize, and live on Mars someday."
No, we, won't.
" Not in yours or my lifetime, maybe not even 100 years from now, but eventually."
AKA religion.
I don't think you know what religion actually is.
Pffft, engineers!
I've seen the damn movie - all you need is Matt Damon and some fucking potatoes, Iron Man up already!
" How about no one ever thought we'd go to space or to the moon? I"
For all practical purposes, it was a stunt. Compare the number of people who fly in airplanes every day with the number of human in recorded history who went into space. That gives you an idea of how the two are not at all comparable. At all.
" There was no blue print to follow.....no "things" to emulate."
Strange, I keep reading how it was exactly the same as the European "exploration" (read: invasion) voyages. That being said, there was nothing to emulate, and there is certainly also no reason to repeat it either. Face it: space is a dead end.
Though, the only reason he was able to pull it off is because everyone else got killed.
This book surely should have been on HBO, Netflix, Amazon, or ShowTime. Its going to be like Watching the Big Labowski or Pulp Fiction on cable. It will be so edited from the original to be barely be recognizable.
For the record, it is one of my favorite books too.
No, but the space nutter troll is certain to snap soon. One just hopes he shoots himself in the foot right away so nobody else will get hurt. Rejected by the nerds! Can you imagine that? I thought computer nerds were the lowest lifeform ever, and I brown-swirlied quite a lot of them, but finding out one can go lower than that... Wow. Just wow.
" What technology needs to happen that does not exist already? "
Since we have not sent even a rat to Mars, the answer to your asinine question is: EVERYTHING. Until you've BUILT and DONE it, all you have is WISHFUL THINKING.
I can easily build a lot of things in my garage, I have a mill, lathe, and the materials needed. If I decide to build a steam engine - already existing technology, I can do that, and it will work. No wishing needed, just doing.
Make certain to type your reply to me in all caps. That shows that you know what you are talking about, and really turns the ladies on.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Now, if you really want to get people hot under the collar, James Earl Jones would be a sterling choice. Think Terence Mann in Field of Dreams, only more so.
Be who you are...and be it in style!
How are they going to survive the ending of having Valentine Michael Smith getting killed in such a graphic fashion.
I think that the radiation problem, that is, how to lift how much shielding is going to be a big one.
Radiation will be a big problem, especially if there is a solar storm during transit. Mass helps, but not as much as most of us think. Water would be helpful, since we obviously need a good bit, but then there is a plastic named RXF1. It shows a lot of promise. This is a link from 2005. https://science.nasa.gov/scien...
It has 3X the tensile strength of Aluminum, yet around a third of the weight. Bring polyethylene based, it is good protection against radiation - I don't know if NASA's product is borated or not, but the nuc industry is already using borated polyethylene. http://www.radiationproducts.c....
Regardless, most people like AC think that you need something like lead as shielding. Problem is, lead makes for a lot of secondary radiation when it is hit, so it isn't as good as people think.
It's amusing, but a bigger concern is making the poly based shielding fireproof. And a bonus is it is a ballistic shield - always a really good thing in space.
So while people like AC are busy calling this stuff a pipe dream or fantasy, We have a lot of stuff happening. Things like Orion and the Ares Rocket are parts that are pretty well known. the BEAM expandable modules are another. Wonder what that's made of, eh? https://www.nasa.gov/sites/def...
Looking at the mass of the thing, it's almost ridiculously doable. Don't even need a big expensive Ares rocket to boost it to orbit.
Shit got real everyone, not a bit of wishful thinking needed. We got the tools, and we have the talent.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
No, everyone else left.
The technology that allows humans to survive in radiation fields that exist outside the Van Allen belts for more than a few days does not exist.
Posting as anon to keep mods. This statement is untrue, we've got a very good idea of how to shield humans from said radiation. Creating an electromagnetic bubble around them will do the trick, and we know how to create those too. The only real issue whether other more practical methods exist.
You're forgetting a few Ultimate Truths that you, as an engineer, should know:
Can we get them there? Sure. Will they survive the trip? Maybe. Will they survive long living on Mars? Coin-flip, at best. By the time we got anyone there and established, there'll be a thousand little problems that nobody thought of, or thought wouldn't be as serious as they turn out to be, any one of which will kill everyone. Anyone volunteering to be in the first wave of 'colonists' to Mars should consider it to be not only a one-way trip, but a suicide mission.
Sounds like a good idea to do nothing at all ever, just gather berrys and scavenge the occasional dead animal.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Problem management is going to be a biggie. Basically, no matter what goes wrong, you are on your own. Even in the most remote places on earth, if things go really, really bad, you can radio for help and if you can hold out for a few days, you will be ok. Not to mention that even the most hostile places on earth are several orders of magnitude more friendly to human life than Mars.
Its a little strange and sad that for all of the advances we have made, that one of the results is people with free-floating fear. So many are one thought away from being afraid to live more than a block away from a Hospital - just in case.
Not all people are like that though. Some people have a sense of adventure and wanderlust. Whereas once upon a time, we might hop a sailing vessel, or take wagons to new places. Some just want to live a life consisting of as little risk as they can expose themselves to.
Myself? I'd hop on a rocket to Mars one way for the adventure as well as the research. Robots are cool and all, and serve a good purpose, but I can tell you that for every interesting fact they turn up, a scientist is frustrated as hell because there are ten new questions that the robot can't test for. Simple questions.
If I were to die out there, well so what? Is the rest of humanity's fate going to be any different? If you iive ten years longer than me and spend it watching reality shows, has your life been more worthwhile than mine?
If I had the choice of meeting my death on a cold windswept world, I'd choose to die that way than live 25 more years as rather demented, hooked up to tubes or in a nursing home, drugged to keep me handleable, steadily draining away my entire estate like the older members of my family.
By the way - you know when they died? When their estate was emptied. Have fun! And be safe. Always be safe.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The technology that allows humans to survive in radiation fields that exist outside the Van Allen belts for more than a few days does not exist.
And we hear more from the post truth faction. Read my other posts with the links, and thn give a reasoned response, not just completely unattributed made up bullshit.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Its a little strange and sad that for all of the advances we have made, that one of the results is people with free-floating fear. So many are one thought away from being afraid to live more than a block away from a Hospital - just in case.
Never heard of such people, and I think you are making a classic argument here that 0.01 should be rounded to 1.0
Understanding that you are 6-12 months away from any help, and without a guarantee that it will come at all is not a fear, it's a fact. Understanding that there is nothing you can do by yourself, contrary to earth where you can always at least try (to live off the land, to build a raft, to treck to the nearest village, etc.) is another fact.
Making your base so that it can handle even unexpected emergencies under these circumstances is not a small challenge, mostly due to the consequences inherent in the word "unexpected". In such a mission, you have to plan for black swans, and that's not a very easy thing to do.
The problem isn't that in the end you'll die on Mars. The problem is avoiding to die in the beginning, before you've had a chance for any of the fun stuff.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
It's the way Neilsen ratings worked then - if someone had 'non-normal' watching habits, eg. nerds who enjoy watching scifi and fantasy, they would be removed from the Nielsen ratings program as 'outliers'. As this happened all the time, even if scifi watchers increased, they would be culled from the ratings and therefore pretty much any scifi that wasn't watched by Joe 6pack got canned because apparently no one was watching it.
Now that we have Netflix, we _know_ exactly who is watching what, not just a (bad) statistical approximation. And hence we now have _lots_ of scifi and superhero movies and TV because they've not thrown away the data from all the people who would prefer to watch something other than reality TV.
(Sturgeon's law).
I'll never understand this obsession to take written fiction and turn it into a move or tv show. Okay, I understand the money motivation. Other than that, a book/novel/literature that isn't made into a movie or book is like a fish without a bicycle.
I did see a movie that was a faithful adaptation of a book, Ender's Game. Anyone else think the movie was dull, boring, and wooden?
Never heard of such people, and I think you are making a classic argument here that 0.01 should be rounded to 1.0
Surely you jest? Your continuing argument is proof of my point. Safety culture is ascendant now, and almost everyone I know is more concerned about staying safe than doing anything the least risky. The interestinf part is that safety is now so inculcated that it is interfering with normal activities.
I catch shit all the time from friends and my wife catches shit from her friends because she "allows" me to engage in risky behavior.
My crimes? Hiking alone. 4 wheeling in the woods. Riding a motorcycle.
The question is whether this would be considered a sample size of one, or maybe a hundred - I never took an actual count of those who think I'm crazy.
Understanding that you are 6-12 months away from any help, and without a guarantee that it will come at all is not a fear, it's a fact.
It's a fact that you and a lot of others fear.
Its also a little silly to think that people are going to be sent off with no medical provisions at all. No, there won't be facilities to do heart transplants, but treatments will be available.
Making your base so that it can handle even unexpected emergencies under these circumstances is not a small challenge, mostly due to the consequences inherent in the word "unexpected". In such a mission, you have to plan for black swans, and that's not a very easy thing to do.
And yet, humans crossed oceans on wooden sailing ships or trekked to the polar regions. And even live in some really remote places even now, some of which are just about as inhospitable as Mars. Places where if you are outside overnight, you gonna die. And black swan events are pretty much unpredictable by definition. I'm going to take a guess that you have some sort of concept of going to Mars as an old Mickey Rooney movie where he suddenly blurts out "Hey gang - let's make a musical!", and everyone just puts on the musical. All of this other Mars exploration has been stepping stones toward putting people on Mars and doing it as safely as possible.
The problem isn't that in the end you'll die on Mars. The problem is avoiding to die in the beginning, before you've had a chance for any of the fun stuff.
Don't transfer your fear onto me. I'm gonna die sometime anyhow. There will be cool stuff going on after I'm dead. My outlook on life and exploration is fundamentally beyond your understanding. Your's is not beyond mine however, as I deal with the fearful every day. And safety culture is working on making that all of us.
So relax, no one that I know of is going to kidnap you and put you on a slave ship to Mars. You can stay safe as you like. This is all just humans doing what some of us feel compelled to do. Explore, go places, do stuff. It isn't safe at the bottom of the ocean, or on the moon, or Mars. Or orbiting space stations, Or near volcanoes, or collecting fossils while perched on the side of a cliff.
Bu then - you don't have to do any of that stuff. Now have a safe day.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
...no, that's not at all what I'm getting at. I'm pointing out that the 'blue sky/rose-colored glasses/what-could-POSSIBLY-go-wrong' crowd is, as usual, ignoring the Murphy factor in an endeavor like this. We're going to go to Mars, sooner or later, but it's going to be messy, and perhaps catastrophic. Luckily for whoever is going, bigger brains than anyone on /. are thinking through What Can Go Wrong, and are making the best contingency plans they can.
Is this any more of a hard thing to understand when there are still vocal idiots that think the writings of nutter Karl Marx have any workable solutions in reality?
NRRPT/RCT
If you actually look at a lot of science fiction; you find a story that includes a problem and a potential solution. I'm talking about what is today "hard" science fiction as opposed to fantasy and simple space opera (sorry fans, Star Wars and Star Trek are space opera - the stories could be wild west or foreign country stories just as well).
Being an old fart, 50+, I've seen enough science fiction become accepted reality not to blow raspberries and wild hair dreams. If you have a cellphone in your pocket; you have a 1960s pipe dream science fiction item that would never actually become reality.
NRRPT/RCT
you must not have seen the director's cut.
I can't see Connery as Jubal Harshaw. I always saw Jubal as more of a Wilford Brimley type of characterization.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000979/?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm
A fine line to get the "curmudgeon with a heart" type of vibe.
NRRPT/RCT
Nope. Jules Verne, "From the Earth to the Moon", and of course many others. Verne was far, far ahead of any engineers and scientists. So far ahead that it is implausible he was inspired by any specific engineering achievement or scientific breakthrough.
Inspiration is of course a bit difficult to pin down entirely. The true course of human affairs is to leapfrog continually, and concepts and building things are definitely part of the leapfrogging process. Anyone with a high degree of imagination can cobble together a new idea out of the most improbable set of experiences, facts and desires. Yet to build something, one must first conceive of it.
And the ideal example of science fiction preceding science fact is Jules Verne.
...no, that's not at all what I'm getting at. I'm pointing out that the 'blue sky/rose-colored glasses/what-could-POSSIBLY-go-wrong' crowd is, as usual, ignoring the Murphy factor in an endeavor like this.
Don't confuse enthusiasm with the idea that there won't be problems. I don't even know anyone here who posits that idea.
I'm a little confused here, as I get the impression that you are trying to say that I'm one of those people. When in fact, the Yes men in the teams I've worked on - especially early in my career - have always thought I was a pessimist about everything until I saved their sorry asses, and worked harder than most to make sure the projects work. Later on, the Boss just told everyone new to shut the hell up and listen to me. As well as his favorite phrase "Dont try to Bullshit a Bullshitter."
In no way does that curb my enthusiasm for going to Mars. And after Mars, maybe some place else. Problems hell - I love problems. Opportunities to make things better. I suppose that sounds like one of those dumbass motivational posters.
Luckily for whoever is going, bigger brains than anyone on /. are thinking through What Can Go Wrong, and are making the best contingency plans they can.
Who knows - maybe some people working on these things are even on Slashdot.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Safety culture is ascendant now,
I'm not american. Your "crazy crimes" don't even raise an eyebrow over here.
Its also a little silly to think that people are going to be sent off with no medical provisions at all. No, there won't be facilities to do heart transplants, but treatments will be available.
Of course. I'm not talking about standard issues. I talked about problem management. If you have a standard procedure to handle it, it's not a problem.
Don't transfer your fear onto me.
Not talking about you specifically. I said that psychology and problem management will be major challenges. I didn't say they're a reason to not go to Mars or that it will be impossible or bla bla bla. I said that these are major challenges, beyond the purely technological.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Your point about the engineering being tough is correct. I have been looking into maintaining a few hundred people in a 6 hour orbit. It takes about 6 meters of polyethylene to get the galactic cosmic ray does down to where people could live there long term.
Why people? They are there to deal with the unknown unknowns, i.e., unjamming the automation and fixing the machines that build power satellites. If some government or group of governments decides that we have to get off fossil fuels, that one of a very few options that scaled large enough to replace fossil fuels. Takes about 3000 5 GW power satellites to equal current fossil fuel production.
There are a couple of videos linked off www.htyp.org/DTC If you want to take part, there is a google group you can join, power satellite economics.
End MGM. Get prospective parents of boys to Google: Men do complain