WELCOME TO MARS

摘要

A spaceship is preparing to land on Mars when the crew notices that one of the thrusters isn't firing. There is, as they say, a problem. But there's no use telling Houston-by the time a distress message reaches home more than 30 million miles away, either the astronauts on board will be space dust or humanity will have become an interplanetary species. That's the premise of National Geographic's new series, Mars, which mixes documentary and speculation to tell the parallel stories of two groups: the fictional future explorers who will make that first journey, and the pioneers of today-scientists, astronauts, and strategists-who are blazing the trail. In the premier episode, for example, that white-knuckle landing scene is spliced with a look at Elon Musk's SpaceX as engineers test a real retropropulsion landing system. Every piece of tech in the show was designed to accurately reflect the current scientific vision of how we'll get to Mars-and to avoid the gaffes that have undermined recent films and invited the wrath of astrophysicist/space ombudsman Neil deGrasse Tyson. As executive producer Ron Howard puts it, "It's not sci-fi!" (Indeed, President Obama has outlined a vision to send humans into Mars' orbit by the mid-2030s.) Here's how Mars envisions our red future.