The Apple TV show “For All Mankind” has started its third season and now includes in its alternative fictional history of the US space program (triggered by the USSR landing on the Moon before the USA causing history to unfold somewhat differently) a company vaguely like SpaceX called “Helios” whose goal is to send a mission to Mars. I say “vaguely” because the company CEO is quite different from Elon in that he has much more empathy on a personal level. At the same time, NASA and Roscosmos are preparing missions to Mars.
I enjoyed the first two seasons of the show for its original take on how things might have gone differently if the US was not first to the Moon. This third season strains my credulity, layering on even more interpersonal drama between various characters that borders on the ridiculous. But it was something in episode 3 (the most recent episode of season 3) that I find difficult to accept.
A private company called Polaris is operating a rotating LEO space station “hotel” that looks a lot like the one in the film “2001: A Space Odyssey”. It suffers a thruster malfunction and comes close to being destroyed. The reputation of Polaris is shattered and bankruptcy looms. The CEO of Helios offers to buy the station because he wants to attach rockets to it and use it as a spaceship to Mars because his own Mars vehicle project is many years away from completion. And yet somehow in a few years he can build a huge rocket in space — see images below, it obviously did not launch in that form from the ground — specifically for the purpose of powering a rotating space station.
My reaction was that you can’t just strap on some huge rockets to a structure that was designed for zero G operation, apply thrust to the central point of the rotating station, and expect it to handle that force. I compared images of the station before and after the rockets were attached and it looks the same. Maybe if the applied thrust was increased very slowly over a long period? But then it would have to very slowly decelerate for Mars orbit capture. Overall a lot of time would be added to the trip. Of course for TV drama when the rockets fire the vehicle immediately starts to visibly move relative to the Earth and obviously that would not be the case.
A lot of the science in the show is reasonably accurate, some of it is definitely not, but this plot development made no sense to me. I know, it’s a fictional TV show, but season 3 is set in the 1990’s and the technology should make sense in that context.
I enjoyed the first two seasons of the show for its original take on how things might have gone differently if the US was not first to the Moon. This third season strains my credulity, layering on even more interpersonal drama between various characters that borders on the ridiculous. But it was something in episode 3 (the most recent episode of season 3) that I find difficult to accept.
A private company called Polaris is operating a rotating LEO space station “hotel” that looks a lot like the one in the film “2001: A Space Odyssey”. It suffers a thruster malfunction and comes close to being destroyed. The reputation of Polaris is shattered and bankruptcy looms. The CEO of Helios offers to buy the station because he wants to attach rockets to it and use it as a spaceship to Mars because his own Mars vehicle project is many years away from completion. And yet somehow in a few years he can build a huge rocket in space — see images below, it obviously did not launch in that form from the ground — specifically for the purpose of powering a rotating space station.
My reaction was that you can’t just strap on some huge rockets to a structure that was designed for zero G operation, apply thrust to the central point of the rotating station, and expect it to handle that force. I compared images of the station before and after the rockets were attached and it looks the same. Maybe if the applied thrust was increased very slowly over a long period? But then it would have to very slowly decelerate for Mars orbit capture. Overall a lot of time would be added to the trip. Of course for TV drama when the rockets fire the vehicle immediately starts to visibly move relative to the Earth and obviously that would not be the case.
A lot of the science in the show is reasonably accurate, some of it is definitely not, but this plot development made no sense to me. I know, it’s a fictional TV show, but season 3 is set in the 1990’s and the technology should make sense in that context.
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