"_" "_" "Retro rockets are about to fire in." "1, 2, 3, breathe. 1, 2, 3, breathe." "We dream." "It's who we are." "Down to our bones, our cells." "That instinct to build." "That drive to seek beyond what we know." "It's in our DNA." "We crossed the oceans, we conquered the skies." "And when there were no more frontiers on Earth we launched ourselves among the stars." "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." "The heavens beckoned a new generation of innovators and explorers, seeking to take human kind even further." "We can push out into the solar system." "Not just to visit but to stay." "That was when Mars became real for all of us." "And for those of us who were around to see the first days, it was... electrifying." "The world's leading space agencies united as the International Mars Science Foundation." "And joined with private industry to accomplish one shared goal." "To build a home for humankind on Mars." "People weren't just talking about the red planet, they were making plans to go there." "And after years of training in the Astronaut Corps" "I was chosen to command the first human mission to Mars." "Wonder," " wonder." " _" "For as long as we've looked up at the night sky that is what we felt." "We named the planets that hang among the stars after our gods." "And gave them the same power to control our fate." "With the support of the space-going nations of the IMSF the Mars Mission Corporation has overcome the most daunting engineering challenges our species has ever faced." "This allows the brave pioneers standing before you today, to bring humanity into a new era." "We will no longer stare and wonder at those planets we named for our gods." "But take our place among them." "Ed Grann could sell anything, but he was more than a salesman." "He was brilliant." "_" "She's 14 stories base to nose." "That's a fancy jacket you got today Ed." "_" "_" "_" "And as much as any of us, he was a believer." "He promised the world he would give us the technology we needed to leave our home, and build a new one." "And he delivered." "This is it." "Daedalus." "Take good care of her, she'll take good care of you." "She's your ship now." "Drives better than a Cadillac." "But that shine isn't gonna last." "Over the next 7 months your bodies are gonna be exposed to nearly 200 times the dose of a normal year's worth of radiation exposure on Earth." "Calcium will leach from your bones which will lose nearly 10% of their mass before you even get to Mars." "There is no test that can tell you whether or not the notion of being 60 million kilometers away from the planet on which you were born can shatter your mind in so many pieces." "Some of us if not all of us will almost certainly die on this mission." "Might be in takeoff, might be in landing, might be in the new world itself." "Now you all are the bravest group of women and men I have ever met." "I'm damn proud to be here with you." "But right now I want you to stop and ask yourself what really is important to you about this mission." "And if the answer to that question is not the most important thing in your life then I'm gonna invite you to walk out that door and go pursue whatever that thing is." "And don't ever look back, because no one will ever have the right to hold it against you." "Daedalus, you're a go for launch in T-minus 17 seconds and counting." "Mission analytic executor, you have primary control of all the critical functions." "Mae, the ship is yours." "I am in control." "The launch of Daedalus was the beginning of our historic 7-month journey to Mars." "But it wasn't easy to reach the red planet." "We needed visionaries to guide the way." "Mars and Earth are sister planets." "The young Mars had rivers and lakes, it even had an ocean." "If there was water on Mars, couldn't there possibly be life?" "Is it habitable?" "If you really want to understand, we want to, need to, go to Mars." "We need to go to Mars because it protects us from extinction." "There's all sorts of things that could happen on Earth that can kill all the humans on the planet." "But once humans are on two different planets the odds of extinction drop to nearly zero." "Getting to Mars will be risky, dangerous, uncomfortable." "But it will be the greatest adventure ever." "Ever in human history." "This is hallowed ground, it's called Launchpad 39A," "and it's the place that the first humans left Earth, then went to another heavenly body." "So this is um, I think, probably," "I think it's the greatest launchsite on Earth." "Buzz Aldrin, Mike Collins, Neil Armstrong get into the transfer van to Pad 39A." "Pad 39A was used for the Apollo 11 mission, and then with the space shuttle." "So it's a place with incredible historical significance." "Now NASA has given Launchpad 39A to SpaceX to use." "The long term goal of SpaceX is to develop the technology necessary to establish a self-sustaining city on Mars." "SpaceX's primary mission is absolutely to make life interplanetary." "We can explore the universe, we can put a colony on Mars." "People can be interplanetary and it's just an engineering problem like any other." "It just takes a group of people who care a lot, and are happy to work really hard to make that happen." "When Elon Musk decided" ""I'm gonna go off and build my own rocket company", everyone thought he was crazy." "Everyone laughed at him." "Now SpaceX has a better record launching things than practically any rocket company in the world." "They have a contract from NASA to deliver very essential supplies to the space station." "Dragon spacecraft now the first-ever commercial spacecraft to visit the International Space Station." "They have investors, they have to have revenues, they want the business of launching billion dollar satellites." "At the same time, they're focused on launching a new civilization on Mars." "So the stakes for every rocket launch are huge." "I think it's important for us to try to get to a self-sustaining situation on Mars as soon as possible." "SpaceX, Falcon9 and Dragon are go for launch." "T-minus 30 seconds." "Because either we're gonna become a multi-planet species and a space-faring civilization, or we're gonna be stuck on one planet until some eventual extinction event." "T-minus 20." "In order for me to be excited and inspired about the future, it's gotta be the first option." "It's gotta be:" "We're gonna be a space-faring civilization." "T-minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0." "What am I ready for?" "I'm ready to be one of the first human beings to go to Mars." "I mean, could you imagine that?" "That's like a dream." "I think Amelia Earhart once said that "adventure is worthwhile in itself."" "Uh, it could be that." "If we don't succeed we still paved the path for people after us to come," "and follow our lead." "Becoming an interplanetary species is, it's our best chance to guarantee humankind's long-term survival." "And, getting to be part of that it's just." "I mean it's..." "It's everything." "Yeah it is." "We've got the opportunity to ensure that humankind continues." "You know, we've been training for this half our lives." "And we've been dreaming about it even longer." "We're ready to give everything for thismission you know, all of us are." "We are coming to you from the International Mars Science Foundation headquarters, in Vienna, Austria." "With live coverage from the Mars Mission Corporation's mission control center in London, and an optical feed from the Daedalus itself, at a 10 minute, 20 second delay." "We had survived a 209-day journey through deep space." "But landing a 14-story ship safely, upright, and on target on the surface of Mars?" "That was a whole different kind of challenge." "Um, by the time this message reaches you," "whatever is about to happen already has." "If all went as planned then we are touched down at the base camp, we are docked" "and we're ready to begin the most exciting phase of scientific exploration in human history." "And if we haven't," "we went into the darkness so that you could find the light." "This is for you, Dad." "On my mark." "Begin entry sequence." "Mark." "EDL sequence engaged." "You ready for this?" "Are you?" "Put your helmets on and seal your kits." "Daedalus descent to the surface has been initiated at 425 kilometers altitude." "By the time this message reaches you, whatever is about to happen already has." "If all went as planned, we are touched down at the base camp, we are docked and we're ready to begin the most exciting phase of scientific exploration in human history." "And if we haven't... 9 minutes 30 seconds till landing." "... know that we went into the darkness so that you could find the light." "Vector is good." ".05 G's," ".1 G's." " Warning." " Pyros didn't fire." "Reaction control system error." "Lift vector requires correction." "RCS thrusters are offline." "Check the backup computer." "Backup also showing RCS is offline." "This thing is real." "RCS thruster electrical board offline." "Propellant valves have not been commanded to open." "The thrusters can't fire." "Recommend immediate manual replacement to 40 circuits." " I'll get down there and check it out." " No, this is mine." "Do a fault tree and talk me through it on comm." "You're going to have to work fast." "I got it." "Warning seat belt harness released." "Failure identified." " Found it." " Talk to me." "It's a failure in bus 14-15-48, aft-starboard terminal." "4-15-48, copy that." "It's the pyro initiation circuit, 4-3-6-double-bravo." "Moving out of micro-G." "Woah, OK, we got a bit of gravity here." "Ah, wow." "The failure must have affected the whole bundle." "71 seconds before we're outside the window for guidance to correct." "I'm gonna need you to give me the number again." "4-3-6-double-bravo." "There we go." "Warning thrust still inactive, 60 seconds remaining to restore reaction control system before landing is compromised." "Ah, the short cooked all four connections," "I'm going to have to cannibalize a replacement." "Mae, identify a PCB with matching electronics to board 4-36-double-bravo." "Cruise altitude control thruster pyro initiation circuit board Mike-Sierra-5-15-48" " is identical." " Mike-Sierra-5-15-48," "Roger that." "15 seconds left to correct." "I'm switching the board now." "Come on, come on, come on, come on." "There you go." "Warning, window for correction is closing in 10." "Thrusters are still offline!" "What are we missing?" " Talk to me." " 9, 8, 7, 6." " What am I looking for?" " 5, 4, 3, 2, 1." "Landing on Mars is really tough." "We can put a one-ton rover down on the ground, but that's all we can do right now." "And for humans to be able to go to Mars, we're gonna need 40 ton." "Our big challenge is indeed what it takes to get down to the surface." "Mars has an atmosphere, but it's not enough to really stop you so consequently you have to really use retro-rockets, parachutes, bladed shields, you have every tool in the arsenal that we can throw at it is what it's going to take" "to get humans down on the ground." "One of the most radical ideas that SpaceX has to lower this horrendous cost of getting into space is reusability." "Elon Musk wants to be able to fire a rocket into orbit, launch a payload into space and then fire retro rockets, and bring that rocket down to land vertically and reuse it." "And part of this whole idea of reusability is to develop a system where you can leave Earth orbit, go to Mars and actually physically land the rocket on Mars." "3, 2, 1, liftoff!" "This is a very hard problem because you better enter the Mars atmosphere at an incredibly blazing fast speed." "Mars atmosphere is so thin that by the time you hit the ground if you didn't start the engines, you'd still be supersonic, so you've got to basically point the engines into the wind at Mach 3," "you gotta fire the rockets into the supersonic airstream, zero out your blast speed, deploy landing gear and land." "And you got one shot." "But rockets there really don't want to work, like there's a thousand ways that a rocket can fail and one way it can succeed." "Who is Joon Seung?" "She's my twin, she's cap comm at mission control." "It wouldn't be easy for me to do this mission without her having my back on the ground." "Mae ID'd a faulty pyro circuit, they're working it now." "You mean they were working it 10 minutes and 20 seconds ago." "Delay or no, RCS status is still negative." "I have Ben below deck." "Found it." " Talk to me." " Mae found him a match." " There's something else." " Communications are in and out." "Initial failure was mitigated, but thrusters are still not operational." "I got it, the RCS temperature reading is incorrect;" "The sensor isn't showing as faulty." "By the time they receive a transmission it will be too late." "We just have to hope they found it too." "If this goes to hell on the live broadcast," "IMSF may never give us another shot." "If they missed that window by more than a few seconds, they're going to shoot right past the landing site." " I'm switching the board now." " Without thrusters, they won't be able to re-orient for retropropulsion." "They'll have no way to slow down for landing." "Thrusters are still offline." "Eyes and ears, Hana." "What are we missing?" "Eyes and ears." "What am I looking for?" "Mae hasn't found it." "We're outside the window for correction." "Reporting all systems nominal." " I don't see anything." " Nothing." " Listen!" " 4 minutes 4 seconds." " Board is in." " It's the RCS temp sensor." "Backup system is offline." "The backup sensor is reading near nominal, Ben, permission to switch from primary to backup." " We're too close to SRP!" " Do it." "Ben you won't make it back to the flight deck for orientation!" "We have to abort!" " I said do it!" " Warning, landing hazard." " Go." " Recommend engaging abort." "Engaged." "RCS thrust is engaged, three minutes 48 seconds." "If Ben isn't back on deck soon he's going to lose consciousness from the G's;" "he could end up down there during landing." "That's it Ben, your blood pressure is good." "You know the countermeasures." "Do the drill." "OK." "I'm watching your vitals, Ben." "You can do this." "His blood pressure is stable, but his heart rate and breathing are climbing fast, he's not getting enough blood to his head." "The G's are climbing too fast!" "You're doing great Ben, tell me what you see." "My periphery is closing in." "5.0." " Tighten your abdomen." " 5.1." "That's it Ben, blow it out hard." "1, 2, 3 breathe!" "Again!" "1, 2, 3, breathe, again." "Guidance can't sufficiently compensate." "We don't have enough control authority." "Prepare for retropropulsion!" "1, 2, 3, breathe, again, 1, 2, 3, breathe." "1, 2, 3, breathe, again," " 1, 2, 3, breathe!" " Counter thrusters are about to fire!" "10, 9." "Ben has lost consciousness!" " 8, 7." " I'm going down." " 6, 5." " There's nothing you can do!" "4, 3, 2, 1." "Fore and aft jets firing." "Beginning reorientation maneuver!" " Hang on!" " SRP in 3, 2, 1." "Ben's vitals went offline," " I'm not getting any feedback!" " Radar acquisition." "Terrain relative navigation initiated." "Divert maneuver initiated." "Constant velocity descent." "Still offline." "Begin throttle down, prep for final descent." "We're coming in too fast!" "Angle is off." "All systems to compensate." "We have to correct." "Throttle down, throttle down now!" "Come on." "Opticals are all offline;" "I've got nothing on audio either." "We should have heard from them by now." "Hana, what is it that you'll miss most about Earth?" "I'll miss my sister." "My mother raised us on her own and she was army so we were constantly moving from place to place and never really had much of a concept of what home meant." "Come on, sis." "I think for me and Joon," "I think for us it's more about what happens after we get there." "What about you Dr. Kamen, can you talk a little bit about the things you'll miss about home?" "What will I miss if I don't go?" "It's hard just to leave your family," "I'm gonna miss their voices but," "I know what I'm doing and I know what I'm leaving behind." "There is a beach in Victoria Island, Lagos." "I used to sleep on the sand and wake up with salt around my nose." "We are going to be breathing recycled air for a long time," "I have a feeling I would trade my last thermos-stabilized tapioca pudding" "for a taste of that ocean air." "If humankind find a way to come together and move toward a healthy evolution, this mission will have been about more than just finding another place to live." "When did you first know you wanted to become an astronaut?" "As far back as I can remember." "I wanted to go into space." "I used to lay out under the sky when I was a child and just memorize the stars." "Right from then I always wanted to be up there, you know?" "Mission Control, this is Daedalus." "We're looking at a red planet." "The Daedalus crew has done it, humankind is on Mars." "Ben." "His vitals are readable, but he's still unconscious," "I'm going down," "I'll check on Ben." "Confirm our position," "I'll go save the ship." "Woo!" "I'm getting off nominal ratings up and down the engine systems." "Gyro circuits are offline." "Tell me what you see." "What do you see?" "It's not good." "How far did we overshoot?" "Ben?" "We are coming, come on." "Javier, hurry!" "_" "So the long term goal is how fast can we establish a self-sustaining city on Mars." "Do we focus on just trying to get the ship there and then maybe send people some other time?" "I think we'd send a ship, make sure it could land OK." "Assuming that lands OK and it seems to be working, on the next Mars mission we would send people, and additional equipment." "You just need a lot of equipment to keep people alive on Mars." "And so we're gonna want to assemble as much of a base as we possibly can." "So some of that will have to be landed first, may have to be robotically put together, and we may have to do it in stages." "Prepositioning a base camp is really the only plausible way to do a manned mission to Mars, let alone a colony." "You would need oxygen, you would need water, then you would need food, a source of calories." "How do you generate power on Mars, we're gonna pre-position solar panels, but you can only generate so much energy from solar panels, what if you're caught in a dust storm?" "We can pre-position a reactor to make power, to make propellant, maybe even additional habitats." "You would send machines to make oxygen, machines that suck water out of the atmosphere." "You really need to send 3d printers so people can build their own things on Mars." "And then we'd land a crew near those facilities." "I think the first few missions people would live in the ship so that the most important thing really would be just to make sure that we land OK, and don't damage the ship." "But you can't live there very long, cosmic radiation is gonna penetrate the ship." "And what happens if your landing is off course?" "That is a real problem." "There are so many things that could go wrong, and there's no help." "There's no emergency supply rocket that's coming right away." "_" "Our biggest challenge on this mission is gonna be everyday survival you know." "Ben, Ben, can you hear me?" "His respirator is damaged." "We got to get his helmet off." "Secure his spine, we're gonna move him." "Yeah, OK, buddy." "OK." "Ugh." "You OK, buddy?" "You passed out during the landing." "We need to check on you." "I'm OK," "I'm OK." "Hey, we made it." "Telemetry indicates the RCS remained offline for the first 91 seconds of entry." "I've got Daedalus position back online." "How bad?" "Put sat on the board." "How far are they from base camp?" "How far?" "75.3 kilometers." "We're cross checking all remaining life support resources now." "But unless Daedalus can tether to the infrastructure at base camp, it's only a matter of time." "There has to be a way to make a suborbital flight to get Daedalus to base camp." "There's barely enough fuel to get them off the ground." "They're all alone up there, what are we telling them guys?" "Showing enough residual propellant in the system to make a single burst, but they're going to come down hard." "Even harder as they just did." "Landing loads were off the chart." "She's right," "Mae is showing engine damage from the off-nominal landing." "If they can't make any repairs, fuel won't make a difference anyway." "What is Ben's status?" "I can see substantial blunt trauma from impact." "I want to do a full battery of scans as soon as the equipment is prepped and calibrated." "I said I'm fine." "It's just the transition from micro-G's." "Ben, I need to run proper tests." "I understand," "I need to know our status first." "How long do we have?" "Life support status says we've got three more days of breathable air." "Daedalus isn't supposed to operate independently from base camp." "It's just not viable." "Come on, let's fix this, it's our guys up there." "Engines are still offline." "Robert, did you troubleshoot the propellant flow control?" "Nothing I do to the electronics will fix the engines." "I can't get the ship moving without a resupply from home." "I can't get the ship moving without a resupply from home." "No chance of bunny hopping Daedalus to base camp." "There's no fix." "I could fix this if I had the 3D printer from the Russian workshop." "I could fix this if I had the 3D printer from the Russian workshop." "The Russian workshop module." "It has independent environmental systems." "And it was pre-positioned for access to candidate lava tubes." "It'd be tight, but..." "What if we call that the new base camp?" "If they upgrade the environmental control systems and air and water recycling." "They'd have a chance." "That doesn't solve the transportation problem." "Can we get the rover to them?" " Checking the route." " I'll check max payload." "The terrain approaching Daedalus is complex, a fair amount of subsidence, portions that may not be stable." "Can they do it, or not?" "Their satellite view is in and out, we have to hand off rover command and control and let Daedalus navigate the local topography." "Do they have an option?" "Initiating override, transferring remote rover control to Daedalus." "You're lost, you must be lost." "You sound like my ex-wife." "You're lost, you must be lost." "You sound like my ex-wife." "Show me their progress." "Maneuvering that last kilometer of terrain from here will be painfully slow." "You should have let me drive." "Nothing on the externals." "I told you," "I'm not lost." "Daedalus." "Daedalus!" "That's our girl." "It's such a beautiful thing." "About time something goes right." "We trained for every eventuality that it started to feel like we'd already landed on Mars," "like we'd already succeeded in our mission, but we hadn't." "We were leaving the ship that was supposed to have sustained us for our first two years on Mars." "The mission to find a new home in this place was going to be hard." "Harder than any of us had imagined." "Ben, I need to run a full body scan on you." "Listen, priority is getting the crew to base camp, you understand?" "After that I'm all yours." "It's time." "Great," "I'll see you down there." "Are you OK?" "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine." "For that brief moment, our pain and worries were gone," "there was no speech, no theater, there was only awe that we had arrived." "And the acceptance that we were just beginning." "If I could talk to the first people to stand on the surface of Mars," "I would ask them to remember that everything they're about to see, they'll be seeing for our whole species, they'll be experiencing, living a dream that our recent ancestors would have deemed impossible." "And it's not just science fiction anymore, there are people on this planet right this moment that are actually planning and working to perfect the machinery that's necessary to make that possible." "_" "T-minus 4 minutes." "We've reached a tipping point." "Thousands of years from now, whatever we become, whoever we are, we'll look back at these next few decades as the moment in time that we are moving off this planet as a multi-planetary species." "VC and DC verify F9" " and Dragon are in startup." " F9 is in startup." "And SpaceX stands as nothing less than a massive game changer." "Stage one, stage two, pressing for flight." "Elon Musk says the only reason that I have founded this company is to get human beings to Mars." "LC LD go for launch." "The key to making Mars economical is the reusability of rockets." "T-minus 1 minute." "I just don't think there's any way to have a self-sustaining Mars base without reusability." "Getting the cost down is really fundamental." "If wooden sailing ships in the old days were not reusable," "I don't think the United States would exist." "T-minus 30 seconds." "And if they nail this ability to land a rocket anyway they want on Earth, then they can nail doing it on Mars." "T-minus 15." "This flight is a huge deal." "We haven't yet landed the rocket." "So this is gonna be hopefully our first successful landing." "T-minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0." "We have lift off." "Vehicle has reached maximum pressure." "Stage one propulsion is still not working." "Altitude 32 kilometers, speed at 1 kilometer per second, down range distance 13 kilometers." "Space is defined by the strange relationship between failure, risk, and innovation." "Which is you can take risks, you can try something very innovative, but you're more likely to fail." "Some people say that the challenges of a Mars mission are excessively formidable." "I entirely disagree." "I believe that far from being the weak link in the chain, human ingenuity, and the human psyche is gonna be the strongest link in the chain." "There's a segment of people in this world that live on the edge." "The talent of these people is evaluating the risk and always the rewards." "If you figure that the reward is worth the risk." "That yeah, it's risky," "I know I could get killed doing this, but it's doing something that man had not done before." "So is it worth it?" "Mhm, it's worth it." "Mission control confirmed the rover is 2000 kilos over maximum payload with all of us aboard." "I ran the numbers, the odds are we won't make it." "Yeah, but someone will." "Come on..." "Let's get to work." "We had 75 kilometers ahead of us." "Over brutal terrain, and a rover thousands of kilos over capacity." "Even if we made it that far, our new base camp was a workshop that would barely hold us all." "Temperatures would drop to minus 70 degrees before nightfall," "and the only help we had was somewhere up there on a little blue dot." "Mars will be the greatest adventure ever." "I'm looking at a red planet." ""MARS, a global event series," "Monday, November 14, at 9:00pm." "On the National Geographic Channel."" "People sometimes ask me," ""how did you know you wanted to go to space?"" "When I was younger I felt like..." " Do you copy?" " I didn't really fit anywhere." "My mom used to tell me to get my head out of the clouds." "I eventually realized that the only place I wanted to be... 3, 2, 1  Was above them." ""Before MARS", a National Geographic digital short film, available to watch now."