No Moon and Flat Calm
May 25, 2019 8:15 AM Subscribe
A new short story about panic in space by Elizabeth Bear. Each month, Future Tense Fiction—a series of short stories from Future Tense and ASU’s Center for Science and the Imagination about how technology and science will change our lives—publishes a story on a theme. The theme for April–June 2019: space settlement.
The response to the story: How Will People Behave in Deep Space Disasters? In just over a decade, NASA hopes to send astronauts to Mars. Things will go wrong; they always do. But this time, the crew will be more isolated than astronauts have ever been. If they need help, it will take six months to get to them, which will be too long. If they need an answer to a simple question, it will take up to 45 minutes just to hear back from Mission Control. They will have only each other.
The response to the story: How Will People Behave in Deep Space Disasters? In just over a decade, NASA hopes to send astronauts to Mars. Things will go wrong; they always do. But this time, the crew will be more isolated than astronauts have ever been. If they need help, it will take six months to get to them, which will be too long. If they need an answer to a simple question, it will take up to 45 minutes just to hear back from Mission Control. They will have only each other.
We hate that. We want terrible things to have happened for reasons. We want there to be a flaw to correct, something we could have done better. A choice we could have somehow made differently. We want horrors to be preventable.
This was a great story.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:59 AM on May 25, 2019 [2 favorites]
This was a great story.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:59 AM on May 25, 2019 [2 favorites]
This bit from Amanda Ripley's response...
posted by heatherlogan at 8:26 AM on May 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
This risk of one agitated individual has implications for the future of deep space travel, particularly the commercial kind envisioned by private companies. Personally, if I got the chance to travel into space, I’d want to do it with the best astronauts in the world—and not with a rich guy who’d bought his way into orbit. Money cannot buy psychological resilience. And even if he’s not in command, he will be part of the group, and the group will matter....made me think of Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer about a disastrous group climb on Mount Everest in which a number of people died. One of the biggest problems was the fragmentation of the group once things started going wrong. (The physical stress of the lack of oxygen also seems particularly relevant in the current context.)
posted by heatherlogan at 8:26 AM on May 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
Great story and interesting info in the response, thanks.
I helped film a NASA training module a couple of years ago. Simple production; an 'astronaut' and a 'ground control contact' (each in front of a green screen, reading from a prompter). The script included a bunch of branching dialogue and it was apparently destined to be part of a 'choose your own adventure' style experience. The person watching would choose how the astronaut should act to defuse tension and come to a satisfactory compromise with ground control.
I forget the specifics but the 'story' was something about a spacewalk that one party wanted rescheduled. Nothing as dramatic or sophisticated as the Elizabeth Bear story (though I'm guessing they are doing things like this in VR now) but it definitely emphasized that crew dynamics and communication were something NASA thinks about a lot and was a cool experience.
We even had an actual been-to-space astronaut in the studio consulting for the project, who lent his mission clipboard to the production for an authentic touch (so cool!) and recorded debriefs for each of the scenario's endings. He had helped with costuming the talent too, which is how I learned that these $15 pants are what NASA astronauts wear in space (though it looks like these are discontinued?).
on preview: Great connection heatherlogan, there are many interesting parallels between space exploration and mountaineering. In case you didn't know, it appears there is currently a deadly traffic jam on Everest.
posted by soy bean at 9:01 AM on May 26, 2019 [3 favorites]
I helped film a NASA training module a couple of years ago. Simple production; an 'astronaut' and a 'ground control contact' (each in front of a green screen, reading from a prompter). The script included a bunch of branching dialogue and it was apparently destined to be part of a 'choose your own adventure' style experience. The person watching would choose how the astronaut should act to defuse tension and come to a satisfactory compromise with ground control.
I forget the specifics but the 'story' was something about a spacewalk that one party wanted rescheduled. Nothing as dramatic or sophisticated as the Elizabeth Bear story (though I'm guessing they are doing things like this in VR now) but it definitely emphasized that crew dynamics and communication were something NASA thinks about a lot and was a cool experience.
We even had an actual been-to-space astronaut in the studio consulting for the project, who lent his mission clipboard to the production for an authentic touch (so cool!) and recorded debriefs for each of the scenario's endings. He had helped with costuming the talent too, which is how I learned that these $15 pants are what NASA astronauts wear in space (though it looks like these are discontinued?).
on preview: Great connection heatherlogan, there are many interesting parallels between space exploration and mountaineering. In case you didn't know, it appears there is currently a deadly traffic jam on Everest.
posted by soy bean at 9:01 AM on May 26, 2019 [3 favorites]
there is currently a deadly traffic jam on Everest.
What the actual fuck. That Krakauer book should be required reading before anyone is let onto the mountain, with a quiz if necessary! I was afraid to climb up the stairs to bed by myself after finishing it.
posted by heatherlogan at 10:35 AM on May 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
What the actual fuck. That Krakauer book should be required reading before anyone is let onto the mountain, with a quiz if necessary! I was afraid to climb up the stairs to bed by myself after finishing it.
posted by heatherlogan at 10:35 AM on May 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
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Sharing with my daughter the disaster planner.
posted by doctornemo at 11:46 AM on May 25, 2019 [2 favorites]