Space travel is being democratised… by movies | Little White Lies

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Space trav­el is being democ­ra­tised… by movies

09 Dec 2015

Spacecraft docked to space station, against Earth's atmosphere.
Spacecraft docked to space station, against Earth's atmosphere.
This video by KAYAK​.co​.uk and Moth­er­board asks whether space is with­in reach of the com­mon man.

How close are we to see­ing attack ships on fire off the shoul­der of Ori­on? Or C‑beams glit­ter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate? Accord­ing to the intre­pid but dis­arm­ing­ly lack­adaisi­cal Ben Fer­gu­son, host of this fas­ci­nat­ing new video by Moth­er­board and trav­el tool KAYAK​.co​.uk, not very close at all.

Those yearn­ing to dance weight­less­ly amid the star­dust will have to fork out close to $150 mil­lion to be able to hop onto one of Earth’s fledg­ling out­er space voy­ages. And if that num­ber sits a lit­tle uneasi­ly with­in the realms of the finan­cial­ly impos­si­ble, rest easy: you could ven­ture into the great beyond for the bar­gain price of just $50 mil­lion. Eep…

So yes, space trav­el is strict­ly the pre­serve of the One Per Cent and get-rich-quick pony­tailed eccentrics, though the option of sim­u­lat­ing space trav­el in an air­craft which is fond­ly referred to as the Vom­it Comet” is most def­i­nite­ly with­in the grasp of the com­mon man. Yet if that burn­ing desire can­not be extin­guished, and ama­teur rock­et build­ing has proven too tech­ni­cal­ly com­plex, then there is anoth­er way: watch­ing movies.

Rid­ley Scott’s The Mar­t­ian pre­miered at the 2015 Toron­to Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val. In it, an astro­naut played by Matt Damon is strand­ed on Mars by his col­league when a vio­lent storm front sweeps in. He is forced to inno­vate in order to sur­vive on the Red Plan­et. With­in his func­tion­al domi­cile, he begins to grow food, recy­cle the air and water, and the film – as its poster adver­tis­es – is about the var­i­ous Earth­bound efforts to Bring Him Home”.

What was fas­ci­nat­ing about the reac­tion to The Mar­t­ian is that a num­ber of the audi­ence mem­bers who saw it thought that it was a true sto­ry. The way the film is pre­sent­ed, in addi­tion to the sim­ple log­ic of how Damon’s char­ac­ter was able to pro­long his lifes­pan, lent the film a humane edge and made the strug­gle feel relat­ably banal. Dur­ing post-screen­ing dis­cus­sions about the film, the point had to be empha­sised that this was a fic­tion­al film based on the 2011 nov­el by Andy Weir – a work which, to avoid con­fu­sion, is suf­fixed A Novel”.

Cou­ple this sim­ple sto­ry of against-the-odds sur­vival with the awe-inspir­ing, expe­ri­en­tial­ly-inclined tech­ni­cal inno­va­tions of some­thing like Alfon­so Cuarón’s 2013 film Grav­i­ty, and sud­den­ly the thought of drop­ping $150 mil­lion when you could spend $15 becomes the ratio­nal thing to do. And if you can cast your mind back to Joe Dante’s superla­tive, nos­tal­gic 1985 fea­ture, The Explor­ers, remem­ber that if you do man­age to make it past the stratos­phere in a pod made from old wash­ing machine parts, then it’s like­ly that all you’ll find is a bunch of dullard aliens fix­at­ed with jive and bad car­toons. Maybe best to just stay indoors.

This video was made pos­si­ble by kayak​.co​.uk

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