46 | NewScientist | 3 November 2018The First, created by Beau Willimon,
starts on Channel 4 this week. Also
available in the US on Hulu
FOR reasons that remained
mysterious by the end of episode
one, veteran astronaut Tom
Hagerty (Sean Penn) has been
grounded. This left him watching
helplessly as a launch accident
wipes out his former crewmates,
bound for Mars on a rocket
bankrolled by prickly space
visionary Laz Ingram (Natascha
McElhone). By the episode’s end,
the disaster has taken a huge
psychological toll, not least on
Ingram herself.
Welcome to the future – don’t
expect it to be easy. Set 15 years
from now, the world of The First
is not very different from our own.
Some cars drive themselves. Media
gadgets proliferate. The women
who currently hold high executive
positions in private space
companies are now public figures.
To hit the next launch
window, Ingram and thousands
of others – in government, in
industry, in NASA and in space
agencies across the world – are
going to have to figure out how
they are going to get a second stab
at Mars. And what’s more, they
are going to have to convince their
paymasters, their employees,
their constituents, their families
and themselves, that all the time
and sacrifice and renewed risk
will be worthwhile.
The First is not your typical
fictional voyage to Mars. “It would
have been safer to just get into
space in the first episode,” says
series creator Beau Willimon, best
known for his stylish US remake
of political thriller House of Cards.
“But space exploration, with all of
its excitement, doesn’t happenovernight. A Mars project will
take years of planning.”
Virtually the whole of the
first season of this intriguing
Martian epic will be set on Earth.
It is a risky approach, but one
that persuaded Charles Elachi,
a former director of NASA’s
Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
California, to be a consultant for
the show. “Only one organisationhas successfully landed
something on Mars,” he tells me
with relish, “and I used to head it.”
“What attracted me,” says
Elachi, “was Willimon’s desire
to look at the Mars project in the
round, taking in the scientific
aspects, but also all the technical
and personal and political
challenges. How do you convince
people to commit to these
amazing projects? Important
as the science is, exploration is
a human endeavour.”Elachi has seen the truth of this
at first hand, having witnessed
the decades of effort and sacrifice
required to land rovers on Mars,
and he is impressed that the
series, although it accelerates
events tremendously, still reflects
the likely scale of a Mars mission.
“The series starts 15 years in the
future, but for me, as the show’s
technical consultant, it’s really
a story of the next 15 years,” says
Elachi. “It’s about all the things
that come before that first flight:
the power sources, the vehicles,
all the equipment that needs to
be developed and deployed before
a human ever boards a rocket.”
Building the backstory to
the series was essential. And
according to Willimon, it was cool:
“A lot of the questions we had
were questions that researchers
themselves are asking,” he says.
“Every design element on the
screen has a clear function and
a precise reason for being there.
We don’t want this to be an 8-hour
science lecture, but it’s important
for the audience that we can
explain everything in the frame.”It takes thousands of people
to get one astronaut into space.
Engineers, scientists, the medical
team, the ground-support team:
people bring thousands of years
of combined experience to the
business of making several
minutes tick by without failure.
Willimon, whose father served
months at a time on nuclear
submarines, also knows the
sacrifices families make. While
his father was away, he says, “I
used to make these drawings and
maps and plans, trying to figure
out where he was, under what ice
shelf, in what ocean? And I’d try
to work out what he was doing.”
This makes The First a very
personal project. “We all ask
ourselves, What does it all mean?
Is there a God? Where’s my place
in the universe?” Willimon
reflects. If we asked these things
of ourselves all the time, we’d go
mad. “But space travel,” he says,
“literally travelling into the
heavens, forces your hand.” ■CULTURE
It’s a long road to Mars
Creating a space epic is an enormously detailed and soul-searching job, discovers Simon Ings
Sean Penn and LisaGay Hamilton
look to the future in The First“ It takes thousands of
people and thousands of
years of experience to get
one astronaut into space”HULU