Stowaway (Netflix): meh

[cellio]

The premise of Stowaway, a new movie from Netflix, as shown in the teasers: a crew of three leaves for a two-year mission to Mars, and after departure discover an injured worker from the launch pad onboard -- not really a stowaway in that he didn't plan for this, but there he is. But the safety margins don't account for an extra person.

I immediately thought of "The Cold Equations", a classic SF short story. It seemed clear that there could not be a happy ending, but I was curious which of the several possible outcomes we'd get. IMO they chose the wrong one.

Spoilers below.

The trio consists of the captain (Marina) and two younger researchers who've gotten their Mars-dependent research projects approved. Zoe is a medical researcher and David is a biologist trying to cultivate algae on Mars. The accidental fourth is Michael, who's designed to tug all the right heartstrings: pursuing an engineering degree while working to support his younger sister (no other family), hard worker, personable.

Marina is a seasoned captain and is on what's planned to be her last mission. In case you're wondering how a seasoned captain could miss the extra weight, especially when they've been given very small weight allowances for personal effects, it's addressed plausibly.

Zoe is caring and compassionate. We also see her medical knowledge play important roles twice early on -- treating Michael's critical injuries from the accident that caused him to be unconscious on the ship during takeoff, and also treating the captain's broken arm.

David, on the other hand, is so focused on his research that when the captain asks him to activate some of his algae samples to filter carbon dioxide from their air so they don't all die, he objects because it will waste years of his work. Yes, that sucks and I'd expect him to be upset, and he's not career space crew with the corresponding training, but it still left me disliking him.

David lost more points with me by trying to take matters into his own hands to get rid of Michael. Presumably even those who aren't career space crew, as condition of being on the ship, have been thoroughly drilled in things like chain of command. It's a short chain in this case.

There are setbacks and the crew tries everything they can to mitigate them, but it's clear to all that four people will not arrive alive on Mars. There's some sort of Plot Reason that I didn't understand about why they can't turn back, but they can't. So they have to deal with this and obviously there is not going to be a happy ending for all four of them.

There could have been a redemption arc where David steps up. This is the outcome I was hoping for. Instead, we arguably got the worst possible outcome, from a dispassionate perspective of trying to maximize survival chances. If it wasn't going to be David, there was another obvious candidate other than what happened, and it's not even as cold as those equations.

(I'm not trying to completely spoil it here even behind a spoiler warning, but I make no promises about what happens in comments.)

Comments

[minoanmiss]

Ugh. is David an example of the Asshole Genius trope? I hate that trope.

[(Anonymous)]

I haven't watched Stowaway, but depending on the drive system of the spacecraft, there's a very plausible reason why they couldn't just turn around and go back home: they don't have the fuel to do so. Any plausible Mars mission using something resembling current technology will very likely involve either (a) a good burn at the beginning of the mission, followed by a long coast, followed by another burn for Mars orbital insertion, using chemical rockets, very similar to how Apollo got us to the Moon; or (b) a more or less continuous "burn", using an ion drive, with a flip-over about midcourse so that the velocities match on arrival. Ion drives are nice because they require very little reaction mass and can be (read: are) powered electrically, but they draw a lot of power and produce very little thrust, leading to a very low rate of acceleration, which makes them largely unsuitable for manned spaceflight and utterly useless for a surface launch. Chemical rockets offer much greater thrust, but require gobs of fuel and reaction mass. (That external tank on the Space Shuttle, which was about as big as the Orbiter itself? They emptied that in about ten minutes flat, and it only got the Shuttle into a fairly low Earth orbit. Or compare the size of the Apollo command module and lunar module ascent stage/cockpit, which together formed the habitable volume of the spacecraft, to the size of the entire Saturn V stack; the difference isn't only fuel, but fuel is a big part of the difference.)

Thus, particularly if the mission uses chemical rockets, it's quite possible that after the initial trans-Mars injection burn is complete, they are committed to the trip simply because they don't have the fuel to turn around and get back home. For the planned trip home, in-situ refueling on Mars is a very real possibility; even though Mars has a very thin atmosphere, there's still a good amount of carbon dioxide available, and carbon (properly processed) plus oxygen makes a quite passable rocket fuel combination.

The harder part to explain away is that the additional mass would throw off every calculation involved in changing the orbit of the spacecraft to begin with, so unless they adjusted for the unexpected mass without questioning why they needed to do so, they would miss Mars in the first place.

/Your Friendly Neighborhood Anonymous Internet Canine

[gingicat]

The solution in The Cold Equations in ingenious, though not possible with current levels of technology.