Stowaway on Netflix (film, script, actors, watching)
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The stowaway, Michael Adams, was a member of the ground crew, his title was 'launch support engineer'. He had already earned his BS in mechanical engineering and was working on his Masters Degree, hoping to come up with some experiment that would get him on the next flight to Mars.
Michael was tasked with arming explosive bolts that would jettison "something" - what ever that something was, or why it might be necessary to jettison it wasn't made clear. Basically, the script writers inserted some technobabble.
Spoiler
What gets me is that the main ship that they use for transit to Mars is obviously an orbital craft that never lands on any planetary surface. The main ship is also at least 30 years old - there are at least 15 old mission patches on one of the bulkheads and each mission is said to take 2 years. Part of the film depicts the current crew adding their mission patch to the collection.
So Michael had to have been trapped in the command capsule before it launched from Earth. This is further supported by the fact that Michael is wearing overalls and not a space suit when he is found. The captain finds Michael when she's in the command capsule, after the capsule and thruster stage have successfully docked with the main ship. But she has to remove an access panel to get Michael out of the innards of the capsule wall - how is it that Michael is sealed up behind a wall in the command capsule? Wouldn't he have had to remove the panel in order to get behind it? Was there another member of the ground crew who had a total brain phart and somehow shut and secured the panel behind Michael, and then left without him? And why isn't there a protocol for ensuring that all ground crew are accounted for prior to launching the command capsule.
One more thing - if Michael is found in the command capsule, and he damages an irreplaceable piece of equipment (the carbon dioxide scrubber, aka the CDRA), then why wasn't there a back-up unit for the CDRA? And why was this item attached to the command capsule and not the main ship? Or better yet, why not TWO CDRAs, a small one for the command capsule and a larger one for the main ship?
I get that this wasn't a NASA operation. It sounds like Hyperion, the organization running the show, is more of a SpaceX corporation that's been doing it so long they're looking for any way to cut costs in any way possible to maximize profits.
But the glaring engineering faux pas just make me rather annoyed. I watched the show in its entirety just to see how bad it could get.
There were some interesting concepts about the design of the space ship.
Check out Scott Manley's YouTube post about how he had been a ship design consultant.
(He does a YT channel to explain astronomy and rockets and space-stuff).
He said his comments have spoilers, so don't watch it until after you've seen the movie.
Scott Manley, the person in the above video, points out that he was one of the technical consultants for the film, and he's even got a very small part in the film as one of the voices of Hyperion mission control.
He does make a valid point about the technical inconsistencies - the writers were on a limited budget and trying to tell a story; they didn't let the tech get in the way of the story.
I guess you could think of this as a story set on a lifeboat in the middle of the Atlantic, except that the writers wanted to make a science fiction movie on a small budget. Knowing the budgetary constraints, the producers did a very good job presenting the spacecraft environment.
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