BBC's Space Odyssey

It will be on German tv on November 18, 20.15h at channel Pro 7.

Harald

Jacques van Oene wrote:
BBC's Space Odyssey

Shortly after ESA astronaut Pedro Duque returned from the Cervantes Mission
to the International Space Station, ESA's Mission Control Centre in the
Erasmus User Centre at ESTEC, Noordwijk, was cleared to make way for a TV
production team. For eleven days in November 2003, the User Centre became
the setting for the new BBC drama-documentary 'Space Odyssey: Voyage to the
Planets', to be broadcast on BBC TV this week.

More at:
http://www.esa.int/export/esaCP/SEMR...Kingdom_0.html

--
---------------------------

Jacques :-)

www.spacepatches.info

On Wed, 10 Nov 2004 18:03:27 +0100, Harald Kucharek
wrote:

It will be on German tv on November 18, 20.15h at channel Pro 7.

It's worth watching.

Harald

Jacques van Oene wrote:
BBC's Space Odyssey

Shortly after ESA astronaut Pedro Duque returned from the Cervantes Mission
to the International Space Station, ESA's Mission Control Centre in the
Erasmus User Centre at ESTEC, Noordwijk, was cleared to make way for a TV
production team. For eleven days in November 2003, the User Centre became
the setting for the new BBC drama-documentary 'Space Odyssey: Voyage to the
Planets', to be broadcast on BBC TV this week.

More at:
http://www.esa.int/export/esaCP/SEMR...Kingdom_0.html

--
---------------------------

Jacques :-)

www.spacepatches.info




Christopher
+++++++++++
"Never take anything for granted."

Benjamin Disraeli

"Christopher" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 10 Nov 2004 18:03:27 +0100, Harald Kucharek
wrote:

It will be on German tv on November 18, 20.15h at channel Pro 7.

It's worth watching.

Harald

Jacques van Oene wrote:
BBC's Space Odyssey

Shortly after ESA astronaut Pedro Duque returned from the Cervantes
Mission
to the International Space Station, ESA's Mission Control Centre in the
Erasmus User Centre at ESTEC, Noordwijk, was cleared to make way for a
TV
production team. For eleven days in November 2003, the User Centre
became
the setting for the new BBC drama-documentary 'Space Odyssey: Voyage to
the
Planets', to be broadcast on BBC TV this week.

More at:
http://www.esa.int/export/esaCP/SEMR...Kingdom_0.html

--
---------------------------

Jacques :-)

www.spacepatches.info




Christopher
+++++++++++
"Never take anything for granted."

Benjamin Disraeli

mm.
Hiya, i watched that last night..
i was a bit dissapointed myself..
The acting / script / plotting / direction etc was a little weak maybe..
The cgi ship model isnt bad. most other effects weren`t all that amazing
i thought. on the plus side they did do some real "zero-g" filming in sets
in some russian vomit comet, it was kind of interesting that you could see
the actors were quite obviously not used to it, in contrast to footage of
normal astronauts.
I felt it was pretty contrived overall. There were a lot of predictable
"tense" moments.
Astronaut(s) actually land on venus and walk about !! in a carbon copy
of an early moon landing. they handwave away the minor issue of crushing
pressure and temperature by giving the very derivative looking suit some
generic "cooling". theres only the most superficial amount of information
given about the places visited. Mars and Venus both look pretty similar too.
There were a lot of fairly daft things that happened. One example is
that to leave earth orbit, the ships nuclear engines fire -forward- which
unless im being especially stupid, is not an efficient way to boost out of
orbit.
In particular there was a moment, which seemed to be uncomfortably
similar to the moments in the nasa control centre when colombia broke up and
was out of contact. i felt it was a bit tasteless.
I will prob watch the next one, but i think it will probably be
dissapointing.
what did others think ?

R

Russell Dunwoody

"Russell Dunwoody" wrote in message ...

snip - agree with all.

I will prob watch the next one, but i think it will probably be
dissapointing.
what did others think ?

Not bad, but it's still fiction.

- Why would a first exploration cover all the planets in one go?
Several disadvantages, and no advantage. If they don't come back, all
the samples are lost.
- How did they get off Venus in a lunar lander sized probe? That would
required nuclear powered ram jets.
- When doing the solar flyby, they forgot to ignite the engines. As
such, the sun would have provided zero gravity assist. Flying from
Mars to Jupiter via the sun requires much more delta-V, and increases
the braking force needed at Jupiter.
- All TV sci-fi persists with the notion that flying through the
asteroid belt is hugely dangerous. No doubt Saturn's rings will be
like standing under an avalanche.
- I don't think the modular, elongated structure could with stand the
Jupiter braking if the humans black out (~10g?)
- The refuelling at Mars was a credible idea (except it would have
been better to send the astronauts with the fuel, not via Venus. Also
- IIRC, it was hydrogen, which would have largely boiled off. Also,
module swapping would be easier and more reliable than pumping
hydrogen from one tank to another.

It has of course been dumbed down. But as "docu-drama" goes, it's
about as good as it gets.

I'll watch the next one, even I do keep going "tut-tut - they forgot
this and that".

In message
(Alex Terrell) wrote:

It has of course been dumbed down. But as "docu-drama" goes, it's
about as good as it gets.

I saw the "Making of..." style prog and wasn't impressed but missed the
main event, it's listed for repeats already so I'll try enduring it
then. Still, my DVD of "Star Cops" arrived today as a reminder that the
BBC can do decent space-based drama!

Anthony

Christopher wrote in message . ..
On Wed, 10 Nov 2004 18:03:27 +0100, Harald Kucharek
wrote:

It will be on German tv on November 18, 20.15h at channel Pro 7.

It's worth watching.

Here is what the Times wrote about it. Of course, one can't expect a
detailed technical appraisal from The Times. They also rather miss the
points of space exploration.

November 10, 2004

Last night's TV

Failing to cross the final frontier
Joe Joseph

OUTER SPACE: it goes on and on, seemingly without end; it is
frequently hostile; often unpredictable; just entering it swallows up
millions of dollars; people are baffled by the hullabaloo and
excitement it generates, given how little it actually affects their
daily lives; and it is dominated by species who don't speak the same
language as normal human beings — no wait, that's not outer space,
that's the American presidential election I was thinking of.

Space Odyssey: Voyage to the Planets (BBC One) is an intriguing new
project, given that the BBC seems to have sent only a five-strong
posse of men and women to cover this six-year-long, eight-billion-mile
virtual trip to Venus, Mars and Jupiter. Only five people? To cover
such a major event? When the BBC dispatched almost half its staff to
America last week to cover the race for the White House?

On recent form, you kept expecting to see Peter Snow turn up with
Day-Glo graphics and a reminder that it was all just a bit of fun at
this early stage in the mission, and David Dimbleby hosting a special
edition of Question Time from an orbiting space station (guest Michael
Moo "Look, it's a fantasy. These so-called planets don't exist. The
US space programme is just a ruse for George Bush to distract the
world's attention while he siphons the fuel out of your car's petrol
tank and sells it back to you at twice the price next week via one of
Dick Cheney's oil companies"), and Huw Edwards anchoring the
proceedings from a spot in the solar system, carefully chosen so that
Mars might appear photogenically above his left shoulder, to prove to
viewers that even if has nothing new to say, he is saying it live.

The universe can be tricky territory for primetime TV. Space, what
with it being infinite and all, can seem as if it's just never going
to end. So a human angle can help to lure viewers. The mission of
Space Odyssey — which is made by the same team that produced Walking
with Dinosaurs — is to weave the known facts about the planets in our
solar system into the folds of an enticing drama, so that the result
looks like a documentary.

The surfaces of Venus and Mars look as realistic as you could hope
for. The astronauts and the scientific crew back on Earth do an
impressive job of that trickiest of assignments: acting as if you're
not acting; that is, behaving during interviews with the "documentary
makers" with just the amount of awkwardness you would expect from
astro-experts not used to explaining their jobs to film crews.

But you couldn't help wondering why — if everything we see in this
digitally-confected series is scientifically accurate — anyone would
now bother spending further billions firing expensively trained
astronauts into outer space just to repeat it all in reality? On the
other hand, if Space Odyssey merely represents the best guess of what
life in space is like, does the absence of a more detached, more
explicit, documentary structure risk making astrophysics seem more
prosaic than it is? This is a series aimed at adult audiences,
broadcast at an adult time of day, yet it seems to have processed its
science into an easy-to-chew meal, maybe more obviously targeted at a
younger audience.

The computer wizardry is clever, though perhaps no longer quite so
impressive as when such film technology first made audiences' jaws
drop. As for those dusty wastelands on Venus and Mars, they reminded
you of those dusty wastelands in Australia and North America, which
remain barren because nobody is the least bit interested in even
visiting them, let alone inhabiting them. If we can't be bothered to
visit an arid dustbowl a short plane-ride away, why are we so obsessed
with conquering new arid dustbowls we won't want to visit? A few tips
as to why might make this BBC space mission more beguiling.

(Alex Terrell) :

Here is what the Times wrote about it. Of course, one can't expect a
detailed technical appraisal from The Times. They also rather miss the
points of space exploration.

November 10, 2004

Last night's TV

Failing to cross the final frontier

[Snip review]

AAAAARRRRHHHHH Is that what pass as a review now? Aside from the questions
raised in the last paragraph that are valid ones, I learnt very little about
the show from this review, instead they seem too busy scoring political
points to bother watching the show itself.

Earl Colby Pottinger

--
I make public email sent to me! Hydrogen Peroxide Rockets, OpenBeos,
SerialTransfer 3.0, RAMDISK, BoatBuilding, DIY TabletPC. What happened to
the time? http://webhome.idirect.com/~earlcp

Earl Colby Pottinger wrote in message ...
(Alex Terrell) :

Here is what the Times wrote about it. Of course, one can't expect a
detailed technical appraisal from The Times. They also rather miss the
points of space exploration.

November 10, 2004

Last night's TV

Failing to cross the final frontier

[Snip review]

AAAAARRRRHHHHH Is that what pass as a review now? Aside from the questions
raised in the last paragraph that are valid ones, I learnt very little about
the show from this review, instead they seem too busy scoring political
points to bother watching the show itself.

These days, with a few exceptions, Newspapers are here to entertain, not to inform.