Mars is just a tiny dot in the sky.
Forty million miles away.
Nothing lives there.
Nothing has ever died there,
but I'm going to bring it to life.
Fourteen hours and counting.
Captain.
Good luck, sir.
Skinny. Hey, excited?
Of course, you? You bet your ass I am.
Perform a.P.U. Start.
Six billion people on earth
cheering me on, but most of them wondering why I'd do this.
Commencing launch sequence. O.S.M. Permit to close.
Why leave this life behind to die on some barren planet?
- Vent one heater exit. - Exit. S.S.C.
Because I know it won't be barren for long.
- G.L.S. On. - G.L.S. Is on.
Final poll. Houston flight?
- Fido? - Fido is go.
- Gpo? - Gpo is go.
- Stm? - Stm is go.
- Spe? - Go.
Cdr? Commander is go.
We are go for launch.
T-minus ten, nine, eight...
This is a one-way mission, but I'm not going there to die.
I'm going to Mars to live.
This is captain William d. Stanaforth here aboard the good ship Zephyr.
We are go for Mars.
Roger that, captain.
- Gravitational spin is on. - Copy that.
Requesting permission to kick off my shoes for the rest of the ride.
Roger, captain, you have permission.
Lights, on.
Welcome to space, captain.
That's the crowd out in the parking lot here in Houston.
We're all thrilled.
That said, we'd like to start
running diagnostics on some of the life support systems we can't monitor.
Copy that stanaforth?
Starting with the essentials, let's run a test of the air circulation
and the water reactor.
Yeah, give me a minute, skinny.
Hello, little guys.
How life on earth started is a mystery,
but sustaining it is an engineering problem.
One meter of steel and insulation separate me from nothingness.
I can feel the pull of the ship's rotation.
My feet are heavy, my head is light.
This massive machine, so tiny in the void of space,
powerful but fragile.
It's unnerving, but I love it.
Hello, captain? It's time for your first weekly student interface.
Are you ready for the uplink?
Kind of busy here.
Stanaforth, take a break. P.R. Is important, too.
Plus a little human interaction could do you good.
Good morning captain stanaforth, I'm Mrs. Wilson,
and I'm going to be monitoring the student q and a
for the American youth in science program.
Our first question comes from Samantha hopps.
Hi, my question is, if you make it to Mars,
how will you be able to survive the harsh climate?
When I get to Mars, we've already sent up a lot of materials, fuel, food.
But one of the big challenges was water. They just can't send up enough.
That's why I had been working on this reactor.
Wow, you made that? What does it do?
It's very similar to the fuel cells on the ship.
Like an electric car, the product is power,
and the byproduct is drinking water.
Only mine runs on dirt.
I invented a process to extract the hydrogen and the oxygen from the soil,
and recombine them, which makes h20.
No one thought it would work,
so I went out to the atacama desert
alone, with no water, and only one way to survive.
To make that reactor work.
Day one, I'm making little adjustments. My throat is parched.
Day two, I'm still working, but without water I'm getting light-headed.
I could have radioed in for a rescue,
but I thought I could fix it.
By day three, I'm doing a full reset.
And in that instant, I knew that this could work on Mars.
With this step, I leave the earth moving to a barren new planet.
Hmm.
With this step, i leave the earth
moving to a pristine new planet.
I'm leaving earth forever, but I will not be alone.
I am leaving earth but bringing humanity with me.
Bringing you with me.
Mankind has transcended.
Mankind has achieved new heights... come on.
I have come to another planet seeking a new start, a fresh start,
a new start.
Take me to your leader.
Houston to Zephyr. It's 0800 hours. Time to go to work.
What's the weather like at Mars base camp right now?
You've got a high of about minus 10 degrees with some ice clouds moving in,
and then it's going to drop down to about minus 80 tonight.
Ice clouds? Yeah.
Hot and humid. Hurricane weather buddy.
My family, we'd be flying on days like this.
Yeah well, that is crazy.
Most people on earth think what you're doing's pretty crazy.
It's a calculated risk.
Don't you have any worries that something might go wrong?
Of course I'm worried, but I only focus on things I control.
Like the weather?
Someday.
Yeah!
Stanaforth!
You okay?
I had to test it out. It worked.
They're going to give us the mission.
Whoa, I don't know that we're ready for the mission, stanaforth.
I know.
Over the next five years we could get 1,000 people up there.
That planet is calling for us.
Ship computer civilian interviews, edited.
I'm applying for the second Mars mission because
I want to do something great for humanity.
Earth has so many problems.
Inequality, war, natural disasters, man-made disasters.
I just don't think it's a good place to live anymore.
There's so much I love about earth that we won't have on Mars.
Oceans and forests, animals, insects, rain.
It's going to be really hard to leave,
but I'll give it all up to experience something totally unique.
I know there will be just a few of us but,
this will be the most amazing people
on earth, or on Mars.
The most amazing people in the universe.
Captain stanaforth is like a superhero.
I don't want to be alone, but I think that being alone,
being one of only a dozen or a few hundred people on an entire planet.
There's a sort of melancholy to that, which could be really beautiful.
Supply depot coming up.
Last stop for food and fuel for the next 20 million miles.
Captain?
Earth to stanaforth.
Stanaforth?
Hey, I thought we lost you.
Careful now. We're approaching the space station.
Because of the initial launch delays, you won't have
a lot of time up there to load supplies.
Ah, come on skinny, these are the last people I'm going to see for a long time.
Hey.
Fruits from the Zephyr.
Ah!
Mmm!
You know I haven't had anything this tasty in four months.
Your garden didn't take?
No, dead in two weeks.
So far so good in mine,
but we'll see.
Endurance, this is Houston. Ready payload number two.
Fuck, can we even say hi here?
Oh yeah, sorry. Hi greenstreet, how ya doing?
Sorry you're still stuck up there, buddy.
Because of the initial launch delays, the new departure time is in eight hours.
Might as well keep my suit on.
Where's the captain?
Hey worsley,
captain stanaforth is here. Can you come and say hi?
Hey worsley, how ya doing?
Hey, worsley.
What's going on?
You have plants.
Yeah. For experiments.
You hungry?
We had mice.
We were doing socialization experiments on the mice,
to see how they would interact in the air lock.
Have you ever seen a mouse in zero gravity?
They all died.
Oh.
We thought, maybe they would form different habits,
or become depressed or even kill each other,
but they didn't.
They just died.
No, no, no I'm just playing a song for my daughter back home.
I'm surprised mission control gives you the time.
Uh, we have a lot of time.
Nothing but time.
It must be hard being away from your daughter so long.
Abort your mission.
- Excuse me? - You heard me.
Take all your fancy machines and go back where you came from.
I'm sorry, what the fuck are you talking about?
I'm just fucking with you.
But seriously, I...
You know I came up here all cowboy like you.
Seeking adventure and all that,
but I'm going back. I'm bringing this experience back with me.
I... I don't get you.
I don't wanna go back. I've seen enough.
How could you possibly have seen enough?
I mean look at that. I have tears
every time the sun rises.
Yeah, it's beautiful.
You've only been up,
what three weeks?
You haven't forgotten yet. Once you forget...
I don't intend to forget, but when you're down there
Ah, you callous fuck, you think you know everything.
we've got a live feed of captain Maddox's launch for you.
Roger capcom, I'm eager to see it.
Cdoct.
T-minus 10...
- Reconfigure heaters. - ...Seven...
- two, one. And ignition. - Okay, odccdr
- you are reaching frequency. - And liftoff.
Odc copy.
Five thousand meters at mach 1.
Pressure 60%.
L.V.L.H. Go.
Start roll program.
Pitch is programing.
Roll complete.
Twenty thousand and mach 2.
Max pressure.
Reduce thrust.
This is captain Emily Maddox aboard the boreas.
On my way to Mars.
Hearing there from captain Emily Maddox
aboard the boreas as she leaves earth's atmosphere,
just three weeks' behind captain William stanaforth traveling on the Zephyr.
These two astronauts have spent the last five years
training for this nine-month journey
to become the first and second human beings on Mars
and the founding citizens of...
You don't know, stanaforth.
Don't go out there thinking you do.
Space station departure complete.
Hi, captain stanaforth.
What is it like to look back at earth
when you're further away than any human being has ever been?
It's amazing.
When you have this level of distance,
there's a strange intimacy.
When I watched earth disappear,
I did remember this one night.
My wife Casey,
now ex-wife,
she was receiving the melville prize
from some literary society.
This black-tie thing, and she's...
Talking to these other writers,
brilliant people and uh...
And they were pouring their hearts out. It was...
Overwhelming.
So I snuck out.
I didn't even take my coat.
I get out on the street, i have no idea where I am,
and it's freezing cold,
but the streets are jammed
with people, it's like I'm taking on a current.
I just started walking.
But I don't feel cold at all.
And uh...
I turn a corner,
and just then down at the end of the street,
above the river,
the moon comes up.
And it's huge.
Lighting up the street.
It feels like I...
I just wanna
walk right onto it.
But I freeze.
No one else seems to notice.
And in that moment,
I felt...
Completely alone.
I walked back to the dinner,
and I stood outside and I could see all these...
People celebrating.
I saw Casey, she was glowing.
And I knew I should be in there with her.
But I stood outside and now I'm shivering.
And I just, couldn't go in.
It was like this, this...
Loneliness... This feeling of being...
Completely alone was inside of me.
And if I brought that in...
Um...
I just shouldn't bring it in.
Minor problem on the reactor,
but it's my job to fix it.
I'm glad to have little challenges to break up my routine.
The ship is going 160,000 miles per hour,
but I can't tell I'm moving.
The sun comes through the window once a week,
and everything repeats.
At first, that felt normal.
The ship is getting filthy.
It's fascinating to witness how much matter can be generated by plant decay
and my own skin.
Greenstreet and worsley have lost hope.
I think that's because their experiments failed.
Their families are waiting for them.
That sense of disappointment and longing
can get in the way of a mission like mine.
"The impossible..."
The struggle to survive has proven...
Uh... the struggle of this journey
has taken us further...
And...
One step further...
For mankind...
One step further...
Calling Maddox.
I just had a dream I was falling.
Ironic, don't you think?
That's not a dream.
You are falling.
You have any dreams like that?
It's late, stanaforth.
Yeah, okay.
You're right, I'm sorry.
Hey uncle bill, happy birthday.
I wish you happy birthday.
All right,
happy birthday, bill. She says happy birthday.
Happy birthday.
Love you. Bye.
Mucho gusto. Me llamo Patty.
Where are you from Patty?
I'm from méxico,
and you? Where are you from?
Soy de méxico, ?Y tú?
Soy de earth,
I am from Costa Rica.
Yo soy de Costa Rica.
Marte.
Marte...
Voy El marte.
Soy de marte.
Call Maddox.
I guess we're on our own out here.
Houston,
I seem to have lost the signal.
Houston?
Skinny, do I have a signal?
What the fuck?
Houston, do you read me? This is captain stanaforth aboard the Zephyr.
I appear to have lost the signal.
Houston, this is captain stanaforth aboard the Zephyr.
Do you read me? I appear to have lost the signal.
Hello?
Hello, hello!
Fuck! Anyone?
Skinny, come on.
Can anyone hear me?
Stanaforth, what's going on?
Skinny, where the fuck have you been?
Is everything okay? What happened?
I just, uh, I tried to reach Maddox,
and then you, and...
Look, we need you to go radio silent for a bit
while we deal with the situation with Maddox.
Okay. Wait, wait.
What's going on with Maddox? Sit tight.
Skinny?
Call Maddox.
Calling Maddox.
Maddox, this is stanaforth. Do you copy?
What are you after?
Always pleasant to hear from you too, captain.
I just nearly lost it missing you.
I'm off course.
Maddox, when was the last time you performed maintenance on your gyros?
Oh, no, no. You're always trying to pin this shit on me.
Why didn't your software detect the issue?
I'm not trying to pin anything on you.
and we think a malfunction with your gyroscope is what's causing the issue.
Houston, I can fix her gyroscopes.
Stand down captain.
And the whole time she's veering further and further off course.
Just let us deal with it, okay?
Skinny, I know this ship from top to bottom,
better than anyone.
Now listen to me Maddox,
you've got something wrong,
Skinny, he's right. You work on your software, we'll try this.
Get into the equipment bay, 0-8-2.
Disable your gyros.
0-8-2, copy.
Any condensation on the sensors?
I don't see any.
Wipe it down anyway and restart.
We can handle this from down here.
No, but I'm seeing that my port has a crack in it.
Mine looks fine.
That must be your problem.
So what's next?
Okay, here's what we're gonna do.
Go to your bunk monitor.
Pull off the e103 cable.
Copy that.
Get a connector from the mid-deck junction box.
You can't just start pulling cables out of the wall
without asking permission from engineering.
The engineers will be glad there are real people here now.
I'm cleaning up their mess.
Stop all right!
Now screw in the four-pin.
Flip it on.
It worked.
Fantastic.
Holy shit.
I'm starting to get good readings from down here, too.
Thanks, captain. Hopefully, we'll end up in the same place.
I've climbed almost every major mountain on earth.
I've deep-sea dived, I've paraglided.
Nothing could ever touch something like going to Mars.
As an engineer, I'm excited for the technical challenges of the mission.
I know that with people all around the world pushing mankind to get to Mars,
we are going to discover things we can't even dream of now.
Great science will come from this mission...
But even greater inspiration will come
from the simple gesture of getting there.
...this discovery has now been confirmed with new data,
and seems to be correct.
The cosmic expansion that hubble discovered,
is now modulated by an acceleration term.
Its expansion is ever faster with time,
and in that scenario, the universe ends in a catastrophic crescendo
where space-time on the largest scale is ripped apart,
and then within a very short time, maybe minutes or hours,
matter itself is ripped apart.
The atoms of the universe, all of them...
Grass.
"Fresh-cut grass."
Ugh.
Space is leaking into the ship.
Uh, Houston?
You won't be able to see this right now, but I've got
a solar flare coming through.
The particles are passing through my eyes.
Two-thirds approximately, that's...
I fucked up.
I short-circuited the battery,
which contaminated the water supply.
Maybe skinny could help.
I trust him,
but the situation isn't desperate yet.
I've survived before on 600 milliliters of water a day,
but not for this long.
It's my fault the water is contaminated, though.
And I'm gonna be the one to fix it.
I have to lie about the reactor,
because if skinny finds out, they'll abort the mission.
Fucking condensation.
There's nothing to look at,
but now I can't even see outside.
Hey, buddy,
I haven't talked to you in a couple days. How are you doing?
Look, all the work you're doing on the reactor's getting people a little worried.
Everything okay?
I want that thing to still be working if I get up there in a couple years.
You know, if anything goes wrong up there, we'd have to bring you home.
Home? No.
Look, skinny, essential systems are fine.
I'm just running some routine maintenance.
Yeah, but I'm getting an earful from the guys in operations,
and they'd definitely prefer it if you just left it be.
Okay?
Ah!
Can't sleep?
Sleep is on the ship like a ghost.
Sorry, what? Never mind.
Why don't you take a sleeping pill?
I don't like the way those things make me feel.
Well, I'm glad you're still awake.
I have some bad news about Maddox.
Oh, really?
The fix you made on her gyroscope didn't hold.
I'm afraid we're going to have to turn her around.
You okay there, captain?
Look, I just need you to assure me
that you're going to be able to keep it together up there.
Oh, c'mon, what does that mean, huh? What does that... I...
What does that even mean?
It means stay sane and stay focused,
so we don't have any more problems.
Stanaforth, I'm waiting for you to tell me that you're going to be all right.
Well, that is a stupid thing to wait for.
I remember waiting for you to come out of that desert, you know?
When you finally got to that rendezvous.
Lookin' like snake skin.
Do you recall what you said to me? You remember what you said?
You said, "skinny, I squeezed water from a stone."
Well, that's half true.
We really have to abort her mission?
Yeah, we tried everything.
She has to come home, captain.
I'm in here,
and every single other thing is out there.
Condensation.
It's as dry as a desert in here,
but it's a closed system.
The ship,
the plants,
they have to give up their water for me.
I'm sorry.
Come on.
It's all connected.
I just have to replicate systems that work in nature.
Hope is out there.
Super-heat the soil, compress it.
Extract the hydrogen and the oxygen, recombine them.
This is how the universe made water.
This is how life on earth formed.
And I'm trying to recreate the process.
I might have enough water to survive the journey.
But if I can't make the reactor work,
what's the point?
I'll just die alone on Mars.
Come on.
Ah! Fuck!
Goddammit.
Work with me, you stupid piece of fucking junk!
Shit, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I didn't mean it. I'm sorry.
Jesus, captain, what's going on?
You look like shit, the ship's a mess.
People are worried about you.
Everyone's asking me what's going on with you,
and I don't know what to tell them.
Huh?
Stanaforth, c'mon you gotta talk to me here.
Skinny, I fucked up.
I, uh...
I plugged into the... Yeah, my...
My power is... My water supply's fucked.
I poisoned the supply.
What?
How is that possible?
What happened?
I just thought I knew...
What it would be like, but I just... I don't know, I...
Okay, look. Protocol dictates you return to earth right now.
Abort the mission, get you home.
Hopefully we can bring you back safely.
Is there anything that we can do to get it working again?
We'll have at least a day or two before we're able to turn you around and...
I know this ship better than anyone.
I couldn't get it to work.
It's amazing that we can build these machines to shoot us through space.
But in the end we're just these fragile little creatures
staring out at the universe, learning.
The important thing is not the technology,
but the humanity.
The technology enables us to experience something really astonishing.
To walk on Mars, to watch the sunset from another planet.
That kind of raw emotional experience
is what's really significant in this journey.
End transmission.
I thought I had everything figured out.
I spent years planning this mission.
I designed a machine so we could live on another planet.
I made this thing work in the desert but...
But that wasn't the reason I, um...
That wasn't the moment.
I drank the land.
But just when i got it working,
the minute I was gonna take a drink...
My foot, my leg went numb. Bang.
I collapsed.
I tried to take a drink, i couldn't...
I couldn't grip the bottle. My hand was like...
Air.
I thought I was evaporating.
I lay down in the sand,
I wove myself in.
And this barrier
between me and everything
just dissolved.
And I could die,
because life is enormous.
And I loved the feeling of dying,
and then it passed.
The feeling passed.
I could feel my hands,
my feet. I got up, i walked to the rendezvous.
And I made up my mind right there and then.
To go on a one-way mission to Mars.
Good morning, stanaforth.
Time to put on your flight suit.
Houston will be taking the wheel for the turnaround,
but we're gonna need you in the cockpit in case of an emergency.
Fuel has been sent up to the space station.
That'll get you the rest of the way home and...
The mission has failed,
but I can't go back.
I don't care if the machines don't work,
if no one else is coming.
I know what waits for me on earth,
but not up there.
What are you doing? What's going on?
Did you just override the controls?
Stanaforth, you will wind up off course. Do you understand me?
You're gonna end up off course.
I'm trying to help you. Goddammit, stanaforth, stop! That's an order, captain.
Stanaforth!
I hope someone, someday, will read this journal.
I don't know if I'm on course.
My ship isn't telling me.
If I miscalculated, I'll miss Mars by a million miles,
drifting into space forever.
I keep up my routine,
but I've lost hope in the mission.
Hoe!
Huh, huh, huh,
hoe, hoe, hoe.
Hoe!
So many people wanted to be part of this journey,
and sent me messages along the way.
I let you down.
Maddox trusted me,
and then I failed.
I hope someday you get another mission.
To keep going with what we started.
And skinny...
I can almost hear you out there,
trying to reach me.
Now that I'm not going to make it,
you must feel like I do.
Broken.
Empty.
For me, I'm trapped inside my own machine.
Pressed down by gravity.
Wringing out the last drops of water,
withering away.
What does it matter if I live another day,
another week, drying up in this tiny box?
This is all i have left to give.
I want to get out there.
I wanna be ripped apart by space, overwhelmed.
Why not open the hatch and step outside?
Stanaf...
I'm trying to...
If you...
Stana... skinny, are you there...
Houston, trying to reach...
If you're alive... Let us know...
Can you hear...
If you... signal...
Get through the...
Stanaforth, are you...
Magnetic storm...
You're close to a...
Storm safely... You'll be there...
Close...
We're rooting for you...
Skinny...
Whole world...
It's me.
Stanaforth, come in.
Yeah, I'm here. I'm...
Skinny... so...
You're so close.
This is it.
Our bodies are more space than matter.
There's an unfathomable distance between each atom,
each particle.
What keeps us solid?
Why don't we dissolve?
This is why I came here.
To give everything up.
For one moment of pure wonder.
I don't know if anyone can hear me, but here goes.
Houston, Zephyr is go for landing.
Zephyr released.
Three minutes.
Two minutes, fuel light is on.
One minute.
There's the spot!
Thirty meters, two down.
Ten meters, three forward.
Five meters.
Down.
Houston, this is captain William d. Stanaforth on the surface of Mars.
Nothing has ever lived here.
Nothing has ever died here.
Maybe I'll live forever.