New Mars

On Tuesday November 9th, the BBC will be airing the first part of Space Odyssey: A Voyage to the Planets, a groundbreaking new documentary series with cutting edge computer graphics and science to match. Based on the ’specumentary’ format of the highly successful Walking with Dinosaurs and Walking with Beasts series, I have high expectations that Space Odyssey will be one of the best space documentaries ever made; they even filmed the actors in weightless parabolic flights for the zero-G scenes! In a first for New Mars, Stuart Atkinson has secured an extensive interview with Chris Riley, Series Producer of Space Odyssey, looking at all aspects of the production and the inspiration for the series.

Over the last few years, viewers in the United Kingdom have been enjoying a series of innovative new documentaries that combine cutting edge computer graphics with science to immerse them in the world of dinosaurs and wild beasts. Walking with Dinosaurs and Walking with Beasts have been met with international success and acclaim, and the latest series looks outwards, towards space. Space Odyssey: Voyage to the Planets (formerly known as ‘Walking with Spacemen’) will receive its premiere airing on November 9th, but Stuart Atkinson from New Mars has secured an exclusive interview with Series Producer Chris Riley. Read on to find out the inspiration behind the series, the creation of the spaceship featured in the show and how they chose the destinations for the astronauts.

New Mars: First of all, Chris, welcome to New Mars and thanks for agreeing to talk to us at what must be a very busy time, with your new book just hitting the shelves and your TV series about to air here in the UK. Could you tell everyone a little about the Space Odyssey project?

Chris Riley: Space Odyssey tells the story of a siarx year human spaceflight to the planets. The idea of doing a big series about a human spaceflight to the planets on TV had been knocking around ever since the late 1990s, but no one had been able to persuade anyone to give them the money to pull it off. But after the huge success of Walking with Dinosaurs and Walking with Beasts the creators of these series wanted to bring this kind of “specumentary” treatment to another subject and at the end of 2002 I got a call from Tim Haines - who’d made Dinosaurs, asking if I’d like to come and help make Walking with Spacemen, (working title). I didn’t need to think hard about it too much. It sounding like a lot of fun and the chance to make childhood dreams come true! I started the project in January 2003.

We would only have one shot at a series like this and those that had put up the money - principally the BBC and Discovery Channel wanted it to be a thrilling tour of our solar system. In that respect we had to cover an awful lot of ground in the two hours of TV that the series would fill. Mars of course was a must - but so was Venus, the Moon’s of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn. I began by working hard on the trajectories that we could harness to take us on a trip that would accomplish all this if we were doing it for real. It was essential that we weaved a story that didn’t break any laws of physics. Everything had to be possible with current technology, even if it was perhaps improbable given the constraints of politics and economics that tend to suffocate big ideas like this. So I spent three months refining the trajectories and researching the propulsion systems that might be able to pull off such a journey.

NM: I’ve gone through the book several times now, and can’t find any actual dates anywhere. What’s the reason for leaving the date of the mission unknown?

CR: It is set in our time. We wanted it to feel “of this generation” and in that respect it’s as more of an alternative history as a look to the future. Our starting point in creating the story was to assume that if we had continued at the same rate as we did in the 1960s, with no financial or political constraints where could we have got to now? In the heady days of the 1960s, as Apollo 11 was heading for the Moon the Vice President Spiro Agnew had declared that we’d have a man on Mars by 1980. And if this too had happened then the idea of a voyage to the other planets in our solar system suddenly feels quite possible. So it is set in the early 21st century and although there is a very precise calendar that we drew up for the trajectories we never mention these actual dates anywhere as we didn’t want people distracted by things like fashion, clothes and hairstyles or the kind of watches being worn and whether they thought such technology would be around on Earth when we make this journey.

NM: As with many BBC projects now, Space Odyssey the series is complemented by a large format book, and as the book is out and the series is yet to air we’ll talk about the book first, then move on to the TV series, if that’s okay? Congratulations on the book, it’s beautiful. If the TV series is half as stunning as the book, all space buffs and enthusiasts are in for a real treat! Probably a daft question, but are you pleased with it?

CR: Yes delighted. We worked hard on the stills pictures in the book for around 6 months as the series was being filmed, to get the look we were after before embarking on the digital effects for the series. All the credit for the incredible pictures in the book must go to an exceptionally talented team of photoshop artists at a company called Framestore CFC in London. Two brothers in particular - Daren and Jason Horely created most of the stunning Mars images which you suggest in your review might be images stolen from the future. I do hope you are right.

As for the story, I wrote it through December and January just passed, immediately following a very grueling period of filming where I’d lived through the story for real as we filmed it. It contains far more information of course than we could fit into the series - and draws on the experiences of about a hundred astronauts - from interviews I’d done, books I’d read and documentaries I’d watched over the years, blurred with the results of over 160 robotic missions which we’ve now dispatched to the planets on our behalf.

NM: There have been lots of books in the past that have taken readers on a “virtual tour” of the solar system, but they’ve all been set in the distant future, with bustling spaceports, tourist flights, hotels on the Moon, etc. Why did you decide to set Pegasus’ mission in the near future, with less fanciful technology?

CR: I was adamant that this series shouldn’t feel like Science Fiction. It was always going to be more Apollo 13 and less Star Trek. Our crews would be landing in capsules - experiencing the gritty reality of a turbulent descent to the surface of Mars or Venus in the way it might eventually happen. In this way I hope it will bring a wider audience to the story than if we’d gone down the more futuristic Science Fiction route. Much as I love to immerse myself in certain science fiction stories (notably the Star Wars saga) I am aware that it is a turn off to a lot of people. There is a barrier between the early 21st century technology we are familiar with and the ultra-high tech worlds portrayed by most Science Fiction. And it was a barrier I was keen to avoid. Anyone who watches the series should be able to imagine themselves or their friends as one of these astronaut explorers - and in that respect it had to feel like it was happening today.

NM: It strikes me the book – the whole Space Odyssey concept - was conceived by someone with a real love of space exploration. So, like many New Mars readers, have you been “into space” ever since you were a kid? Or are you a late convert?

CR: Oh - ever since I was a kid. I wasn’t quite two years old when Armstrong and Aldrin had walked on the Moon and although I’m told that I was made to watch it live I sadly don’t remember it first hand. But by the time the Viking landers had touched down on Mars I knew only too well what the thrill of this mission meant. And with the help of my father I had often been out into the back garden with his binoculars to check out our nearest planets. Then in 1977 Star Wars hit the big screen. I’d never experienced other planets in such a way as George Lucas portrayed them from low orbits above their exotic surfaces. And when Luke Skywalker watched that double star system setting across the desert plains of the planet Tattooine. I was hooked. Planets truly were real worlds like Earth. Sagan’s Cosmos and the Horizon documentaries that the BBC made added to my sense of wonder and awe at this subject. I found a diary from 1979, that I’d kept when I was 11 years old, in a box the other day and over the summer months I’d been so thrilled by the Voyager missions that I’d drawn the whole solar system out across the pages - with the spacecraft trajectories marked on them and lots of exciting annotations of what they were finding in the atmosphere of giant Jupiter. The National Geographic magazine from January 1985 (it’s got a Gorilla on the front cover) was another seminal moment for me. A brilliantly illustrated article by Rick Gore painted our state of the art understanding of the geology of many of the planets and moons of our solar system. There was a wonderful artist’s impression of what one of the Venera spacecraft might look like on the surface of Venus which remained etched onto my mind for decades and inspired one of the scenes in Space Odyssey. I went on to study geology at University and picked a department that ran a third year module in planetary geology which I lapped up. So I guess I was always a bit of a space nut!

NM: Two of the landers used during the Pegasus mission are named after famous figures from the history of astronomy. Was that fun, choosing the names, or did you feel pressure to honour such important figures?

CR: Great fun yes. I really enjoyed picking the names of the spacecraft. I had to honour Clyde Tombaugh when it came to landing on Pluto. I have a bit of a soft spot for Clyde. I wish I’d met him. He died the year I begun researching the BBC series The Planets and so never had that opportunity. But I spent some time at the Lowell Observatory with the survey plates and the blink comparator he’d used during his search for Planet X. So that was an easy choice. Messier - our comet lander was slightly harder. There were so many astronomers to pick when it came to comets, but I guess Messier’s survey was particularly important.

NM: What specifically inspired you to create Space Odyssey? Did any one event trigger it in your mind… maybe the loss of Columbia, I’ve wondered?… or was this one of those long term, “nagging creative itches” we hear about?

The Columbia accident happened within a few weeks of starting to research and write the series. It had a profound effect on the story - in that human spaceflight suddenly seemed a million times harder to achieve. And here were we talking about landing on Venus, aerobraking in Jupiter’s atmosphere and touching down on Pluto! Suddenly Space Odyssey felt even more fanciful. If anything this event perhaps focused us even more on routing our story more firmly in the reality of the challenges and daunting engineering difficulties of trying to pull off such a space flight. I’d also been reading the Columbia crew’s diaries in the run up to the accident and there had been something that Kalpana Chawla had written the day before they died about seeing the whole Earth reflected in her eye and how mesmerising and wonderful the site had been. Some of Kalpana’s thoughts inspired parts of the book. But the concept of the series was born long before Columbia and it was something I’d longed to do since I was a child I guess.

NM: Reading the book I detected more than a hint of the vision of science fiction writers such as Arthur C Clarke and Stephen Baxter. Have any sci-fi writers influenced you particularly during this project?

CR: I interviewed Kim Stanley Robinson a few years ago and was rather embarrassed that I hadn’t read his Mars trilogy properly at the time. So when we started this project I made a point of reading Red Mars - which tells the very realistic story of a first colonising mission to Mars. There’s lots of extremely well researched and well informed ideas about what such a mission might one day be like and I found it a very inspiring account. I also listened repeatedly to a BBC Radio production of Stephen Baxter’s Voyage story which I felt preserved the excitement of the “Apollo-convention” dialogue - lots of phraseology from the real Apollo mission transcripts and communication beeps. And this soundscape was something I was keen to create for our series as well.

NM: In the introduction to the book you say “A generation has grown up not knowing a time when humans could fly to other worlds. Until we decide to go once more, this book is for them”, which makes you sound very angry about the way space exploration has stalled since your childhood. Are you?

CR: Well as I’ve already mentioned I was wowed by the space missions of the 1960s and 70s. Once the Vikings were on Mars it was obvious humans would follow as they had to the Moon. But there was a terrible lack of planetary exploration (when it came to Mars) for the next 21 years and I have always felt rather robbed of that experience. I felt like a young child again in 1997 when Pathfinder bounced down onto Ares Valles and wished it had happened in the 1970s or 80s. We can’t get those lost years back, and I feel that way every time a mission fails. So many years still elapse between missions that it’s still very frustrating, although I do feel lucky to live at this time when so many planetary missions are flying again. As for human space exploration I don’t think it’s ever delivered the promise of what it could be since we left the Moon. Of course human missions to the planets are very costly and need a good reason to go. And it’s not always easy to find a good reason other than George Mallory’s “because it’s there” which was always enough for Kennedy. So why isn’t it enough anymore?

NM: Which space missions of the past have made the biggest impact on you? Judging from the book you’re a much bigger fan of manned missions than of unmanned missions..?

CR: I adore the robot missions to the planets as much as human missions. As I’ve already mentioned the Viking landers, Pathfinder, the Voyagers, Magellan, Mars Golbal Surveyor, Mars Express, and the MER landers have all thrilled me to bits. But I have a soft spot for human space flight. There’s a connection you can always make with a human that’s harder to make with a robotic flight. The Apollo-Soyuz mission held great significance for me, coming at a time when I was just about old enough to remember it - I felt it symbolised a hope for working in space together as a planet rather than for individual national pride. The first Space Shuttle flight was an immense influence too. The TV feed from the launch site in Florida was being shown in our school library all day and between each lesson I’d race over there to see what had happened. I was late for every single lesson that day! The other human missions that made a big impact on me where when the Shuttle started to dock with Mir. Tomorrow’s World covered STS-71 live and I was answering the phones during the programme to answer viewers questions. Someone called up with a ham radio receiver and patched the crew through to my phone call. “Dosvidanya Mir, Dosvidanya Mir” the caller cried. And back came a crackly Russian voice saying goodbye. I rushed outside after the call and saw the Shuttle and Mir shining brightly as it sailed by in the dusky sky overhead. But all these missions are knocked into touch by the Apollo series. Those men who left the relative safety of Earth orbit to head for the Moon undertook the most significant human endeavour ever to have been attempted. And it seems to me more incredible with every year that passes that they accomplished this immense undertaking so successfully all those years ago. I feel privileged to live on Earth at the same time as them and the gift of Apollo is one I shall always treasure and look to for inspiration as long as I live.

NM: Apollo 15 Commander Dave Scott was one of the project’s advisors. What was it like to work with one of the men who have actually walked on another world? Exciting? Humbling? Terrifying?

CR: With every brush I have every had with a Moon walker I always feel thrilled at each encounter. And working closely with Dave Scott was no exception. Yes I was nervous about our initial meeting. There is always a risk whenever you meet your heroes that you might say something to upset them, or vice versa. But I had nothing to fear. Dave is one of the most charming and delightful human beings you could hope to meet. He was both generous with his time and a joy to have on the project. Bringing his unique experience to our scripts and during filming on set as he coached the actors to deliver their lines and perform their space walks and surface exploration scenes in as accurate and realistic way as possible brought a realism to the series that few human beings could provide.

NM: Onto the Pegasus itself. It’s a beautiful ship. Who advised you on the design, and how realistic is its technology?

CR: Once we had our trajectories and planetary encounters plotted out we turned to a number of spacecraft engineers to help us design a spacecraft for the job. The design of Pegasus is completely inspired by necessity and the mission it needed to pull off. Former spacecraft engineer and historian Dr David Baker came up with the exterior design and Professor Chris Welch from Kingston University came up with the life support system designs and provided the calculations needed to keep the crew alive. The spacecraft company EADS Space in Stevenage helped to turn the initial sketches into engineering designs that our digital artists could work with and Pegasus was born. It’s divided into three portions - a giant 400 meter aerobraking shield at one end which also houses the nuclear fusion engine. A 700 meter truss separates the engine from the habitation module which is assembled from clusters of spent Space Shuttle external fuel tanks. An artifical gravity system rotates 100 meter arms with sleep and exercise modules at each end which rotate at 2.8 rpm to simulate 0.5Gs. Solar panels for emergency power in the inner solar system and radiators also adorn this portion of the ship and a couple of giant superconductor tarus cores at each end of the hab module create an artifical magnetosphere to protect the crew from extremes of ionising radiation. At the other end is another 300 meter truss and a y-shaped Brayton cycler - power system.

NM: When she saw it, a friend of mine commented that the 5 man crew of the Pegasus is very “politically-correct”… international, mixed race, mixed colour… a deliberate decision?

CR: This mission is for all mankind and we tried to represent a broad breadth of cultures and ethnic backgrounds in that respect. Not really politically correct but an attempt to reflect the whole planet. And it’s the same at Mission Control - we wanted an atmosphere that felt like the United Nations - drawing on the finest minds and greatest talents from every corner of the globe.

NM: The photo-realistic digital renderings in the book are absolutely stunning, among the best I’ve ever seen. Tell us a little about the team responsible for them.

CR: The digital artists are all from Framestore CFC - the creators of the Walking with…. documentaries and many of the finest films of our time. I agree. I was thrilled with their images - particularly their work on Mars. They are extremely talented artists and I found it a very rewarding collaboration between the planetary science community and these artists.

NM: Have you a favourite image in the book? (Mine would have to be the astronauts peering down into Valles Marineris, and the astronaut standing on Io, with an aurora flickering above her head…)

CR: Yes - I simply adore the Valles Marineris image too. Definitely my favourite.

NM: What about a favourite crew member? And why? I’d have to go with the Mission Scientist Zoe Lessard, she seems the most human to me.

CR: I do like Zoe’s character. She was based on astronaut Susan Helms, who I read moved out of her appartment and put all her possessions into storage before one of her missions so that she could think of the ISS as her home. I like the commander - Tom Kirby too. He’s got a lot of great leadership qualities, he’s very calm under pressure and carries the single minded conviction and drive to accomplish such an ambitious mission.

NM: The story of Pegasus’s epic journey isn’t a fairytale; without giving too much away, not all the crew make it home. Were you ever tempted to go for a “happy ending”, after the tragedies suffered by the real space program?

CR: A lot of space series tend to major on the doom and gloom of space - the next thing to threaten Earth. One of the criticisms of the Sam Neil series I heard was that it was too depressing. What with gamma ray bursts, the Sun running out of fuel and asteroid and comet impacts it was all a bit grim. But we were always adamant that we wanted to reflect the reality of the risks of this kind of mission and in that respect a totally happy ending wouldn’t have been totally appropriate.

NM: Although the Pegasus visits many places on its epic tour, it obviously can’t visit everywhere. Which worlds, or bodies, did you want to explore but couldn’t through lack of room? I’d have liked to have seen the crew exploring Phobos, and Mimas; I’d have loved to have seen one of the astronauts standing on the summit of the mountain in the centre of Herschel crater and looking up at Saturn’s rings cutting the planet in half…

CR: Yes - we were spoilt for choice with the series and it was frustrating - loosing worlds with dramatic views like those you describe. Personally I really wanted to land them on Titan - the thought of those extra-terrestrial oceans was a real treat. But they’re existence isn’t proved just yet and by January next year I hope we will know more for sure about the exotic surface of this weird world after the Huygens mission. But Tim felt it too risky to guess at Titan and then find we were proved wrong before the series airs in the US. So maybe next time!!

NM: On to the TV series now… If the book’s anything to go by the series will be visually stunning. British TV has certainly come a long way since the wobbly spaceships of Blakes 7 and the cardboard corridors and papier mache aliens Dr Who, hasn’t it?

CR: Oh yes - the processing power of affordable computers has transformed what we can do. Like you I grew up with Dr Who and Blakes 7 and never really questioned the effects, but the bar has been raised exponentially since then and TV has struggled to keep up with the multi-million pound movie industry. The trouble with doing something like this for a TV event is that it’s got to be as good as the movies or people will flick over, and that was very hard to do with the much smaller budget we had. Although it was a very generous documentary budget it was a very small drama budget - particularly a drama that had to look so visually stunning. Very daunting. But we squeezed very last penny out of the budget and everyone worked round the clock day and night to do it! Our director Joe Ahearne has gone on to direct the daleks in the new Dr Who series - and I wonder what he’ll make of them after Space Odyssey!

NM: Today, TV audiences are used to ultra-realistic special effects. Do you think Space Odyssey’s effects can compete with those seen in series such as Enterprise and Battlestar Galactica?

CR: I hope we are as good. Cos if we’re not people will switch over. It’s essential to match these series if we want to hold on to our audience.

NM: It’s generally agreed that Walking With Dinosaurs, another BBC series, set new standards for TV special effects. Do you consider Space Odyssey’s special effects to be as groundbreaking as the effects seen in Walking With Dinosaurs?

In this genre I do think Space Odyssey has set new standards on TV, but that’s for you lot to decide!

NM: For all its sfx, Space Odyssey is a very human story. What were the actors like to work with? Were any of them space fans already? Did any become space enthusiasts whilst working on the project?

CR: The actors were all space novices! We put them through a kind of space school to convert them - with lectures on planetary science, astronomy, engineering and human spaceflight. It was hard for them to get to grips with all the techno-babble but I think I do a very good job. By then end I think they’d gone as far as they could towards space without going all the way - floating weightless during parabolic flights wearing real cosmonaut space suits.

NM: How long did it take to film Space Odyssey?

CR: We filmed for just ten weeks during September to November last year (2003) but the series took two years to make. There was a year of post production alone.

NM: Which are your own personal favourite sequences in the series? Having seen how many pages are devoted to it in the book, I’m guessing you’re a big fan of Mars exploration…

CR: Mars is a place we know more about than any other planet beyond Earth. Our robots have spent more than 12 cumulative years on the surface and I felt we had a very good chance of simulating a very realistic human experience on Mars. There’s a very rich body of research to draw on for these scenes in the series and the pages in the book. My first draft of this chapter was twice the length it’s published at! There’s just so much to say!

NM: I gather the Mars sequences were filmed in Chile? Why did you shun the usual suspect pseudo-Mars locations, such as Death Valley, Arizona, etc?

CR: I looked at a place called Mars Hill in Death Valley which is a dead ringer of the Viking 1 landing site - but the thing that swung it to Chile was that we also needed a location that was a cloudy desert to pull off Venus, and we could get that on the coast in N.Chile and then pick up our Mars scenes further inland. The Atacama desert was also voted the most Mars like place on Earth by researchers at Mexico State University whilst we were filming there. So it was the right place to go for both planets!

NM: So far - with perhaps the honourable exception of Capricorn One - depictions of Mars seen on both the small and big screen have disappointed. Are you hoping that Space Odyssey’s Mars sequences will make up for the disappointing portrayals of Mars seen in Mission to Mars and Red Planet?

CR: We worked hard to get it right. The butterscotch skies, the dust storms, the reality of a dust devil and of course the 1/3rd gravity that no previous film seems to have every bothered with so I hope our recreations of Mars will help them to get it more accurate in the future!

NM: As a British writer and program maker, producing a project for the BBC, were you tempted to have the crew find Beagle 2 on Mars? Similarly, were you tempted to have the crew visit Spirit or Opportunity, to appeal to the US market?

CR: We’d already visited Venera 14 on Venus in the story when we reached Mars and although it was an idea we bounced around - finding Pathfinder in fact, (as when we filmed Spirit, Opportunity and Mars Express hadn’t arrived and we didn’t know what the outcome of these missions would be) it was decided that discovering one old robot in the series was enough and as many people don’t know we’ve been to Venus that was the one we wanted to pay tribute to.

NM: Are there any sequences missing from the book that we’ll see on TV? Things you wanted to keep for the series? I’m hoping to see the Shackleton probe gathering its samples on Europa. For that matter, why didn’t you land people on Europa, when there’s so much interest and excitement about it amongst exobiologists?

CR: The opposite in fact. There are scenes in the book, (like Juno - the nuclear ram jet exploring Jupiter) which didn’t make it into the film. We didn’t build Shackleton in the end - although its views of the surface of Europa are still in the series. The reason for not landing humans on Europa was that the radiation expose in Jupiter’s Van Allen belts is immense and only one EVA was feasible. It was easier to do a short (few hour) visit to Io than Europa - which required weeks of drilling to penetrate the ice. So we felt on balance it was better to do that bit of exploration with a robot. But you are correct - exobiology is a keystone part of the mission and something that underpins the whole series.

NM: Finally… when the Pegasus crew land on Pluto, they set up a telescope to detect and image planets orbiting other stars, far out in space. Is this a subtle hint that there may be a sequel one day? Will we see the great grandchildren of the Pegasus crew setting off for 51 Pegasi?

CR: Maybe. We’ve already written the treatment for a sequel and I’d love to make it. But that will depend on how well this series does. We’ll have to get a lot of viewers for another series to be made!

NM: Chris Riley, many congratulations on the book, and best wishes for the TV series – and thank you for talking to New Mars.

CR: It’s been a pleasure. I do hope you enjoy the series as much as the book, and that these truly are images stolen from the future. It would be a shame if this wonderful story didn’t happen for real one day!

Filed under: Interviews on October 30th, 2004