S03.E05: Seven Minutes Of Terror

[paulvdb]

Quote

The race to land first on Mars brings together unexpected allies.

Premiere datre: July 8, 2022

[PurpleTentacle]

I'm a bit unclear on the timeline here. It sounded like Sergei was put in prison shortly after what happened in London. But then why would Margo still go through with sharing their engine design? That doesn't quite track for me. Maybe they janked him right after she shared her plans? Don't know, doesn't seem like the smartest play. Smarter would have been to keep him in play. I mean yes, the KGB was ruthless, but they weren't evil for evils sake. This seems to be written very much from an american perspective and not quite accurate.

That Danny- Ed- stuff I could really do without. I'm not looking foreward to where that is going and I could do with less drama. The Soviets and Americans having to work together is plenty drama for me.

I'm not sure how accurate it is that Mars's atmosphere would produce so much drag, but then I'm not that versed in it. Might be correct. At least now it makes more sense that Sojourner is shaped like it is, not that we know that they actually landed the whole ship.

The ending was funny. "How inspiring."

[yourdreamer]

Can Danny just attempt to kill Ed by kicking him out of an airlock before getting suited up (or duct tape suit him and kick him out or something), so we can move on from this stalker storyline? It really drags the storyline down.  I hated last season when Danny and Karen had their tryst (and I guess she told Wayne Cobb, don't remember that), and it's even worse that it's still affecting current storylines, 10-ish years later.

Other than that plot, I am finding this season is ratcheting up the tension pretty credibly.  The Russian/American tensions feel earned and reasonable.  Not sure about the Margo/Sergei plot, though.

Danny would have plenty of angst and drama just from his parents' deaths - with that one astronaut re-enacting the movie of his parents' lives, apparently.  And that statue that is in front of the Houston NASA building.  The writers just did not need to add the extra stuff between Ed, Karen, and Danny.  Any reasonable person wouldn't be all consumed by those videos from Karen to Ed.  There's nothing remotely sexy or passionate in there, just respect.  Which is the problem - I guess Helios has ZERO mental health therapists or tests before letting people go off into space.

[maczero]

Fun ep.  Weird coincidence that this is the second time in the past week  I've heard NWA's "Express Yourself" in a streaming show (FAM and the Boys).  Anyway, I think it was a mistake for Karen to quit Helios.  Wouldn't she want to keep tabs on what they're doing since the CEO has proven he's both shady and ruthless.  Also, in agreement that the psycho Danny plot needs to end.  I got a kick out of seeing Danielle and the cosmonaut rush out of the shuttle to be first on Mars.  

[marinw]

Great episode. 👍 I loved the humour of the final shot. Danny needs to go he is dragging down the show with his Karen Creepiness.

I still can't get over how luxurious Phoenix is. Maybe Ed can give the other crew a ride home? 🤔 

Edited July 9, 2022 by marinw

[Clawdette]

I HATE the Danny storyline. That is all. 

[Anduin]

I really wasn't in the mood yesterday. But today, I made myself. Looks like Dani was the first one to get a foot down! Other than that, I just really wasn't feeling it.

[marinw]

I predict Ed will find out about Danny and Karen at the worst possible moment.

[xaxat]

Russian astronaut: I don't remember any deal.

Me: Beat his ass Dani! literally and figuratively.

I can't with Margo. I don't care how much she rationalizes her actions, she's a spy.

I've watched several NASA/JPL livestreams of Mars rover landings, and "Seven Minutes of Terror" is nerve racking even for a casual observer.

[marinw]

Great episode. 👍 I loved the humour of the final shot. Danny needs to go he is dragging down the show with his Karen Creepiness.

I still can't get over how luxurious Phoenix is. Maybe Ed can give the other crew a ride home? 🤔 

Poor Sergei. That is all.

Kelly is turning out to be a bit of a Mary Sue.

Edited July 9, 2022 by marinw

[KarenX]

2 hours ago, xaxat said:

I've watched several NASA/JPL livestreams of Mars rover landings, and "Seven Minutes of Terror" is nerve racking even for a casual observer.

Speaking of which… I remember watching Pathfinder land on giant screens at the county fair. I wondered if those scenes with the white tents was real footage from such an event.

[marinw]

Another reason I keep comparing FAM  to The Expanse is that it demonstrates that putting women in charge will not necessarily result in a Feminest Utopia, whatever that could look like.

Edited July 9, 2022 by marinw

[HDJulie]

2 hours ago, marinw said:

Another reason I keep comparing FAM  to The Expanse is that it demonstrates that putting women in charge will not necessarily result in a Feminest Utopia, whatever that could look like.

They are television shows. If they wanted it to result in a Feminist Utopia, they would have done so.  Or, are you saying that they deliberately did not have it become such. 

[Joimiaroxeu]

Ed better hope Dev didn't have a backdoor "eject captain" button installed on the ship.

Karens gonna Karen, lol. Dev wasn't ready for the Baldwins.

Danny was sending that video to his brother? That means Jimmy knows about the tryst with Karen. He better hope Jimmy doesn't let it slip to Danny's wife or Molly.

Margo did Sergei a solid getting him out of that Siberian prison. He was probably receiving beatdowns from Putin himself.

What were those gooballs, fried ganja? Were those really a thing? Yech. 🤮

OMG, Ed. You are going to lose your mind when you find out your boy Danny was the one Karen cheated with. I wouldn't put it past Danny to let Ed know in some slippery way.

Aleida should've let it go. Now Margo has to kill her. 😉

Was Danny trying to let Phoenix crash? I think he likely would've been okay with killing himself if it meant Ed would be dead too.

At least NASA won the Mars race, though having the Russians with them was a cop out IMO. And Dev learned a very expensive lesson: sometimes throwing a ton of money at a thing isn't enough if the Fickle Finger of Fate has other plans.

Wonder what Margo can do to get Sergei and his family to safety without destroying her own future? Plus she's got Aleida to deal with.

Over on reddit they're joking that Kelly is going to get knocked up by the Russian cosmonaut with the first Mars baby. Whee!

[watch2much]

kind of hard to believe both Helios and NASA would risk the success of the mission by not making one more orbit since the dust was clearing.  maybe Helios because Dev wanted that to the exclusion of everything else, but you would think NASA still cared about their crew and ship more than being first.  

not a Dev fan, but he was kind of right when he said no one told them to move forward their Mars plans by two years.  it would be one thing if there wasn't another ship to do it, but there was.  

agree, the Danny story line is boring.

[Dobian]

I'm completely done with the Danny the Obsessed Stalker.

I was totally expecting to see Danielle and the Russian rolling down the ramp punching each other.

I love Dani if only because her last name is Poole, like Jordan Poole of the Golden State Warriors. :D

I was waiting for Margo to toss that binder into a shredder.

Aleida: "Margo, the Russian rocket looks the same as my design."  "Margo, the spec data on the Russian rocket is identical to mine."  Margo, someone in NASA must have leaked my design to to the Russians."  "Margo, someone on our team must have been the leak."  "Margo..." chokes as her neck is snapped.

Kelly became the first member of the 116 million miles high club.

Edited July 11, 2022 by Dobian

[Accidental Martyr]

On 7/8/2022 at 7:31 PM, Clawdette said:

I HATE the Danny storyline. That is all. 

Definitely.

[AnnieBananie]

On 7/9/2022 at 9:16 PM, Joimiaroxeu said:

Aleida should've let it go. Now Margo has to kill her.

I thought that too! As if Margo doesn't have enough on her plate!

What's in the goo goo balls, besides the obvious? I love Karen's friendship with Wayne. 

Danny sucks, Dani rocks. 

[Black Knight]

On 7/8/2022 at 7:25 AM, yourdreamer said:

I hated last season when Danny and Karen had their tryst (and I guess she told Wayne Cobb, don't remember that),

We weren't shown it, but I can believe it since Karen and Wayne do pot together (loose lips) and that a core part of their friendship for them is that they can say things to each other that they would not to anyone else.

On 7/10/2022 at 9:43 AM, watch2much said:

not a Dev fan, but he was kind of right when he said no one told them to move forward their Mars plans by two years.  it would be one thing if there wasn't another ship to do it, but there was.  

That's true. However, Dev picked his date specifically in an attempt to beat the USA and Russia to Mars. He had to fully expect that they would move their projects up. He'd have done the same.

On 7/10/2022 at 9:43 AM, watch2much said:

kind of hard to believe both Helios and NASA would risk the success of the mission by not making one more orbit since the dust was clearing.  maybe Helios because Dev wanted that to the exclusion of everything else, but you would think NASA still cared about their crew and ship more than being first.  

It wasn't NASA's decision, it was Dani's as the commander of the ship. As Ed and Tracey reiterated at key points in this series, once in space the commander decides. NASA and Helios with their 8-minute delay weren't in a position to do anything anyway.

It was interesting after all the test pilot stuff to see things play out with Ed just as they did with Apollo 10. I don't fault him for aborting the mission, especially in the tin can that was the Helios landing vehicle. If Ed had been flying the much sturdier Sojourner, I think he would have landed successfully, and that if Dani had been in Ed's seat in the Helios lander, she also would have aborted the landing.

In the end, this validated Margo's decision to choose Dani over Ed. Nobody ever argued that Dani wasn't better suited for the remainder of the mission; Ed and his proponents just didn't trust that she was a good enough pilot to handle the spaceflight and landing. But both of them are completely capable in that respect, so it made sense to choose the one who fit the rest of the mission better. As Kelly noted when she chose NASA over Helios, the NASA mission was more science-focused.

Speaking of Kelly, I liked the moment when Karen was watching the TV coverage feeling sad for Ed, but then saw her daughter named as one of the first eight on Mars and cheered up. I imagine that will also be of great consolation to Ed. A Baldwin was still on the first vehicle to land successfully on Mars. Ed already has a number of historic accomplishments; now his daughter does too.

[ahpny]

Whenever I see people jogging inside a space station that's creating artificial gravity by spinning, I wonder if the joggers are moving fast enough noticably to counteract that spinning and meaningfully add or subtract to the artificial gravitational effect. A jogger running in against the opposite direction of rotation would decrease that artificial gravity, while jogging in the same direction would increase it, to some degree.

As best as I can tell, on Polaris/Phoenix, the answer is no meaningful change would be felt by the jogger. Wikipeadia tells me the diameter of Polaris is 137 meters. The formula for acceration imparted through spinning is A = sq(ω)r. 

9.8m/s/s = sq(ω) x 68.5m

ω = .3782/s, meaning the speed of rotation of Polaris to generate artifical gravity of 1G is just over 1/3 of a rotation each second. Since the circumference of the the Polaris ring is 430.4 m (C = 2πr), that means the relative velocity of the ring rotates at about 143 m/s. Average jogging speed is about 2.25 m/s. Since that's only about 1.5% of the relative velocity of the ring's rotation, no mater which direction a jogger ran in Polaris, the effect of that movement would be unlikely to be noticed at all.