Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:13 — 12.9MB)
Recounts a fictitious telling of the beginnings of Mars exploration. An astronaut is stranded in space. The nation gets behind the rescue project and contributes mass amounts of cash to build and launch a rescue rocket. Though the astronaut dies, the incident provides the push needed to unify the sentiments, and pocketbooks of the nation to launch a successful Mars program. But wait, there’s a bit of scandal. Listen and find out what really happened to that astronaut out there in space.
PS: If you only give this a surface glance, you’ll find a story of tragedy and suspense as we sit on the edge of our seats, hoping the best for a stranded astronaut. Give it a few more listens, and pick up on the deeper elements. Social statements of the times, expectations for what advancing technology means. There’s wreckless, fly by the seat of your pants adventure, when what is actually needed is a little more strategy and safe procedure. There’s human drama and emotions, and a host of other tiny details that paint the picture of an unchanging lifestyle of the 1950’s onto an explosion, out of control advance of technology. Not exactly how it really turned out, but that seems to have been the trend of storytelling at the time. Has it really changed any today?
