How we wound up covering this teen romance

Chris was in town and at the last minute, we called together a Decipher SciFi meetup in NYC. Thanks for coming out, folks!

Settling Mars

Long and short term threats to humanity. Anthropocene.  Courage and adventure and inspiration.

Astronaut Quarantine

Frank Borman and space vomit and space diarrhea. Pre-flight and post-flight quarantine protocols.

Mars mission design

Rocket to orbit, dock with the larger ship/station, then on to Mars. Not entirely dissimilar to irl concepts. Finding energy on other bodies in space with lesser gravity wells. Public and private space industry partnership.

Timelines and propulsion

Around nine months to mars (maybe). Ion drives? Mundane solid rocket? Apparent weightlessness?

Robots

Remote Agent architecture. Robots prefabricating a Mars base before the humans arrive.

Weightlessness

Weightlessness as an environmental “stressor.” Insemination in space. Fetal and childhood physical development.

Video Chat

Light speed communication speed limitations. Using AI to simulate realtime conversation. Translucent screens! ? A terrible design for the user, but a good design for storytelling in film. Also of some utility to teachers, who can then see what students are looking at. Parallax.

The hardship of existing on earth

What would a native-born Martian human experience coming to Earth? Higher gravity. Heart enlargement. Blood pressure. Thin bones, low muscle mass.