The best sci-fi thriller on HBO Max reveals the brutal truth about life on Mars
Mars is a hellish sight. Step onto this planet without a protective spacesuit and your eyes will pop out of their sockets as your veins burst and your whole body convulses. At least, that’s the premise of one of the most successful sci-fi films to ever set foot on the red planet.
Fortunately, the colony of Mars in Remember Total‘s imagined future don’t go out too much, stay in a big dome filled with breathable air. But this dome is a different kind of hell. For many people, the conditions are terrible. People are being charged for essential resources and poor radiation shielding has caused genetic mutations.
There’s a lot of sci-fi wild and escapism in Remember Total. A talking taxi, a three-breasted woman, a flashing memory implantation machine, a is-it-all-dream? ends, and a psychic rebel leader joins the underbelly of his brother George.
But director Paul Verhoven’s Arnold Schwarzennager vehicle also forces us to consider the harsh realities of life on Mars — and how those in power may someday control the planet’s precious resources. Is Total Recall a vision of humanity’s future life on Mars? Let’s take a closer look.
Roll science is Backwards a series that reveals the real (and fake) science behind your favorite movies and TV.
Can you take a walk on Mars?
Sets how hostile conditions will be on Mars in the first scene Remember Total very important from a storytelling perspective. This sets the tone for the film and provides a contrast to the film’s uplifting ending. According to Dr. Nicholas Heavens, who works at the nonprofit Research Institute of Space Science and specializes in Martian weather and climate, is also remarkably accurate.
“It may not be as visually impressive as it is in Remember Totalbut leaving the pressurized environment on your Mars base would have fatal consequences,” said Heavens Backwards.
This is because the atmosphere is mostly made of carbon dioxide, and the air is very thin.
“Atmospheric pressure is about 150 times less than on Earth, adds Heaven.”
Dr. Erin McDonald, an astrophysicist, writer, producer, and science adviser for Star Trek, says it helps to think of Mars as a vacuum. “You know the science museum experiment with the jar where you suck in all the air to see what happens in a vacuum? When they do their best, the ‘atmosphere’ inside is comparable to that of Mars.”
“Your eyes won’t— pop out.”
But the pressure issue is one of many.
“Mars is much more exposed to the solar wind and radiation than Earth is because Mars doesn’t have a magnetic field,” McDonald said. “So, although maybe not immediately, you’re going to have a sunburn too.”
So what would it be like if we stepped out on Mars? Is death inevitable? Will our eyes bulge out of their sockets like Schwarzennager’s eyes at the end of the film?
“Once he was pushed out he would be hit once by a ruptured eardrum and multiple blood vessels on his face, suffocated in about a minute, and found frozen with a horrific case of sunburn on exposed skin,” said Dr. Heavens. “An analogy to what a diver experiences during rapid depressurization suggests that there may be some eye damage, but your eye won’t ‘protrude’ in the same way.”
Can we grow our own atmosphere on Mars
Remember TotalMining operations on Mars reveal a huge, millions-year-old secret: ancient alien technology that can change the shape of the planet. As Arnold’s character explains, “The entire core of Mars is ice, the reactor melts it, and releases oxygen […] Enough for the whole planet.”
Assuming there is no alien technology hidden on Mars in real life, is there at least some truth to the idea that we could use the planet’s interior to make it more hospitable on the surface?
“Mars does not have a glacial core. The core of every hot planet; heat left over from formation,” said Sara Seager OC, astronomer, planetary scientist, and professor at MIT. “There are giant glaciers at the north and south poles of Mars, mostly made of carbon dioxide but also water.”
Could these glaciers be used to give Mars a breathable atmosphere?
“People must be speculating about terraforming Mars,” Seager said. “The melting of the polar ice caps would release this powerful greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, thus warming the planet by creating a greenhouse atmosphere.” However, we still have to find a way to produce oxygen.
“We have to replenish the atmosphere faster than lost.”
Dr. Tanya Harrison, a geoscientist who has worked on several NASA missions and is now Director of Strategic Science Initiatives at Planet Labs, says one way to produce breathable oxygen is to mine it from the atmosphere.
“Thanks to science, we can rip oxygen out of carbon dioxide,” Harrison said, “and NASA’s Perseverance rover actually has an instrument called MOXIE that does this as we speak!”
The larger version of MOXIE – which stands for Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment – can produce enough oxygen for a human base. However, the lack of a magnetic field on Mars means any long-term plans will be a challenge.
“Without the protection of the magnetic field, the solar wind slowly disarms the atmosphere,” Harrison said. “We have to replenish the atmosphere faster than it’s lost, and we’re going to create that atmosphere from limited resources.”
Are we moving towards a Martian dystopia?
Basically Remember Total lies the devastating and all-too-familiar story of gross inequality. The ruler of Mars controls its resources and treats its citizens badly. They had the means to make Mars habitable for everyone, but chose to remain silent.
We may not have established our own existence on Mars, but many people worry that those with the power, money and means will treat the red planet and its inhabitants in the future.
“It sucks and I hate it.”
“Right now we are in a space race driven by capitalism,” said astrophysicist Erin McDonald. “So if a company establishes an out-of-world presence, I can see them using fundamental resources to turn a profit. Any space development effort with a profit-oriented mindset will take advantage of this. It sucks and I hate it.”
Even though everyone Backwards spoke to for this article shared the opinion, there is some hope for a brighter future than we often see in dystopian fiction.
“From the start, humans will be in an environment where everyone has to play a role to keep the base running in order to survive. Inherently, that means we have to take more care of each other and create a sense of collective community.” geoscientist Tanya Harrison says. “As someone who ideally dreams of a future like Star Trek, I hope we learn from our mistakes on Earth.”
But Remember Total not just a warning about our future on Mars. Beneath the sci-fi set, there’s a much more pressing lesson, many people currently in power don’t need to be administrators on Mars to act like dystopian villains – they already do.
They have the means to drastically improve the lives of millions of people, but they either choose not to or have set their sights on something else. Think of Elon Musk’s focus on Mars, which he justified by saying: “Life can’t just be about solving problems.” (Sounds right when you’re one of the few non-privileged people.)
We need to think more like Remember Totalleader of the psychic rebel Kuato., we need to open our minds and unlock ways to better care for the Earth and the lives of everyone on it. before we venture into the stars. Otherwise, our home planet may soon bear a much closer resemblance to Paul Verhoven’s hellish scene of Mars.
Remember Total streaming right now on HBO Max.
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