Friday 4 November 2011

Faking it

How they shipped all this to Mars dominates the first third of the film.
I see that the European Space Agency's fake Mars mission is about to end.  That means it's time to dust off that screenplay I've been working on.

The premise is that just before the fake mission to Mars was about to begin, the Mars simulation gear develops a glitch that would have meant scrubbing the mission.  Fearing embarrassment and  a loss of credibility, ESA tries to cover up for the failure of the fake mission by actually sending the team to Mars to send back videos from the "fake" red planet.  Unfortunately, now that the "mission" is over, the crew knows too much and has to be shut up.  Permanently.

I think it's got box office potential.

1 comment:

jayessell said...

There was a short story from the 50s where the unmanned probes to the moon all failed crossing to the farside.

A manned mission was planned to see what the far side of the moon looked like.

The crew was launched unconscious (I forgot why... to avoid launch stress?)
Well... that's what the crew was told! Actually, they're in a simulator with TV screens instead of windows.
Just as the video was to be turned off, a relay sticks on, and the crew sees the back side of the simulated moon is 2 by 4s and canvas.

One goes nuts thinking God never made the back of the moon.

What was the name of that story?