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On January 28, 1986, NASA launched the space shuttle Challenger on a routine mission. Seventy-three seconds after take-off, rubber seals failed, burning gas melted through metal and the fuel tank blew up. The resulting explosion ripped the Challenger to pieces on live TV. The audience included nearly 20 per cent of the US population. House of Cards writer Beau Willimon chose to start his mission-to-Mars drama The First with a similar catastrophe – a shuttle launch, a difficult separation, a huge fatal explosion – for a particular reason.

“We’ve been lulled into thinking space travel is safe,” he says. “With all the private sector rocket companies and plans for crowdfunded missions to Mars, we think space is routine, safe and fun. One NASA engineer told me we will inevitably lose people if we attempt to colonise another planet, and the public needs to get used to the danger. I wanted to show that cost right away.”


Willimon’s inspiration was close to home: his father Henry was a nuclear submarine captain in the US Navy who would be at sea for up to five months at a time, unable to send messages home. For young Willimon, long voyages were about separation and failure to communicate. This theme is at the heart of The First, which focuses not only on the astronauts attempting to become the first humans to visit Mars but also the people they leave behind.

Set 13 years in the future, the first season takes place during the 26-month gap between launch windows – which are only possible when Mars’ orbit brings it close to Earth. Sean Penn plays Commander Tom Hagerty, an experienced astronaut whose career has wrecked his family, and Natascha McElhone plays Laz Ingram, an excessively-focused CEO determined to reach Mars. After the launch disaster in the opening episode, she pushes for a second chance and he ends up leading the replacement crew. Season one is mainly earthbound, with a hint of sci-fi in its driverless cars and invisible phones.

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Hulu / Channel 4

The real star, however, is off screen: the show’s space consultant Michael López-Alegría, the Spanish-American astronaut boasting the second longest Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA) record, with ten spacewalks under his belt. He also completed the third-longest spaceflight for a US astronaut, spending 215 days on board the International Space Station from September 2006 to April 2007.


Willimon wanted The First to be a stickler for accuracy, effectively creating a procedural vision of Elon Musk’s Mars ambition. “There is a huge degree of reality and believability about the show,” López-Alegría says. “They were very picky. They might have a question or idea and I would say, ‘You can get away with that on TV.’ They said no, they wanted to get this right.”

López-Alegría’s advice in series one focused on space suits, mission control layout, launch procedures, EVA scenes and what happens on the ground when a mission is knocked off course, giving everything an accurate, credible feel. He even ran through NASA’s future plans for a new space launch system, which the team adapted for their own rocket.

“The opening launch and crash are very accurate,” he says. “I gave advice on the suiting up, how the crew walk up to pad, the banter between the crew – plus the details gained from the Challenger event. For instance, we learned from Challenger to isolate the families in case there is an issue. In the show, we put them together in own section of grandstand, which is standard procedure.”

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Hulu / Channel 4


WIllimon’s subtext is communication; Hagerty can’t talk to his grief-stricken daughter even when he’s in the same room. During the long transit, the minutes of delay in messages sent between mission control and the Mars-bound ship make it harder than ever to speak.

“That part, I didn’t advise on,” López-Alegría says. “On the ISS we had pretty good communication with the ground – we had email and VOIP. You could call someone on Earth most of the time. I read my son a bedtime story, it was like being on a business trip.”

He acknowledges that, in the case of a voyage and any real world voyage to Mars, communications would be far harder. He also advised the team that a very long voyage might produce tensions between the crew – something that starts to show in The First before they even blast off.

“The ISS is huge, so during my stay I never felt the other people that much of burden,” López-Alegría says. “You’re working or exercising – you have to exercise for at least two and a half hours every day – and the station is so big that sometimes you wouldn’t see each other between lunch and dinner. On the way to Mars you need a different mindset – you can’t see Earth – so you can’t assign crew without a trial of personal interactions. They try to do that on space station missions, but it doesn’t always work.”

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Hulu / Channel 4

When Hagerty and his crew finally make it into Earth orbit, they leave their shuttle and enter the Mars Transit Vehicle (MTV). The Mars Transit ship’s sleek design is also rooted in real-world designs. “I’m working with a company which wants to build commercial station after the ISS is decommissioned,” López-Alegría explains. “The designs don’t have the huge truss structures. The reason we have them today is because a lot of the electronics were built in the 80s or 90s and therefore so big they have to go on the outside. These days, everything can be inside, which is why the MTV looks so streamlined in the show.”

One key plot point involves Hagerty and an accident during a long EVA. As the man who’s spent the second-longest amount of time doing EVAs, López-Alegría found the shots believable, but he says the need for EVAs is reducing every year. “If something goes wrong with outside electronics, we have to do a spacewalk, but thanks to miniaturisation most of that stuff is in the ship not outside it,” he says.

First Man masterfully depicts the dangerous reality of space travel Film First Man masterfully depicts the dangerous reality of space travel

As for the overall dream of travelling to Mars? He’s not convinced. “Mars is a difficult problem,” he explains. “The size of the vehicle to Mars would need to be so big and we’d be exposing the crew to such great risk. Food, water, oxygen and equipment all have to be perfect. We think we understand systems tested on ground – in space, some fail right away, some after a month. In orbit or on the Moon we can get supplies or replacements in days. On Mars that’s not possible.”



For Willimon, it’s this tension that produces the drama. “If you’re in a can with a small group of people on a mission you won’t return from, you’re going to be in an amazingly complicated frame of mind – and that combination of ambition, madness and consequences is what I love about writing,” he says. “In the end, space, politics, adventure, heartbreak – they’re only stories because they help us to understand what it is to be human.”

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