YMMV / Space Odyssey: Voyage To The Planets

• Fridge Logic:
  • Why do they risk landings on the surface of places like Venus and Io if they know very well they can be so dangerous ? They could've instead chosen Europa, since Zoe nearly died on Io and didn't manage to haul back her collected samples due to dizziness and time constraints. Oh well, probably just good ol' Rule of Drama. Zoe even lampshades this after her return, proclaiming that a robot would suit the sample-collecting mission better than a complicated EVA.
    • Even better, Ganymede. Outside the dangerous part of Jupiter's magnetic field, and holding water ice.
    • Callisto has the least radiation risk out of the four Galilean moons, and has been proposed for actual mission concepts.
  • Why is the whole team so absurdly small ? Come on, 5 people for a grand tour of the whole Solar System ?! Even the current plans for future missions to Mars estimate a crew of 8 at the very least.
    • And since poor Pearson dies during their stay near Saturn, who serves as The Medic of the crew for the rest of the journey ?
    • Whoever it was that tended to Grigorev's injuries after a comet fragment punctured his lung. Probably Nina Sulman, but I couldn't tell properly.
  • Why are they trying to go to every planet on their first mission anyway? A real-world first mission would be to one planet and back. A mission planner who suggested this sort of mission would be led off in a straightjacket.
    • The behind the scenes documentary that accompanies the series mentions that they selected the planets in the grand tour partially on where they would be in the solar system at the time and how favourable those positions would be to getting a gravitational assist to the next one, like how the Voyager probes were able to in order to execute their Grand Tour. This is why Mercury, Uranus and Neptune are left out. Their position would make getting to them without excessive fuel expenditure impossible. Basically Shown Their Work is in effect. Though obviously as a work of fiction simple Rule of Cool had a big say in the journey too.
• Funny Moments: After a near miss with a binary asteroid which Mission Control had assured them would not pass within ten kilometres, Kirby calls them to say that they are naming the asteroids "Catastrophe" and "Hubris" in their honour.

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