If NASA succeeds at getting human beings safely to Mars and back—a mission they hope to accomplish by the 2030s—it would be a stellar orchestration of talent and teamwork. At over 100 million miles away, the Red Planet is almost incomprehensibly far from us. It takes three days to get to the Moon; it could take upwards of nine months to get to Mars.
The psychological fortitude demanded of the mission’s astronauts will be formidable. It stretches one’s imagination to picture living in such a small space, surrounded by the same handful of people for months on end, while one’s family and friends are millions of miles away, back on the planet we call home.
Red Heaven, a documentary from 2020, gives viewers a first-hand look at one of the ways NASA is attempting to tackle the psychological dynamics of long-duration space missions.
Directed by Lauren DeFilippo and Katherine Gorringe, Red Heaven takes viewers to Hawai’i, where NASA has been conducting its Hawai’i Space Exploration Analog and Simulation since 2012. Also known as HI-SEAS, the aim of the project is to better understand how factors like extreme isolation and stress affect not only individuals but also team cohesion. Dr. Kim Binsted, the HI-SEAS Lead Researcher, sums up the driving question behind the project: “How do you keep astronauts sane and healthy?”
It’s a question we might not immediately think of when pondering trips to Mars, but it’s nonetheless a crucial one. No matter the scientific and technological expertise at our disposal, a successful trip to Mars will likely require pushing the human psyche to its utmost limits.
If you don’t normally take an interest in space-related documentaries, you might still find Red Heaven intriguing. With the COVID pandemic barely in our rear view mirror—and with a steady surge of technologies reshaping the way we interact—isolation may well become one of the most pertinent mental and emotional issues of the coming decades.
The specific HI-SEAS mission that Red Heaven showcases is Mission IV. Conducted in 2015, it involved six volunteers (three women and three men), and spanned twelve months. Red Heaven is quite unique in that it’s composed almost entirely of camera footage shot by the volunteers themselves. Aside from the film’s brief opening and closing, there is no narrator or otherwise guiding element to the film. The footage we see is the story we get. (This turns out to have a few pros but also some major cons.)
HI-SEAS Mission IV began on August 28, 2015. After an enthusiastic send off from colleagues—“Enjoy Mars!” one person playfully calls out—the crew enters the roughly 1,200 square foot dome to begin their year-long simulation. Sheyna Gifford, the chief medical officer, gives us a tour of the crew’s new home.
There’s the sleeping quarters, arranged side by side on the second floor; there’s the bathroom and shower (a note on the wall reminds everyone that water conservation is essential); there’s the kitchen and dining area (only freeze-dried food is available—though many of their meals don’t look half bad). Outside their domed-habit is the vast outdoors of Mauna Loa volcano, a terrain similar to that of Mars. The crew is allotted two hours of outside time, twice a week.
Red Heaven is loosely divided into half a dozen segments. Each opens with a similar template of information: “DAY 27. DAYS REMAINING 338. SURVEYS COMPLETED 1,139. CREW STATED OVERALL MOOD EXCELLENT.”
The documentary starts off promising enough, but before it reaches its halfway point, one starts to wonder how much substance and insights we’re actually going to get.
Many pieces of information that seem pertinent to both the mission itself, as well as the film’s presentation of it, go oddly unaddressed. We hear from the crew members about the multiple daily surveys they must take, but not a jot of information about what kind of information the surveys seek (and by extension, what NASA doctors and psychologists are hoping to gain from them). The same goes for the tracking devices the crew wears around their necks. What kinds of information and biofeedback do they collect?
In two brief scenes, we see one of the crew members wearing VR goggles (a technology that’s been explored as a way to stave off loneliness, isolation, homesickness). Yet in neither of the scenes are we given any details. Does this particular crew member find VR to be genuinely helpful? Do other members? If so, in what ways?
Once again, in-depth details are completely lacking—a pattern that occurs throughout he film. And because the documentary is propelled solely by the crew’s voices and camera footage, there are many scenes that, in real time, just don’t capture much helpful information for a viewing audience. A post-production narration might have helped reduce this limitation considerably.
Red Heaven covers an interesting project, and kudos to the filmmakers for drawing out attention to it. But the film’s 80 minutes ultimately feel underwhelming. One gets the sense that NASA’s HI-SEAS Mission IV project was much more interesting and revelatory than Red Heaven manages to convey.
Spectatio 