Wanderers: a short film of humanity's expansion into the Solar System [video]

by Thevet • 12 years ago

543 118 12 years ago

abrichr• 12 years ago

This is beautiful.

For me, Carl Sagan's voice is incredibly inspirational. He knows just what to say and how to say it to elicit a beautiful and optimistic feeling of wonderment.

And the visuals were stunning. A tantalizing glimpse into the next century or two of human exploration and experience.

Thank you for this.

Edit: Reddit thread at http://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/2nseb3/wanderers...

molmalo• 12 years ago

I loved it, thanks!

blisterpeanuts• 12 years ago

Wow; that was incredible. I wish it were three hours long.

That dude floating in that debris belt (ring of Saturn?) -- that looked a bit dangerous. Hopefully he had a force field around him.

There's so much out there, just waiting for us to get off our duffs and explore. We have much of the technology; if we could just stop spending trillions on machines of war and instead spend it on machines of exploration....

jimbosis• 12 years ago

Well, it's not 3 hours (the Wikipedia page lists a 42 minute running time), but you might be interested in In Saturn's Rings, a documentary nearing release made using only photographs from space missions:

http://www.insaturnsrings.com/watch/

http://www.insaturnsrings.com/home/ (with another teaser video not on the "watch" page)

a3n2• 12 years ago

There's so much out there, just waiting for us to get off our duffs and explore. We have much of the technology; if we could just stop spending trillions on machines of war and instead spend it on machines of exploration....

I agree with this 100%. But while we're moving outward, however slowly, don't forget Sagan's Caveat:

"Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand."

Absolutely, go see what's across the street. But make sure your house is clean and safe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot#Reflections_by_S...

Carl Sagan - Pale Blue Dot https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wupToqz1e2g

prawn2• 12 years ago

My reaction to Wanderers was also to consider our own planet. For all the curiosities out there yet to be discovered, Earth is flat-out stunning. I was watching segments from David Attenborough's Africa earlier and thinking that what we have already discovered is incredible, and (in general) we're already doing some excellent work in trying to wreck it.

jeangenie• 12 years ago

The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life.

I often reflect on this sentiment and have half-convinced myself that the current definition of 'life' we use in this sense to be far too limited to capture the infinite diversity of existence.

In other words, our explorations will never reveal any creature like us (or other known forms of life on Earth) because the life that develops in other environment will be uniquely suited and predicated on existing in that environment exclusively.

I would add to what Sagan said: the whole universe is alive in ways we have not yet even conceived or be capable of conceiving.

prbuckley• 12 years ago

You should really go see interstellar, I saw it last night and it is probably the closest thing to a 3hr version of that short video that exists. They are both really fantastic films. I would also add that interstellar is worth seeing in IMAX if you can.

andy_ppp• 12 years ago

Well, Interstellar would be okay if you removed the plot. Unfortunately all the SciFi bits and special effects were ruined by Hollywood schmaltz.

----- arguably the movie is already spoilt, but spoilers -----

And seriously, NASA couldn't find astronauts apart from a farmer?

Someone falls into a black hole and SURVIVES.

Is given the power by 5 dimensional light beings to alter time?

The list could go on.

graycat2• 12 years ago

Wander? From earth into the rest of the solar system? If we'd grown up anywhere else in this solar system, then the place, the dream destination, in this solar system would be earth.

Since I'm already here, no way do I want to leave!

Send some machines to gather some data and transmit it back to us here on earth? Fine. Maybe terrific. Go there, in person? For me, no way!

hereonbusiness• 12 years ago

If someone offered me the chance to travel the solar system, watch the sun rise on mars, jump off vertical cliffs on a moon, see jupiter and saturn up close, ... I would do it in a heartbeat

Do I think human space travel is feasible or even necessary at least at this point in time? No, not by a long shot. Machines can do a better job and will probably always be able to do it better if technology keeps advancing. Machines don't need air, water, food, living space, and that's some of the stuff needed just to keep us alive in an hostile environment, all resources can be instead focused on the mission itself.

I think that people tend to forget that we don't just happen live on planet Earth, we where born by it, molded by it :)

If we'd evolved anywhere else then that place would probably be by far the best possible habitat for us too.

Although If we could somehow get rid of the human body, just take a brain, equip it with a neural interface of some kind and put it in a water tank ...

graycat2• 12 years ago

Other than earth? I might like to visit there, but I don't want to live there!

But with the realities, as you outlined, of visiting, really I wouldn't want to do that, either.

Mars? Okay, send a lot of robots. Let the robots get a good base going. Let the robots mine Mars to get fuel for return trips. Let the robots come and go until it all seems highly reliable. Go to the trouble to get enough mass for cosmic ray protection. Let some high risk takers go and return. Then, maybe, maybe, maybe I'd consider a visit! But that whole scenario is not nearly realistic at all soon.

kylegordon• 12 years ago

If you'd grown up or evolved elsewhere in the solar system, there's a high chance Earth would be inhospitable to you, just like Mars is to us. Your dream home would be Saturn, or Venus, etc.

The universe has a history of destroying the majority of life on Earth. It would be naive to think that statistics don't apply to the human race.

ogig• 12 years ago

All these visuals made by just one guy? I'm impressed. It has higher quality than many hollywood fx products.

dmix2• 12 years ago

It has higher quality than many hollywood fx products.

Seriously. How are Hollywood CGI films so poorly made when this is possible?

prawn2• 12 years ago

Because they're trying to do a lot more.

erjiang• 12 years ago

hollywood blockbusters have many shots that are very labor intensive, and they can be pretty cavalier about throwing money at a problem. For example, films with a lot of mixed live action and CGI can take a lot of manual frame by frame work, and anything involving realistic character animation is a huge time sink. Not to mention huge server farms.

It looks like this film uses a limited number of shots (no cutting rapidly like action films), takes advantage of a lot of nasa and other imagery/data (no army of matte painters), limits characters to simple walking movements (no Pixar gesticulating), and probably keeps the particle effects and physics sims minimal (no computational fluids sims for glorious explosions).

ijk2• 12 years ago

What makes it for me is that every place depicted in here actually exists, right here in our solar system.

T-A• 12 years ago

Except for the O'Neill cylinder, I guess? :)

tbolse• 12 years ago

Waiting.

dmix2• 12 years ago

"As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts." - Herman Melville

Wonderful quote by Sagan.

alexbecker• 12 years ago

Well, it's not quite fair to call it a "quote by Sagan".

machinshin_• 12 years ago

I want to go to there

pkaye• 12 years ago

I really loved this. Are there anything else similar elsewhere?

yogrish• 12 years ago

Awesome creation. Image Gallery and Explanation: http://imgur.com/a/Ur5dP

agrona• 12 years ago

Art and source photos aside, this link is sort of disappointing. For example,

As Mars' diameter is about half of the Earths, the elevator cable wouldn't have to be as long to reach geostationary orbit and due to the lighter gravitational pull it wouldn't suffer as much stress from its weight.

Mars' diameter has nothing to do with the distance to stationary orbit, which is a result of gravity (and thus its mass).

pjungwir• 12 years ago

I assumed he was thinking of mass as a function of diameter, which for a rocky planet makes sense to me. I thought his comments were pretty amazing myself!

el_zorro• 12 years ago

The diameter actually does have an effect on where geostationary orbit is: it changes how fast the surface is spinning, and hence the orbital speed needed for a stationary orbit.

Mars spins once every 24 hours 37 minutes. If the diameter was twice as large, it would have to be moving twice as fast to maintain that length of day.

Interestingly, since you orbit faster the closer you are to the surface, a decreased diameter actually pushes geosynchronous out away from the planet. This effect is, of course, very much negated by the absence of mass. Still, two equally massive planets with the same rotational period but NOT the same diameter will have different geostationary altitudes.

anw• 12 years ago

Videos like this make me truly yearn for our civilization to expand off of our home planet.

I've finally gotten into some of Philip K Dick's works, as well as adventuring in the game Eve Online.

Both make me question how far we could be in technology, medicine, civilization, if we all could work together and not have schisms divide us.

I suppose it's the same as wishing for a utopia, though.

Ygg22• 12 years ago

Amazing video.

I especially like the world play here. Latin Planetes (as in planets) means wanderer. The name of this film can be understood as Planets.

mturmon• 12 years ago

Nice observation. They got that name, of course, because the stars are fixed but the planets "wander" among them.

tomr_stargazer• 12 years ago

Ancient Greek actually – apologies for being nitpicky.

'A planet (from Ancient Greek ἀστὴρ πλανήτης (astēr planētēs), meaning "wandering star")' > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet

Ygg22• 12 years ago

Yeah, but judging from Google's etymology of the word it seemed to suggest plananan as greek word for planet, and not planetes.

I went for the more similar sounding one.

frinxor• 12 years ago

Check out Reid Gower's videos as well, the Sagan Series, a collection of videos he did that also used Carl Sagan's voice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oY59wZdCDo0&index=1&list=PLF...

And of course, Cosmos, which is where all the audio is from in all these videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dADUBcoEEHw&index=1&list=PLB...

hysan• 12 years ago

Episode 2 of the Cosmos series playlist gives me this:

This video contains content from eOne, who has blocked it on copyright grounds.

zan2434• 12 years ago

That was beautiful. I'd love to read more about how exactly the visuals were generated. This is a lot more than spheres rendered w/ NASA photo textures.

airlocksoftware• 12 years ago

In the same genre, I watch this when I need a touch of inspiration. They're quotations from The Pale Blue Dot, again with the Sagan voiceover.

http://vimeo.com/2822787

Often we forget how far we've come, and how far we have to go. It's easy to get bogged down in the minutiae of regular life. When I listen to Carl Sagan sometimes I feel like I've glimpsed a bigger perspective.

shmerl3• 12 years ago

Martian sunset at 1:50 is based on an actual photo:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_rover#mediaviewer/File:Ma...

See also gallery here: http://www.erikwernquist.com/wanderers/gallery.html

Corrado• 12 years ago

There is also an outline of each of the shots and images used on Erik's page. Very, very cool indeed!

rbanffy5• 12 years ago

I had that picture as my workstation's wallpaper.

People dropped by and asked where I took the picture. I loved to explain to them the picture was taken by a robot on Mars.

There is also another one, with a small Earth shining above the horizon. That too was my wallpaper, and that too caused countless people to be amazed.

Inspiring people is important.

shmerl3• 12 years ago

I used it as a wallpaper for a long time too :)

There is also another one, with a small Earth shining above the horizon.

Do you mean a shot on Mars? Can you link to it please?

Kronopath• 12 years ago

I love the details in this film. Things like the winged people flying on Titan, possible due to its dense atmosphere. There are things on these other worlds that we could never experience here.

Even the title has multiple meanings to it:

In ancient times, astronomers noted how certain lights moved across the sky in relation to the other stars. Ancient Greeks called these lights πλάνητες ἀστέρες (planetes asteres, "wandering stars") or simply πλανῆται (planētai, "wanderers"), from which today's word "planet" was derived.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet

houseofshards• 12 years ago

Wow ! This is beautiful. Stunning graphics + Sagan's legendary voice almost left me in tears.

evaneykelen• 12 years ago

Frustrating to realize that perhaps only 1 or 2 years of Earth's military spending would enable mankind to achieve this (approx $1700 billion/year). Not saying we don't need to spend money on defense, merely taking one the world's expenditures as a yardstick. It would be so great if mankind is able to cooperate in the colonization of our solar system.

increment_i• 12 years ago

I imagine this cooperation will happen, probably towards the middle of this century, as resources become ever more scarce and general ignorance of the population at large decreases.

JetSpiegel• 12 years ago

general ignorance of the population at large decreases

I like sci-fi, but this is the real world we're talking about here.

yc1010• 12 years ago

If our history is anything to go by, then lack of resources and competition for what remains wont lead to "co-operation" but will lead to war.

einrealist4• 12 years ago

It would be even better if we could spend this amount of money to fix the problems we already have on this planet, like global warming, pollution and hunger and stuff.

waterlesscloud• 12 years ago

It's like the entire point of this video just whooshed right over your head.

avz2• 12 years ago

This is fundamentally a question of the balance between our efforts focused on the long-term vs those focused on the short-term. Space exploration offers significant benefits long-term but generally provides no immediate pay-off next quarter.

I'm personally baffled by the desire to focus all our resources on the short-term. The questions of the long-term future of humankind and our place in the universe, make the immediate issues like pollution and disease look petty and irrelevant by comparison.

Also, from the practical angle, we're already spending a huge amount of money on solving our local, short-term problems here on Earth. Adding ~$2 trillion would be an increase, but not a game-changer. OTOH, humanity spends under $50 billion/year on space [1]. Adding $2 trillion would constitute 4000% increase! This might be enough to transform humanity from a precarious single-planet species into an interplanetary civilization in a few generations.

Another important point is that a lot of our problems here on Earth are entirely self-inflicted (e.g. inequality, pollution, global warming) and so they can't simply be fixed by throwing money at them: they need political transformation.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_government_space_agenci...

rasz_pl3• 12 years ago

You seem to not realize those are problems for us, human virus, and not the planet problems. Those so called problems are natures way of trying to balance things. If you cut hunger and make a breakthrough in healthcare you will immediately accelerate population growth, and in effect accelerate pollution and energy use.

Earth is unsustainable in the long run. No one is willing to accept euthanasia, birth limits, basically efforts to maintain population caps. People might say its a good idea others should implement, not them personally :)

kabdib• 12 years ago

Explorer to Queen Izzabella (or whomever): "We'd like to sail west and find a shortcut to the Indies."

Queenie: "Sorry. We've got poverty and people who are hungry here, you'll have to wait."

(400 years later)

Descendant of that Explorer: "Can we go now?"

Queenie: "Sorry, still haven't solved that poverty stuff. Go do some farming or something."

----

A lot of the "poverty and hunger stuff" is caused by corruption and unworkable politics and ideologies. Another big factor is simple human nature. "The poor will be with us always." It's a wicked problem that will probably never go away. We shouldn't use it as an excuse. (I would be quite happy trading military and secret-police spending, which is basically out of control).

Oh, we can try to address poverty. But putting everything else on hold doesn't make sense. A rising tide floats all boats; more resources and better technology will help everyone, at least a little.

[I'm actually not a big fan of manned exploration any more; it's expensive, and robots can do way better than we can, for the foreseeable future. Oh, putting men on other planets has undeniable poetry and significance, but if you want to do science or mining or whatever, you're better off with metal than monkeys].

rbanffy5• 12 years ago

Plain and simple, either our species spreads or we die.

We die not only because we can't seem to solve our immediate problems (I bet global temperatures will cross the +6 Celsius in this century) but we die the next big space rock hits Earth or the next time Yellowstone erupts, or the next time some weird highly energetic phenomenon we are absolutely clueless about roasts our high atmosphere just enough it starts letting the sun's UV through.

It's stupid to colonize other worlds and ignore our current problems because they'll kill us before we get there, but it's equally stupid to ignore the long-term problems of putting all our eggs on a single planetary basket around a single star. While I'm quite sure the Sun will not blow up on the next quarter or before the next couple elections, I'm quite sure it'll not last forever and really think it'll eventually misbehave in some deadly fashion. There are several mass extinctions in fossil record and I'd much prefer our species would not end up as a museum curiosity for the following civilisation.

grondilu5• 12 years ago

It would be so great if mankind is able to cooperate in the colonization of our solar system.

We already collaborate for the exploration of the solar system, via robotic probes and giant telescopes. That's good enough. Colonization is an all different matter, and a weird one if you ask me. Earth is the largest place with a solid ground in the Solar system, and it's by far the most hospitable. Settling on an other planet like mars would cost an insane amount of money[1] and would at best double the available real estate for our species. It's not so sure it would be worth it, especially considering that a lot of people would end up having contributed for something that other people will benefit from.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YDnGHaXdxw

Steuard• 12 years ago

The history of the human race is a long succession of people contributing for something that other people will benefit from. Sometimes just knowing that you're enabling the dream is enough.

fit2rule• 12 years ago

It will be worth it when we build space-ship building robot factories, which can also build robots, and send them to an asteroid or so .. and in return get ourselves a fleet of robots in space ships to do other things with. There is no need for us to actually go there; we can do all the building from here. Vote for me and I will vow to make the space-ships, with robots, show up!

rbanffy5• 12 years ago

Settling on an other planet like mars would cost an insane amount of money[1] and would at best double the available real estate for our species.

Not quite. Having the technology to live on Mars or on the Moon would enable us to settle pretty much anywhere in the habitable zone of the system. Just imagine how much real estate can be built in the form of rings or tubes with materials mined from the Moon or the asteroid belt.

Planets are nice for mining, but going up and down deep gravity wells is not something an interplanetary species would want to do regularly.

Also, keep in mind there are a lot of global catastrophes that could easily wipe out our civilisation.

hiphopyo2• 12 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/user/criminalisewar

hmottestad• 12 years ago

Don't forget that you can download the video using youtube-dl (if you like me, get annoyed that Vimeo doesn't continue buffering when you pause it, and deletes the current buffer if you rewind)

http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/

dredmorbius• 12 years ago

Or VLC or XBMC which do a vastly better job of buffering than online players.

Youtube-dl is my first choice though (and is how I viewed this video).

hiphopyo2• 12 years ago

Crazy how one man can do something that normally would take hundreds of people to accomplish.

Wouldn't it be nice if Erik Wernquist was in charge of the filmatization of "2312" (the novel that inspired his "Iapetus Ridge" scene).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2312_(novel)

pmr_• 12 years ago

I was immediately reminded of Robinson's work a few seconds in. There is so much to discover out there and the extremes of physical state and sheer size make it so hard to imagine it all. His writing offer a window into that world and this short was a great visualization of it.

arethuza2• 12 years ago

Robinson is a fantastic author at conveying "a sense of place" - particularly Mars, of course. I fell in love with Mars because of Robinson, unrequited love of course - Blues for the Red Planet indeed....

Also, I also loved his book Antarctica which is effectively "White Mars" - at least there is a chance of visiting incredible places like the Airdevronsix icefall - arguably the largest waterfall on this planet (5km wide and 400m high):

http://www.wondermondo.com/Countries/An/Antarctica/Antarctic...

arethuza2• 12 years ago

What a fantastic video.

My favourite part: BASE jumping from Verona Rupes - the tallest known cliff in the Solar System - somewhere from 5km to 20km vertical:

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110404.html

By comparison the tallest vertical drop on Earth is on the surreal Mount Thor at 1250m:

http://www.amusingplanet.com/2013/03/mount-thor-greatest-ver...

[Some great details - like the Earth coastlines used in the asteroid interior (mentioned on the film's website) and the Taijitu in the crater at 1:54].

tobr• 12 years ago

Beautiful.

You might be interested to learn that Erik Wernquist is also the person who created Crazy Frog some ten years ago.

brador• 12 years ago

Which planet would allow for the largest/densest brain size in an organism that evolved to maximum size there?

thomasfl• 12 years ago

I would like to see a full length Wanderers movie. The optimistic feeling of adventure, travel and belief in science, would make it well worth spending a couple of hours watching.

spiritplumber2• 12 years ago

It'd make a great sequel to Interstellar actually...

wcoenen• 12 years ago

Definitely check out the imgur gallery[1] with explanations of all the scenes!

http://imgur.com/a/Ur5dP

Osmium• 12 years ago

As a first step, I wonder how feasible it would be to have a constant presence around these planets and moons? A 'standard' orbiter, mass produced? I was reading about the Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer mission, and it's incredibly exciting, but it won't get there until the 2030s, and even then it'll be a temporary presence.

The reason I think of this is that I recently came across this animation from New Horizons showing a 330km-high eruption that recently happened on Io:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Io_(moon)#mediaviewer/File:Tvas...

It's utterly captivating, at least to me, and I can't help but wonder what effect it would have on the public's imaginations to be able to see images like that every day, in high definition, from all over our solar system.

devgutt5• 12 years ago

Todo list: 1- Invent powerful machines for simulations and calculations(ok) 2- Stop with childish religious beliefs altogether (in progress - 5ys) 3- Review completely the social contract (in progress - 50ys) 4- Fix mortality (urgent - 100ys) 5- Explore the universe (2114)

disputin2• 12 years ago

5 years? How do you figure that?

devgutt5• 12 years ago

I think that we already have all the elements to make this leap. I am not being naive, only optimistic.

twtwtaway2• 12 years ago

too bad we are not going to be around when mortality will be fixed. out of luck, i guess.

devgutt5• 12 years ago

Actually, for Aubrey de Grey, that will be 50 years[1], but I think this is only to get more funds.

[1] http://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_ag...

ff102• 12 years ago

There is no single social contract, but if there is, it very well has to be reviewed before we "fix" mortality. And who says that the further exploration of the universe (which is happening since a few thousand years anyway) is tempting to a critical mass with an unlimited lifespan where distractions are manifold and any simulation more convenient and less dangerous than the exploration of the universe in person.

devgutt5• 12 years ago

There is no single social contract, but if there is, it very well has to be reviewed before we "fix" mortality.

Just like I said.

any simulation more convenient and less dangerous than the exploration of the universe in person

We have been risking our lifes to explorer our world for millenniums. Why would it be different for space?

eklavya• 12 years ago

How I wish I was born in a time when mankind can travel the vast cosmos.

a3n2• 12 years ago

Make it happen. We might not go, but our far descendants would.

twtwtaway2• 12 years ago

yeah we're out of luck unfortunately

spiritplumber2• 12 years ago

Very uplifting.

nkoren• 12 years ago

Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy is apparently being made into a TV series now. This guy must work on the visuals for that. He gets it; he really, really gets it.

ews• 12 years ago

When I saw the movie I immediately thought of Kim Stanley Robinson's work. I think this short may be heavily inspired by that.

martythemaniak• 12 years ago

I read KSR's Mars Trilogy after hearing about it repeatedly on /r/spacex and I highly recommend it. In fact, given that it is a 20 year old work at this time, I think it has stood the test of time very well.

I'm glad to hear it's being made into a tv series, but I worry that you really need a high budget to make it come alive (like Game of Thrones)

dojo999• 12 years ago

Beautiful short film, excellent effects and voice-over. Like.

urza• 12 years ago

I'll just leave this here: http://youtu.be/FbpIwT9nV3Y?t=7m7s

booleanbetrayal• 12 years ago

absolutely stunning. i will feel incredibly deprived if my exhaust without witnessing this sort of endeavor by mankind.

rbanffy5• 12 years ago

I never thought I'd use this quote here, but:

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Wanderers: a short film of humanity's expansion into the Solar System [video]

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