I want to like this show so, so, so badly. Everyone has a problem with the way a piece of space trash rocks a space hotel, and yet no one has a problem with the fact that Ed Baldwin would be roughly 66 years old when the mission to Mars begins and would take at least 3 years to get there and back, meaning Ed Baldwin returns in his 70s. Neither NASA nor the viewer seems to care about this, for some reason.
Let's talk about Ed, actually. This is the same Ed Baldwin that has had numerous, numerous failings. Like how after he learned his son died in an accident, went completely offline for several days in Jamestown while an emergency situation unfolded, and Mission Control had to cook up a solution to flash lights in Morse code just to get his attention so he responds to them. Great leadership!! All while this was happening, Ed Baldwin had taken a Russian cosmonaut hostage, risking nuclear war between USA and Russia for a personal vendetta, and intended to torture information out of the cosmonaut. It is by complete dumb luck that he gets out of this situation.
Nothing happened to him though, of course, and not only that, he is rewarded somehow in Season 2 with a prestigious position where he alone has authority over the program to find people suitable to be future astronauts (lol) That is until he gave himself the opportunity to fly the first Pathfinder mission. Must be nice. So, what happened then? Oh ya, he escalated tensions with the USSR blockade of the moon and fired nuclear warheads at his own ship. He detonated nuclear bombs in space on the dark side of the moon, as Russia was getting ready to do the same. What if Russia, seeing warheads coming their way fires back? "Who cares!" says Ed Baldwin to his crew while one of them holds a literal gun to his head because she thinks he is unhinged. We actually know he's unhinged because his feelings are hurt about his wife cheating on him. And we also know, like everyone else in NASA, that in season 1, Ed's feelings were hurt by the death of his son, so he took a cosmonaut hostage and cut communication off with the Earth for multiple days.
That's the 70 year old Ed Baldwin that Molly, another individual that has demonstrated a series of catastrophically terrible judgement, wants to lead a mission to Mars, and all anyone here wants to talk about is the way theoretical space trash might damage a theoretical space hotel.
I had hoped so, so, so badly that this season Ed Baldwin, Molly, and all the others with catastrophically terrible judgement would finally at least enjoy background story arcs, while we get some new blood and better characters that you can actually root for. I cannot believe we're in for another season of watching Ed Baldwin make the same childish, reckless decisions that he's only ever been rewarded for.
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