Do you miss the days of space shuttle launches? Do you want to see humans go back to the Moon, and even explore Mars, in your lifetime? Paul Hildebrandt does too. So he's initiated a Kickstarter campaign to create Fight For Space: Exploring the Future of Manned Spaceflight, a documentary with a higher aim than just getting viewers.
Fight For Space aims to capture of the magic of space exploration's Apollo-era glory, and seed it in a new generation. You can check out a spectacular trailer for the documentary above.
Fight for Space will feature Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, NASA Astronaut Leroy Chiao, and Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI institute, as they make the case for United States-funded manned space flight and further exploration, amidst a dire backdrop of negligible political support, both in words and finances. One of the most damning scenes from trailer is from the Florida Republican Presidential Debate, as Mitt Romney declares:
If I had a business executive come to me and say they wanted to spend a few hundred billion dollars to put a colony on the Moon, I'd say you're fired.
Fight for Space also features aerospace engineer Robert Zubrin, one of the creators of the cost-friendly Mars Direct proposal for a crewed mission to the planet. The documentary aims to point out the benefits for people on Earth, from manned missions to Mars and beyond. Hildebrandt cites the wealth of environmental and climate information that could be gained from studying the once-flourishing surface of Mars, as well as the rewards of being the country that captures the imagination of the world through a series of ambitious (and job creating) missions to the stars.
You can learn more about this documentary at Fight for Space or at their Kickstarter page. [The Interrobang]