Story Sketch

One man, one way. One man mission to mars. Never coming back. See 99% invisible episode. Lives in submarine-like tube. Either make it about NASA and getting there or about actually being there. Or maybe even both. In the future, earth has just sent the first manned mission to mars. One man, alone on a planet a million miles from home and earth is hit by a metior or side swiped by a comet or has thusly left the planet population obliterated. Our astronaut must make the decision to take the risky oneway trip back to earth which could could no longer support human life or stay and wait to be contacted by any survivors on earth.

As much of this story would be internal monologue I need to come up with something better than thought bubbles the whole way through. Maybe something individual to the character and his state of mind. Kind of like sandman speech bubbles. Maybe this method degrades over time with his sanity.

Could there be a telescope on mars that can see earth? Could the astronaut figure out a way to hack into the satellites orbiting earth and attempt to view earth or communicate with any survivors? Would there be some sort of robot or computer system for him to talk to or would he type commands into a terminal? A terminal would make things a little more interesting, it could be in courier typeface and leave some mystery in what is being typed due to syntax of the code.

Character Sketches