VICE (2013) s04e18 Episode Script

1 This week on "VICE," the new space race to Mars.
The key to rapid innovation is competition.
It's a really exciting time to be in space.
Man: You have about 15 to 20 more seconds.
And then, the legacy of the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay.
Gianna Toboni: You were the guy that was assigned to create this place.
If you could say one thing to the detainees who were innocent, what would you say? It's time for America to shut it down.
(whistle blowing) (men shouting) Hands up! Don't shoot! Hands up! When scientists confirmed in 2015 that there's liquid water on Mars, it raised the possibility of actually moving human life to the Red Planet.
What kind of future do we want? Do we want a future where we are forever confined to one planet until some eventual extinction event, however far in the future that might occur? Or do we want to become a multi-planet species and then ultimately be out there among the stars? Today, scientists, entrepreneurs, and even volunteers, are racing to find ways to make this colonization a reality.
Thomas Morton: I guess this is where Mars begins.
Thank you.
Okay.
Okay.
Morton: The Mars Desert Research Station is a simulated Martian habitat in the middle of the closest thing Earth has to a Martian landscape-- Utah.
(Susan Jewell talking) Welcome, welcome.
Come on in! Hi.
Susan: So Thomas, let me introduce you to Crew 158.
Excellent.
- Everybody, this is Thomas.
All: Hi! - Thomas, this is the crew.
- Hi, Thomas.
Ilaria is our crew engineer.
And Nicholas is the executive officer-- second in command.
And Philippe is our health-and-safety officer - and the crew medical officer.
- Excellent.
Morton: The MDRS hosts missions of up six weeks to see how crews like this will deal with the confinement they'd experience on a planet with one third of Earth's atmosphere and a fraction of its temperature.
What happens on Mars if these seals break? (Susan talking) (Cinelli talking) Morton: The crew members go on daily excursions, or EVAs, into the simulated Martian air to do things like routine maintenance on the habitat or drills like today's simulated medical emergency in which a crew member's pressure suit has perilously sprung a leak.
Well, first of all, I want to say it was a fantastic EVA.
Okay, so whose turn is it to shower today? Woman: No one's.
- No one's turn to shower.
- So whose turn tomorrow? Woman: Mine.
Is there a formula or anything for how much food and water and everything you're able to take at the beginning of your mission? They gives us water quantity.
Then it is up to us how to manage that.
- And the same thing for the food.
- Oh, okay.
We have a fixed amount of food.
It's all about, how do you survive in this extraordinary environment? Cinelli: Of course we have tension, but we have to learn as crew to overcome that.
If we are going to colonize another planet, we have to learn to resolve every kind of problem.
Morton: While the effects of extreme isolation on group psychology is the big experiment of the MDRS, each of the crew members has their own experiments to work on in their particular fields of study, as actual astronauts would do on Mars.
Nicholas: This is the chemical workstation.
Different soil samples as you can tell, right? So we got those.
- And Emi's using her feces and urine for her plants.
- Okay.
Morton: Philippe Souvestre is a former test pilot for the French Air Force and a physician who specializes in neurophysiology and aerospace medicine.
- "Bio photonics.
" - Yes.
"Intranasal light therapy"? Yep! So this is a photonic stimulator.
Bio-photonic relates to preventative application, or physiological deterioration using light.
- Cool.
That's very exciting.
- It is.
Susan: So now we want to relax.
We want to be centered and focused.
Just go like this.
You know, just shake off all this energy that you have.
I want you just to, like, get rid of all this energy.
Okay.
All the way, and then go back a little bit.
I want you all to be very calm and I want you to think about the tension in your body.
Focus on it.
And then just let it go.
Morton: While the Mars Society may look like glorified LARPing, it's actually a legitimate feeder program to other analogue research experiments run by actual space agencies, like NASA.
NASA's current Martian mission is called the Orion Program, which will use the state-of-the-art Space Launch System, or SLS, to break free of Earth's gravity and penetrate deep space, where Mars lives.
Garry Lyles is the head design engineer of the SLS, currently being developed at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Does it feel like there's a new kind of energy at NASA? It's the busiest we have been since early shuttle.
We're focused on a destination.
We're going to Mars.
And a Mars mission drives a much larger vehicle than anything that we've ever done before.
Going into deep space takes a lot longer.
You don't want to strap the crew into something really small.
It's got a big living space, right? I've been with NASA for 40 years.
And we now have a team that-- it's one of the best teams I've ever worked with.
Morton: The SLS is being assembled at a huge warehouse in Louisiana, where NASA built the original Saturn rockets that took us to the moon.
The facility is also working on the Orion Capsule, which will sit atop the SLS rockets and carry the most valuable payload of all-- human life.
Mark Kirasich: Orion is part of NASA's human exploration program.
The pressure vessel behind me we built for the mission we call Exploration Mission One.
Orion will travel farther away from the Earth than any spacecraft has ever done before.
Our goal is to return humans beyond Earth orbit.
And that will happen in 2021.
Man: You're in the home of the world's most powerful rocket built to date.
To give you a sense of scale, that barrel panel's about 22' tall.
And the hydrogen tank has got five of those things welded from top to bottom.
So it's an enormous structure.
One of the big things that's come really recently is additive manufacturing.
Basically print parts, right? We can now print high-strength metals.
The next technology that will be inserted as we evolve this vehicle will be composite structures, carbon-lined plastics, which will take a lot of weight and cost out of the aluminum structures that we're building today.
That percentage of new technology is going to increase over time as we evolve this vehicle.
And that's all going to drive the cost of this system down.
Morton: As the vehicles that will take man to Mars are being tweaked and tested, NASA is also running human endurance tests a la The Mars Society, albeit with much higher tech.
At Johnson Space Center in Houston, home of Mission Control and the Astronaut Corp.
, they're building space-ready equipment to keep astronauts healthy and sane on long trips away from Earth's gravity.
Stan Love: This is going to be mission control for the Orion missions.
And they're talking about 2030s for that mission.
That probably means 2039.
We basically made it from, like, - first manned flight to the moon in eight years? - Yeah.
- Why does stuff take longer these days? - Money! We had 4% of federal spending during Apollo-- 4%.
Right now, we have .
4% of federal spending.
So we're getting a tenth of the money and we have to go a thousand times as far.
You know, progress is not going to be super quick.
Morton: While NASA's budget has been slashed by every president since Nixon the private sector is awash in billionaires, all competing with each other to be the first businessman in space.
( "2001: A Space Odyssey" theme playing) Richard Branson: I've always believed that having the best-looking planes in the world, while not a guarantee of success, is a good start.
But our new spaceship has taken that concept to a whole new level.
And that's why I knew without a doubt who I was going to ask to name her-- a man who never ceases to amaze and inspire us all.
Voice of Stephen Hawking: I have always dreamed of space flight.
By opening up space, we help to change the world for good.
Please welcome Virgin Spaceship Unity.
(pop music playing) Richard Branson is one of the big three in the most recent space race, along with, like, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
He's the only one who really doesn't come from a tech background, though.
He brings a certain, you know, kind of panache to it.
Throws a hell a party, at least.
Four, three, two, one! Whoa! Morton: Branson may be more of an impresario and showman than a rocket scientist.
But Virgin Galactic's CEO comes straight from the space program.
George Whitesides was the chief of staff at NASA under both Bush and Obama, so he knows some rockets.
Why'd you, uh-- why'd you jump ship for Virgin? Because I felt like Virgin Galactic has the opportunity to fundamentally change how humanity interacts with space.
I mean, what we want to do here is, like, open up space.
Change it from something that only 500 people have done in 50 years, to something that hundreds and eventually thousands of people, and eventually tens of thousands and millions of people have done.
Do you feel like we're in, like, a new phase of-- of space exploration with, like, the advent of all the private companies involved? I do think it is a new phase, you know? And I think the key to rapid innovation is competition.
The best part of this current age is that there will be more competition, because it'll drive us all to do better.
And, um, and that's what you're seeing now.
You're seeing innovation all over the space sector.
It's a really exciting time to be in space.
Morton: In order to keep this excitement up long enough for an actual Mars mission to get underway, it's not enough just to inspire the engineers and financiers of today.
You have to target the generation that will actually be making the trip-- today's children.
While everyone else is busy making all the hardware for Mars, we're busy training the people that are going to go to Mars.
Because of the first person who is going to set their foot on Mars is probably someone, you know, eight to 12 years old today.
And those are exactly the people that are coming through space camp.
The idea is to kind of walk dramatically.
We're putting a Mars mission together right now to train citizens who want to take the private ride.
We want to be one of the places where you come and get certified to be a part of space travel.
Barnhart: We've had 700,000 graduates.
We try to crack their cosmic eggs to the possibilities in their own future.
They come here and they realize, "I've got to set my journey.
" And they come away completely different individuals after the experience.
Okay.
Who all from SpaceX and stuff has graduated from here? Well, the top guy, Elon Musk, was a Space Camp graduate.
Jeff Bezos, George Whitesides, who's the chief engineer for Virgin Galactic, is a graduate.
Our graduates are changing the world everywhere.
Morton: Tonight's a rocket launch here at Cape Canaveral.
Um, the rocket and its module are both made by a private company called Orbital ATK.
The launch itself is run by another private company called United Launch Alliance.
Morton: An unmanned resupply mission may not seem that impressive in the scheme of things, but by having the private sector take over the routine maintenance of the space station and satellites and everything else NASA's looking after now, it frees them up to go even further into our solar system.
Love: When low earth orbit is full of private space crafts and tourists, we'll be on the moon.
When the moon is full of tourists, we'll be on Mars.
In that way, I hope we can keep pushing the boundaries and we can keep doing that forever.
Morton: So essentially, the small steps private space is now taking for profit will allow NASA to make even gianter leaps for mankind.
Morton: Which launch pad is that, that it's going off of? - Do you know? - Uh, 41.
It's right there.
You can see that red light flashing over there.
Those are the lightning towers.
Okay.
What do you think about Mars? Are you excited about Orion? - I'm hyped for Orion.
- Yeah? They say like kids now ages, like, 10 to 15 will be the ones landing on Mars and going to asteroids in this time frame.
I want to be a part of building the rocket and everything.
Man over radio: Minus ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.
And blast off.
There it goes.
Holy shit.
Please put your Sweet hand in mine And float in space And drift in time All my time All I want in life's Until I die A little bit of love Susan: I'd like to see humans be able to settle on another planet one day.
Morton: Do you think it will happen in your lifetime? I believe so.
Because of the rapid pace of technology and the fact that the private sector are really interested in taking humans off Earth.
Now people are talking about Mars and humans to Mars.
I think that's what excites me too.
Please put your Sweet hand in mine And float in space And drift in time.
The debate over what to do with the detainees at Guantanamo Bay is one of the most polarizing political issues of the post-9/11 era.
On the one hand, President Obama argues that keeping the camp open gives terrorists a powerful recruiting tool.
And on the other hand, opponents in Congress argue that it's too dangerous to release the inmates even if we can't convict them in court.
But 14 years after Gitmo opened, what happened behind its walls is only now slowly coming to light.
Gianna Toboni: Two years ago, we visited the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center to try to shed some light on one of the world's most notorious prisons.
Were they all Muslim? Toboni: After military personnel deleted parts of our footage each night, closely regulated what we could and couldn't shoot Woman: You can't have that on it's got to go off.
Wrong time of day.
Turn it off.
and avoided relevant questions Are you able to tell us what they're in here for? we quickly learned that if you want learn more about Guantanamo Bay, the last place you go is Guantanamo Bay.
But we were able to get some answers from the man who actually built it-- Retired General Michael Lehnert.
Toboni: So you were the guy that was assigned to basically create this place? Yes, I was assigned to create Guantanamo and build the first 100 cells and do all of this within 96 hours.
We took down every non-essential fence and essentially made 8' x 8' cages.
Yeah, it looks like a zoo, pretty much.
It-- pretty much, yeah.
It's not a pretty place.
What was it like when the first detainees arrived? We flew them in on a C-17.
We ferried a school bus with the windows blacked out and the seats taken out, put the detainees on the school bus.
They had not had any opportunities to use facilities, so most of them were wearing diapers.
It was pretty stark.
Lehnert's voice: You have to understand-- these people were captured on battlefields.
They are warriors.
They have the capacity and the potential for violence.
After 9/11, as a country, we were angry, some of us were frightened.
And we wanted our leaders to do something.
This was something.
And then I started looking for the documentation.
Some cases, we received pretty good documentation that individuals were really bad guys.
So we had some that were the worst of the worst.
We had others that showed up with almost no documentation whatsoever.
And so what was that moment for you when you realized-- I think it was-- it wasn't a moment.
It was just a gradual recognition that, you know, all of the facts weren't adding up.
Yeah, it wasn't a moment.
It wasn't one of these "aha" epiphanies or anything like this.
You know, I'm not smart enough for that.
It was just simply, you know, putting together all of the evidence and data we had.
And saying, okay, we do have some bad people down here.
There's no doubt about that.
But we also have a bunch of people here that shouldn't be here.
Toboni: Of the roughly 780 detainees sent to Guantanamo Bay, only 30 have been charged, and of those, only eight have been convicted.
And two of those convictions were overturned.
Over the last 14 years, the US has released hundreds of detainees to 58 countries scattered around the globe.
And while it's impossible to verify the facts surrounding their time at Guantanamo Bay, we wanted to give some of these detainees a chance to tell their side of the story.
(honking) (Toboni laughing) Toboni: Zakir Hasam was one of the first prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
After more than four years of being held without charge, he was sent, not to his native country of Uzbekistan, but to a new country-- Albania.
(honking) (honking) I think male drivers are crazy.
Toboni: Zakir invited us back to his home where he told us his account of how an electrician from Uzbekistan ended up at Guantanamo Bay.
To the US? Toboni: The common perception is that detainees were captured by US forces.
But in reality, most of them were captured by Afghan and Pakistani forces in the midst of a controversial bounty program.
Air-dropped flyers offered thousands of dollars for any suspected terrorists delivered to the Americans.
We have leaflets that are dropping like snowflakes.
Not surprisingly, part of the local population began to turn on itself for the cash.
Toboni: While what happens to the prisoners inside Guantanamo is severely restricted to the press, in Doha, we met with an Al Jazeera journalist who experienced the conditions in the camp himself.
Sami Al-Hajj was working in Pakistan when he says he was wrongfully detained.
Toboni: What the U.
S.
government didn't know when they detained Sami is that he would eventually use his standing as a journalist to share every detail of his mistreatment with a global audience.
Toboni: Released detainees consistently claim that guards exposed them to this kind of brutal treatment.
Toboni: In the years since 9/11, we've seen what that kind of anger can lead to, as images of horrific mistreatment of prisoners in US detainment facilities have flooded the news media.
Toboni: A controversial allegation we heard from both detainees was that guards forcibly administered psychoactive drugs to prisoners.
(Al-Hajj speaking) Toboni: Government reports have acknowledged that certain drugs were used, but officials claim that they were administered to treat mental illness.
Since the majority of prisoners here are held without charge, often the only way to protest their detention is by going on extended hunger strikes.
Toboni: To prove that the way they force-feed detainees is humane, one camp official told us he voluntarily tried it himself.
Toboni: What's it feel like when the Ensure is actually going down? Toboni: After 480 days of refusing food, losing 95 lbs and six years of his life, Sami was finally released from Guantanamo Bay without ever being charged with a crime.
But there are still 80 prisoners being held at the facility without trial, many of whom have been cleared for release.
I will close Guantanamo! I will restore And while President Obama has pledged for more than eight years to close the facility Let us do what is right for America.
Let us go ahead and close this chapter.
the decision may ultimately be left to his successor.
This morning, I watched President Obama talking about Gitmo, right? Guantanamo Bay, which by the way-- which by the way, we are keeping open-- which we are keeping open.
Guantanamo is a very serious, I guess, symbol.
We are in a fight against terrorism.
We have to defeat it.
We don't need to have Guantanamo hanging out there over our heads.
If you could say one thing to the detainees who were innocent, what would you say? I regret that those things happened.
And I'm sorry that those things happened.
And I think about Guantanamo every day.
Toboni: So do the people who were detained there, as we learned from Zakir, who's now attending a university in Albania.
How'd you decide to study international relations? Toboni: If you could go back in time, would you choose to go through it all again? Toboni: Few people know for sure what actually happened inside the facility, but it's clear that the prisoners we met with will carry their scars with them for the rest of their lives.
Lehnert: I think that as we found out more and more about what we set up down there, that it's time for America, as a matter of policy, to shut it down.