The Mars Generation

This is the perfect documentary for kids and grownups who love and miss American space exploration. For those who lived through earlier, more active days of the federal space program, when rockets were launched regularly, when Americans were sent to the moon, and when shuttles regularly flew to the International Space Station, The Mars Generation feels like a hopeful declaration of a resurgence of American interest in space exploration bolstered by an infusion of private funding and research from such companies as Space X and Virgin Galactic. According to the movie, government funding dropped from four percent of the federal budget in NASA's glory days to four tenths of a percent of the federal budget currently. The hope is that private industry will come up with reusable rockets and other technologies to cut the cost of sending people to land on and colonize Mars.

The movie flags a bit as it turns away from the Space Camp and its passionate campers to allow experts, including astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, and science promoter Bill Nye to describe how a Mars landing will be impossible without the direct participation of private companies to help build reusable rockets. Scenes of Space Camp teenagers learning how to create heat shields and launching protected eggs, or "eggstronauts," into the air to see if they can land unbroken paint a miniature picture of the details that aerospace engineers must attend to before sending humans into space.