Allusions/references To Actual History, Current Science, and Popular Culture
Oxygen makes repeated and obvious references to the near-disastrous Apollo 13 mission.
The Mars Habitat Unit, the Earth Return Vehicle, the Ares Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle, and various other pieces of equipment are all products of the active research program of Mars Society under the directorship of Doctor Robert Zubrin. The mission profile is an adaptation of NASA's own Mars Design Reference Mission profile, which itself derives from the Mars Society's own Mars Semi-Direct Mission profile.
The following real-life institutions and events bear direct reference in Oxygen: the United States Senate, NBC, and the National Football League (and its premier event, the Super Bowl). Specifically:
- A US Senator threatens to terminate Project Ares and even NASA itself.
- NASA commits with NBC to launch Ares 10 the day before the Super Bowl, on a transit timed to have it land on Mars on Independence Day. This is not an optimal launch profile, and as such it is a source of tremendous frustration and consternation on the part of everyone involved, not least the crew.
Read more about this topic: Oxygen (novel)
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, actual, current, popular and/or culture:
“Popular culture entered my life as Shirley Temple, who was exactly my age and wrote a letter in the newspapers telling how her mother fixed spinach for her, with lots of butter.... I was impressed by Shirley Temple as a little girl my age who had power: she could write a piece for the newspapers and have it printed in her own handwriting.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“The predicate of truth-value of a proposition, therefore, is a mere fictive quality; its place is in an ideal world of science only, whereas actual science cannot make use of it. Actual science instead employs throughout the predicate of weight.”
—Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953)
“I have come to believe ... that the stage may do more than teach, that much of our current moral instruction will not endure the test of being cast into a lifelike mold, and when presented in dramatic form will reveal itself as platitudinous and effete. That which may have sounded like righteous teaching when it was remote and wordy will be challenged afresh when it is obliged to simulate life itself.”
—Jane Addams (1860–1935)
“There is a continual exchange of ideas between all minds of a generation. Journalists, popular novelists, illustrators, and cartoonists adapt the truths discovered by the powerful intellects for the multitude. It is like a spiritual flood, like a gush that pours into multiple cascades until it forms the great moving sheet of water that stands for the mentality of a period.”
—Auguste Rodin (1849–1917)
“It is of the essence of imaginative culture that it transcends the limits both of the naturally possible and of the morally acceptable.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)