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 is seductive; high culture is imperious.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Irish? In truth I would not want to be anything else. It is a state of mind as well as an actual country. It is being at odds with other nationalities, having quite different philosophy about pleasure, about punishment, about life, and about death. At least it does not leave one pusillanimous.”
—Edna O’Brien (b. c. 1932)
“A man is a little thing whilst he works by and for himself, but, when he gives voice to the rules of love and justice, is godlike, his word is current in all countries; and all men, though his enemies are made his friends and obey it as their own.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Vodka is our enemy, so let’s finish it off.”
—Russian saying popular in the Soviet period, trans. by Vladimir Ivanovich Shlyakov (1993)
“No race has the last word on culture and on civilization. You do not know what the black man is capable of; you do not know what he is thinking and therefore you do not know what the oppressed and suppressed Negro, by virtue of his condition and circumstance, may give to the world as a surprise.”
—Marcus Garvey (1887–1940)