 | This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
|
Mission to Mars is a 1955 children's science fiction novel by Patrick Moore, published by Burke. It is the first of a six-book series based on the character Maurice Gray. [1]
The action is set initially on Earth and then on Mars. The time is 1968, two years after the first landing on the Moon.
Maurice Gray, a young recently orphaned Englishman, arrives at the Woomera Rocket base in Australia to meet his only known relative, Dr Leslie Yorke, a scientist at the base. He learns from Bruce Talbot, a radar technician, that Dr. Yorke is presently on an expedition to Mars in the Hermes.
Listening to the base radio, Maurice hears a fragmentary message from the expedition in morse code. The expedition report that their ship has landed, but has been damaged and is inoperable. They have limited supplies of air.
Because of his light weight and his knowledge of radio-transmission, Sir Robert Lanner, the Chief Controller, is persuaded to allow Maurice to join a rescue mission with Bruce and Dr David Mellor aboard the nuclear-powered ship Ares.
The journey is uneventful except for a spacewalk that goes wrong; Maurice rescues Bruce when the latter loses his safety line. This rescue binds the crew closer together.
During the landing, they pass through the so-called 'Violet Layer', a portion of the Martian atmosphere, which severely buffets them. They land, but their radar systems are damaged beyond repair. They discover that the Layer contains a powerful magnetic field, which also probably damaged the Hermes.
Exploring Mars on foot, Maurice and Bruce are nearly frozen in the cold of night when a dust-storm delays them and injures Bruce. They make fragmentary contact with Yorke, who reports a few hours worth of air. They set out to rescue the others.
On the journey, they encounter carnivorous gastropods and pterodactyl-like flying creatures. They witness an attack by one of the gastropods on one of the flying creatures and are able to rescue the latter, nicknaming it "Horace". Unable to find the Hermes, they are guided to the ship by "Horace" and several others, who exhibit signs of intelligence.
Yorke, Whitton and Knight are found, running critically short of air. They cannibalise the Hermes, especially the undamaged radar systems, and return to the Ares. Despite the extra weight, they manage to take off and return to Earth.
A fossil collected by one of the expedition members is examined and speculated to have been part of a winged intelligent humanoid - maybe one of the remote ancestors of "Horace".
Maurice, now fascinated by Mars, is invited to join the staff at Woomera.
HMS Hermes was a British aircraft carrier built for the Royal Navy and was the world's first ship to be designed as an aircraft carrier, although the Imperial Japanese Navy's Hōshō was the first to be launched and commissioned. The ship's construction began during the First World War but not completed until after the end of the war, delayed by multiple changes in her design after she was laid down. After she was launched, the Armstrong Whitworth shipyard which built her closed, and her fitting out was suspended. Most of the changes made were to optimise her design, in light of the results of experiments with operational carriers.
HMS Hermes was a conventional British aircraft carrier and the last of the Centaur class.
HMS Invincible was the Royal Navy's lead ship of her class of three light aircraft carriers. She was launched on 3 May 1977 as the seventh ship to carry the name. She was originally designated as an anti-submarine warfare carrier, but was used as an aircraft carrier during the Falklands War, when she was deployed with HMS Hermes. She took over as flagship of the British fleet when Hermes was sold to India. Invincible was also deployed in the Yugoslav Wars and the Second Gulf War. In 2005, she was decommissioned, and was eventually sold for scrap in February 2011.
A seaplane tender is a boat or ship that supports the operation of seaplanes. Some of these vessels, known as seaplane carriers, could not only carry seaplanes but also provided all the facilities needed for their operation; these ships are regarded by some as the first aircraft carriers and appeared just before the First World War.
The Westland WS-61 Sea King is a British licence-built version of the American Sikorsky S-61 helicopter of the same name, built by Westland Helicopters. The aircraft differs considerably from the American version, with Rolls-Royce Gnome engines, British-made anti-submarine warfare systems and a fully computerised flight control system. The Sea King was primarily designed for performing anti-submarine warfare (ASW) missions. A Sea King variant known as the Commando was devised by Westland to serve as a troop transport.
HMS Formidable was an Illustrious-class aircraft carrier ordered for the Royal Navy before the Second World War. After being completed in late 1940, she was briefly assigned to the Home Fleet before being transferred to the Mediterranean Fleet as a replacement for her crippled sister ship Illustrious. Formidable's aircraft played a key role in the Battle of Cape Matapan in early 1941, and they subsequently provided cover for Allied ships and attacked Axis forces until their carrier was badly damaged by German dive bombers in May.
CVA-01 was a proposed United Kingdom aircraft carrier, designed during the 1960s. The ship was intended to be the first of a class that would replace all then-existing Royal Navy carriers, most of which had been designed before or during the Second World War. CVA-01 and CVA-02 were intended to replace HMS Victorious and HMS Ark Royal, while CVA-03 and CVA-04 would have replaced HMS Hermes and HMS Eagle respectively.
It! The Terror from Beyond Space is an independently made 1958 American science fiction horror film, produced by Robert Kent, directed by Edward L. Cahn, that stars Marshall Thompson, Shawn Smith, and Kim Spalding. The film was distributed by United Artists as a double feature with Curse of the Faceless Man.
The Italia was a semi-rigid airship belonging to the Italian Air Force. It was designed by Italian engineer and General Umberto Nobile who flew the dirigible in his second series of flights around the North Pole. The Italia crashed in 1928, with one confirmed fatality from the crash, one fatality from exposure while awaiting rescue, and six missing crew members who were trapped in the still-airborne envelope. At the end of the rescue operations there were a total of 17 dead.
Space Shuttle missions designated STS-3xx were rescue missions which would have been mounted to rescue the crew of a Space Shuttle if their vehicle was damaged and deemed unable to make a successful reentry. Such a mission would have been flown if Mission Control determined that the heat shielding tiles and reinforced carbon-carbon panels of a currently flying orbiter were damaged beyond the repair capabilities of the available on-orbit repair methods. These missions were also referred to as Launch on Demand (LOD) and Contingency Shuttle Crew Support. The program was initiated following loss of Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003. No mission of this type was launched during the Space Shuttle program.
The Exploration Systems Architecture Study (ESAS) is the official title of a large-scale, system level study released by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in November 2005 in response to American president George W. Bush's announcement on January 14, 2004 of his goal of returning astronauts to the Moon and eventually Mars — known as the Vision for Space Exploration. The Constellation Program was cancelled in 2010 by the Obama Administration and replaced with the Space Launch System, later renamed as the Artemis Program in 2017 under the Trump Administration.
Belt armor is a layer of heavy metal armor plated onto or within the outer hulls of warships, typically on battleships, battlecruisers and cruisers, and aircraft carriers.
Ilak Island is a small island in the eastern Delarof Islands, Aleutian Islands of Alaska.
"A Martian Odyssey" is a science fiction short story by American writer Stanley G. Weinbaum originally published in the July 1934 issue of Wonder Stories. It was Weinbaum's second published story, and remains his best known. It was followed four months later by a sequel, "Valley of Dreams". These are the only stories by Weinbaum set on Mars.
The Planetary series of stories by Stanley G. Weinbaum is a series of short stories, published in Wonder Stories and Astounding Stories in the 1930s, which are set upon various planets and moons of the Solar System.
Stranded is a 2001 English-language Spanish science fiction film about a fictional first crewed mission to Mars. It stars Vincent Gallo and Maria de Medeiros, and was directed by Spanish filmmaker and actress María Lidón, with screenplay by Spanish science fiction author Juan Miguel Aguilera. Lidón won the "Grand Prize of European Fantasy Film in Silver", and Gallo and de Medeiros were named best actors at the 2002 Fantafestival in Rome.
The Voices of Mars is a 1957 children's science fiction novel by Patrick Moore, published by Burke. It is the third of a six-book series based on the character Maurice Gray.
Marooned on Mars is a juvenile science fiction novel written by American writer Lester del Rey. It was published by John C. Winston Co. in 1952 with illustrations by Alex Schomburg.
The study of surface characteristics is a broad category of Mars science that examines the nature of the materials making up the Martian surface. The study evolved from telescopic and remote-sensing techniques developed by astronomers to study planetary surfaces. However, it has increasingly become a subdiscipline of geology as automated spacecraft bring ever-improving resolution and instrument capabilities. By using characteristics such as color, albedo, and thermal inertia and analytical tools such as reflectance spectroscopy and radar, scientists are able to study the chemistry and physical makeup of the Martian surface. The resulting data help scientists understand the planet's mineral composition and the nature of geological processes operating on the surface. Mars’ surface layer represents a tiny fraction of the total volume of the planet, yet plays a significant role in the planet's geologic history. Understanding physical surface properties is also very important in determining safe landing sites for spacecraft.
The Martian is a 2011 science fiction debut novel written by Andy Weir. The book was originally self-published on Weir's blog, in a serialized format. In 2014, the book was re-released after Crown Publishing Group purchased the exclusive publishing rights. The story follows an American astronaut, Mark Watney, as he becomes stranded alone on Mars in 2035 and must improvise in order to survive.
 | This article about a 1950s science fiction novel is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. See guidelines for writing about novels. Further suggestions might be found on the article's talk page. |
