Thomas Pesquet is in the ISS doing his scientific experiments.
And U.S ?
Here are some cultural tips for living the next six months with your head in the stars
From the addicting
Space Brothers
manga
to the uchronic
For All Mankind series
to the Kerbal Space Program space flight simulator, there is something for everyone.
Share a little the daily life of the French astronaut with VR experiences, music from space or reading
Dune
, the novel he took up there
It's okay, he's gone.
Thomas Pesquet took off on Friday, along with the three other astronauts from the Crew-2 mission, aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon 2 capsule, before heading to the International Space Station.
An event experienced live by millions of spectators around the world, stars in their eyes.
And now ?
Well, months of scientific experiments, inevitably less spectacular.
But, Thomas, you can't leave us like that…
20 Minutes
offers you several cultural recommendations (manga, TV series, video games…) for the next six months, the time of the Alpha mission.
The manga "Space Brothers"
From the essential
Objectif Lune
by Hergé to
the aptly
named
In Thomas Pesquet's combi by
Marion Montaigne, through science fiction and space opera stories, comics have always loved space. The manga too. One of the best series of the moment is also
Space Brothers
published by Pika, the story of Hibito and Mutta, two brothers who are passionate about space since they saw a small UFO. If the first, the youngest, has become one of the youngest astronauts in history, the second is an unemployed loser.
But it's never too late to make his dream come true, and Mutta decides to take the JAXA exam, the Japanese NASA, to follow in Hibito's footsteps and become the model big brother he always wanted. to be.
With around thirty volumes already and still in the process of being published,
Space Brothers
describes with realism, detail, humor and above all a lot of heart the fate of our Japanese Thomas Pesquet.
The manga has a strong addictive potential, so try to enjoy each tome rather than devouring them, but be aware, at worst, that there is an anime adaptation and a live movie.
The "For All Mankind" series
Interstellar
,
Gravity
,
Ad Astra
,
Seul sur Mars
… If we often quote films, and the revolution of special effects, to speak of the fascination of fiction for the conquest of space, what then of the series with
The First
on Hulu ,
The Stuff of Heroes
on Disney +,
Away
on Netflix and especially
For All Mankind
on AppleTV +. In this uchronia, Ronald D. Moore (
Battlestar Galactica
) imagines that it was not the Americans who walked on the Moon in 1969 but the Russians.
From there, it unfolds a thrilling and inclusive space conquest which had rather gone unnoticed in season 1 but which everyone agreed in season 2. "The best series you don't watch", headlines the site Slate, while US TV critic Alan Sepinwall calls the Season 2 finale, which aired last Friday, "one of the best and most thrilling series I've ever seen."
Immediate take-off?
The game "Kerbal Space Program"
Not so fast the space boys and girls.
Have you at least built your rocket, calculated its trajectory in great detail, prepared all possible failure scenarios…?
This is the very complete program offered by the
Kerbal Space Progam
video game
.
Launched in alpha version in 2011, this simulation puts you at the head of a space center in an imaginary universe populated by little green men.
But science, and even space mechanics to be precise, is very real.
The game has thus won the loyalty of several million budding astronauts over the years, who can, for example, replay the Apollo program with the
Making History
extension
.
Available on PC, Mac, Linux, PS4 and Xbox One,
Kerbal
What do you occupy for hours, days ... six months?
Virtual reality experiences
It's the world upside down.
Thanks to VR, Thomas Pesquet takes a piece of the Earth with him on the ISS, and will thus be able to cycle in Paris or Marseille.
Great, but take off into space from your sofa, is it possible?
You can imagine that virtual reality has from its inception aimed at the stars, and there are no more VR experiences dedicated to space.
The favorite French astronaut even got involved with
In the skin of Thomas Pesquet
, two immersive 10-minute films, the first on his training and the second on his trip, during the Proxima mission.
We can also mention Blueturn,
Space Explorers: The ISS Experience
,
2nd Step
and
1st Step,
or Spheres, “the million dollar VR movie”.
The soundtrack from space
No, Hans Zimmer did not compose the music for the cosmos, it 's just the
Interstellar
soundtrack playing
on a loop.
As the astrophysicist Jean-Pierre Luminet explained in his
Chronicle of space
on France Inter, "the virtual vacuum of the Universe offers no support for sound".
On the other hand, it evokes "a song of light", because the light waves captured by telescopes can be transcribed into sound waves.
This is what NASA did, which calls them the "scary sounds of the solar system".
Ah OK.
Good night ?
For reading advice, there would be a choice, from the classic SF
Foundation
by Isaac Asimov to the popular science of
The Universe within reach
of Christophe Galfard, but let's follow the guide and Thomas Pesquet.
The astronaut has indeed warned to reread
Frank Herbert's
Dune
on the ISS, a very good idea, especially since the novel has had the right to a new edition and several tests in anticipation of the film's release.
Science
"This second stay aboard the ISS will be more difficult than the first", confides Thomas Pesquet three days before departure.
Science
Thomas Pesquet would see himself "one foot on the Moon, one foot on Mars"
Series
Manga
Sci-fi
Thomas Pesquet
Space
Culture