Nat Geo Channel's 'Mars' Shows Hazards of Human Spaceflight

Viewers who tuned in for the television debut of "Mars" last week (Nov. 14) may recall the nail-biting scenes in which the Daedalus crew struggles to safely land its spacecraft near its pre-built Martian base camp. The crewmembers make it to Mars alive — for now — but are a whopping 75.6 kilometers (46.8 miles) away from camp. Though the Daedalus spacecraft, which is designed like SpaceX's reusable rockets, was built to be able to lift off and land again, there isn't enough fuel left to restart the engines and hop on over to base camp.