Page 2 July 29, 2021
Entertainment
Film Review
‘Settlers’ Review: A Sci-Fi Adventure
That Questions the Colonizing of Space
By Ryan Rojas for cinemacy.com
With the recent week’s news of Sir Richard
Branson and Jeff Bezos becoming the
first American Billionaires to enter the legal
atmosphere of space, the reality of humans
colonizing other planets is becoming more
and more a reality. But what exactly will that
future look like? What obstacles will the first
people who live on Mars endure, and what
flaws will we bring with them? One such
vision comes in the new sci-fi film from
IFC Midnight, Settlers (in theaters today),
which feels surprisingly less fictitious and
more inevitably real of what may be to come.
Settlers tells the story of mankind’s earliest
people on the Martian frontier. Reza (Jonny
Lee Miller), Ilsa (Sofia Boutella), and Remmy
(Brooklynn Prince) are a tight-knit family of
three living on a compound in Mars. It’s clear
that they love each other, showing concern
Settlers, courtesy IFC Films
for each other’s safety at every moment, and
soon enough it’s clear why: when masked
intruders arrive brandishing weapons and
disrupting the family unit, their dynamic is
destroyed. The trespasser’s message becomes
clear soon enough: who is the real intruder
amongst them? And who is actually trespassing
on whose land?
For a sci-fi film taking place on Mars,
writer and director Wyatt Rockefeller gives
Settlers a realistic setting (not always easy
to do on a tight budget). Its vast, red-skied
desert landscape makes for a grounded and
believable depiction of Mars. To this end,
Settlers smartly focuses its story on the human
elements at the heart of the story (even
breaking the film into chapters focusing on
each of the main characters). The central
struggle here is both of settlers and indigenous
See Film, page 7
Daring Little Dragonfly: A
NASA Mission to Ice Moon Titan
By Tommy Vinh Bui, MLIS
Associate Librarian
Inglewood Public Library
There’s a palpable buzz and renewed
interest in the air around space travel. Be it
billionaires climbing the rungs of jet-fueled
propulsion to slip the surly bonds of earth to
reach new heights or the raft of telecommunication
satellites that are launched annually,
there’s a veritable space race being stoked to
see who can go further and farther.
But let’s not forget the original go-to space
agency that started it all. Which is why I’d
like to take this opportunity to bring attention
to another enthralling upcoming endeavour.
The robotic rotorcraft lander Dragonfly will
be NASA’s fourth New Frontiers mission to
continue to stretch the bounds of scientific
curiosity and explore the surface of the
organic-rich ocean world of Titan, the largest
moon of Saturn.
Dragonfly will kick up the proverbial
space dust and attempt to travel in situ and
measure chemical components and processes
that produce biological compounds in diverse
environments. The rotorcraft was designed
with an array of aerial mobility allowing it to
soar through the dense and relatively stable
low-gravity nitrogen-based atmosphere to
haul scientific payloads to multiple locations
spread across Titan’s icy geography.
The topography of Titan offers a diversity
of geologic features and histories for
scientists to scrutinize under their eager
microscopes. Dipping and ascending around
methane lakes, subsurface oceans, and
frosty -290 degrees Fahrenheit climates.
Dragonfly will also careen over interdune
flats among the organic dunes spread along
the equatorial Shangri-La sand sea. And
ultimately swoop and land within the Selk
impact crater where scientists hypothesize
that key ingredients for life such as liquid
water and complex organics may have
theoretically mixed together for upwards
of tens of thousands of years. Dragonfly’s
ably-engineered propeller blades will also
investigate prebiotic organic chemistry,
evaluate Titan’s potential extraterrestrial
habitability, and uncover the unique chemical
compositions of past biological processes.
Included in Dragonfly’s mission objectives
will be thorough analyses in the context of
Titan’s meteorological cycle, geophysical
measurements of the subsurface, and fastidious
planetary mapping. A challenging and
ambitious enterprise indeed.
Dragonfly is slated to launch in 2026 and
arrive 2034 thereabouts. This earnest little
eight-bladed rotorcraft has quite a distance to
cover. This upcoming mission also marks the
inaugural implementation of a fully powered
and remote controlled multi-rotor vehicle to
traverse a moon. Along with being the first
drone-like mechanism to navigate its entire
scientific payload to dozens of sampling
sites for repeatable and targeted access to
surface materials. We’re breaking some serious
ground here.
Octocopter Dragonfly hefts a lot of hope
on its gangly little cogs and gears. This
rotorcraft’s instruments will further advance
our understanding of astrobiology and
guide us to new conclusions regarding the
progress of pre-life chemistry. And perhaps
beam back an abundance of new knowledge
about our origins and the basic building
blocks of life.
So let’s continue to keep our gazes pinned
to the skies and mutter a benison or two
for the intrepid Dragonfly as it uncovers
the enigmatic and icy secrets of Titan
and further stirs our understanding of the
piping primordial soup from whence we
percolated. •
Tommy Vinh Bui
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