ANSA Mission Profiles

"Instead of sailing off into the sunset, he hopes to sail into the next century."
-Dave Anderson

Unraveling America's First Interstellar Mission
and the World's First Interstellar Disaster

This is one interpretation of the events that occurred "off camera" in the movies. By simply studying the actor's movements, their moods and attitudes, and studying the nuances of the various lines of the script / dialog, one can infer much about the history of the situation that we see portrayed in the movies. Here is what many of you have all been waiting on, some for decades! An explanation of what ANSA was thinking, what the astronauts were doing, where they were going, and why they were going there.

I try to answer all the big questions here, the who, what, why, where, and when using as much of the information given in the movies as possible.

These five basic questions are critical to any type of explanation for the movie series. Using all the quotes I can from the movies, and all the other tidbits of information I can gather, I will present to you one possible chain of events for the movies. Your opinion may and probably will vary, but to me, this approach makes the most sense of all, especially since it is drawn straight from the movies. The dialog of the characters in the movies says several things to us if we listen closely, and for the most part, figuring out Taylor's mission, or making any sense at all out of the space program as presented in the movies, takes a lot of listening and reading between the lines.

WHEN:	Lift off from Cape Kennedy on January 14, 1972 A.D. Return and crew recovery scheduled for August 3, 1981 A.D. Nine year total flight time round trip.
WHERE:	Alpha Centauri, the star that is the closest to our solar system and the logical first step into interstellar space.
WHAT:	America's first interstellar mission, under command of USAF Colonel George Taylor.
WHO:	USAF personnel Colonel George Taylor, Lieutenants Landon, Stewart, and Dodge.
WHY:	Exploratory mission to Alpha Centauri to gather preliminary data and to map the closest neighboring star system to our own.

WHEN:	Lift off from Cape Kennedy on January 14, 1972 A.D. Return to Earth on November 25, 3978 AD.
WHERE:	Alpha Centauri, the star that is the closest to our solar system and the logical first step into interstellar space, accidentally fell into a Hasslein Curve or 'bend in time' that exists between our solar system and Alpha Centauri.
WHAT:	The failure of America's first interstellar mission and a follow-up rescue mission.
WHO:	Stewart dies during the mission flight when her suspended animation chamber malfunctions. Dodge is killed by armed gorillas, stuffed and then put on display in a human museum. Landon undergoes a primitive frontal lobotomy at the hands of chimpanzee veterinarians and is reduced to a vegetable. Taylor escapes into the Forbidden Zone with his new mate, Nova, where he discovers that they are not on an unknown planet but have returned to Earth 2006 years in the far future, long after nuclear war has wiped out civilization as he knows it.
WHY:	Exploratory mission to Alpha Centauri to gather preliminary data and map the closest neighboring star system to our own.

Now to the explanation as we make a logical assumption of how to put all of the events together that occur at apparently adhoc fashion throughout the movies. What might work better is a Q&A style format, where I present the questions that I always had, and the answers that I have arrived at through my own research into the moods, expressions, and dialog of the characters in the movies.

"There's no sensation to compare to this. Suspended animation. Sated bliss..."
- Pink Floyd, "Learning To Fly"