I know the show likes to push forward, but the I think the Working Class Astronaut idea would have worked better on the moon. They could have looked at how new technology disrupts established ones (Fusion replacing Petrochems) and so on, as well as the tyranny of distance for FIFO moon workers.
Having said that, I really like the idea of Working Class Astronauts in all situations (its why I love the aesthetic of Alien so much). The tech in Alien is solid, reliable, will work for decades at a time. It's an aesthetic that doesn't get enough air time. Not everything is going to be smooth, white and clean. The guts of the thing are going to be lubricated, messy and noisy.
They implied in one episode that this had already played out on the moon, and the strike was broken by bringing in non union scabs to take over the mining operations. The context was that with Mars a month's travel away, the economics of strike breaking wouldn't work the same and the Mars crew had greater leverage.
Working Class Astronauts is a severely underexplored area of sci fi, possibly because Alien nailed it so perfectly. Although JB made a nice detour through it in the Cruel Stars with the underclasses scraping an existence on the deck plates of the Habs.
I know the show likes to push forward, but the I think the Working Class Astronaut idea would have worked better on the moon. They could have looked at how new technology disrupts established ones (Fusion replacing Petrochems) and so on, as well as the tyranny of distance for FIFO moon workers.
Having said that, I really like the idea of Working Class Astronauts in all situations (its why I love the aesthetic of Alien so much). The tech in Alien is solid, reliable, will work for decades at a time. It's an aesthetic that doesn't get enough air time. Not everything is going to be smooth, white and clean. The guts of the thing are going to be lubricated, messy and noisy.
They implied in one episode that this had already played out on the moon, and the strike was broken by bringing in non union scabs to take over the mining operations. The context was that with Mars a month's travel away, the economics of strike breaking wouldn't work the same and the Mars crew had greater leverage.
Working Class Astronauts is a severely underexplored area of sci fi, possibly because Alien nailed it so perfectly. Although JB made a nice detour through it in the Cruel Stars with the underclasses scraping an existence on the deck plates of the Habs.
Cool