Good Night Oppy (docu-film): Fantastically done and I learned a lot

I would say that I have a normal amount of interest in the cosmos. I briefly became very interested in it when I was on a Stephen Hawking binge in my 20's but other than that I look up into the sky with a sense of wonderment like most people do.

The exploration of Mars is something that kind of goes in and out of the news. I knew we had a rover on Mars at one point but there was so much about it all that I had no idea about. The extremely huge success of the NASA operation involving Opportunity which would later be colloquially known as "Oppy" was something I knew extremely little about and that is part of the reason why this documentary was so impactful for me.

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Obviously, trying to send anything to something as far away as Mars is would require a tremendous amount of planning and huge amounts of resources and this doco goes into, albeit briefly, exactly how huge of an investment the operations have been.

I didn't know that there had been another Mars rover in the past as I don't think it was publicized as much as Opportunity and Spirit were, even though the latter 2 didn't really make the news all that frequently because most of what they had discovered isn't Hollywood exciting enough to hold the attention of the average person these days.

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A great deal of the footage that you are going to see in this documentary is CGI, because there is no way that they would possibly have footage of the rovers moving around like they pretend to show in the film. It's still all accurate though and when they show you the actual footage next to the simulated one, you can see how slow and arduous this exploration must have been. The first rover that arrived on Mars managed to only make it 100 meters from where it landed. When you think about the fact that NASA's second attempt managed to make it 7.73km and that Oppy managed to make it 45 km, these are impressive strides as far as progression is concerned.

The rover was only built to last for 90 days and when they started to get into years and the thing was still moving around, well, that's extremely impressive.

The documentary does a nice mix of interviews, technically dumbed-down information about what is taking place so far away, as well as emotional re-tellings of what it was like to be a part of this mission that lasted over 15 years.

I think that Amazon did a good job of making this something that the general public can consume because they left out all the technical jargon that while I am sure it is of vital importance to the people running the show, it doesn't exactly make for good viewing for those of us that don't specialize in this sort of thing - which is almost all of us.

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The movie explained a lot to me about how harsh the conditions are on Mars and I walked away from this having learned a lot about this planet that I honestly, would have known nothing about otherwise - and while I don't necessarily aim to learn something when I am watching a film, it is a nice little side-effect when it does happen.

This is not some sort of sci-fi nerd documentary. I believe this is something that the average person - of which I consider myself to be a part of - can well and truly enjoy.

Should I watch it?

Absolutely. This is especially true since it seems as though these events just kind of snuck past all of us despite how much of a monumental achievement they actually are. It's crazy to think that there are people intelligent enough to be able to manage a multi-year operation with a machine that doesn't even hear your requests until 10 minutes after you send them. Think about that the next time you have a small problem with your ping on your internet connection at home ok?

I think this is one of the better documentaries I have ever seen about anything. I actually got a bit emotional at the end of it, and I bet you will as well

_{While I have read there are regional restrictions that will require a VPN in order to access it in some locations around the world, the only way to legally watch this film is with an Amazon Prime subscription}