Blues for a red planet

United States, 1979

Film
Please note

Sorry, we don't have images or video for this item.

Episode number 5 of Series “Cosmos: a personal voyage”.
Mars has fascinated humans for centuries, and become the mythic arena on to which we have projected our earthly hopes and fears. In this program Carl Sagan begins with H. G. Wells’ vision of Martians, shows us the telescope through which Lowell studied the “canals” on Mars, touches on Robert Goddard’s experiments with rockets and looks in depth at the Viking landers and their observational role. He concludes by discussing the possibility of microbiotic life and the potential for future colonisation of “the Red Planet”.

Content notification

Our collection comprises over 40,000 moving image works, acquired and catalogued between the 1940s and early 2000s. As a result, some items may reflect outdated, offensive and possibly harmful views and opinions. ACMI is working to identify and redress such usages.

Learn more about our collection and our collection policy here. If you come across harmful content on our website that you would like to report, let us know.

How to watch

This work has not been digitised and is currently unavailable to view online. It may be possible for approved reseachers to view onsite at ACMI.

Learn more about accessing our collection

Collection

In ACMI's collection

Credits

director

Adrian Malone

co-producer

Gregory Andorfer

Richard Wells

production company

BBC

Carl Sagan Productions

KCET (Television station : Los Angeles, Calif.)

Polytel International

Duration

01:00:00:00

Production places
United States
Production dates
1979

Appears in

Cosmos: a personal voyage

Group of items

Cosmos: a personal voyage

Explore

Collection metadata

ACMI Identifier

325327

Language

English

Subject categories

Mathematics, Science & Technology → Mars (Planet)

Mathematics, Science & Technology → Space flight - History

Mathematics, Science & Technology → Viking Mars Program

Sound/audio

Sound

Colour

Colour

Holdings

VHS; Access Print (Section 1)

Please note: this archive is an ongoing body of work. Sometimes the credit information (director, year etc) isn’t available so these fields may be left blank; we are progressively filling these in with further research.

Cite this work on Wikipedia

If you would like to cite this item, please use the following template: {{cite web |url=https://acmi.net.au/works/82877--blues-for-a-red-planet/ |title=Blues for a red planet |author=Australian Centre for the Moving Image |access-date=26 April 2025 |publisher=Australian Centre for the Moving Image}}