Avenue 5: How Scientifically Accurate HBO’s Sci-Fi Show Really Is -BB

Avenue 5 may be a science-fiction comedy series, but the show’s portrayal of the science behind space flight is no joke. Created by Armando Iannucci, the comedic genius behind Veep, Avenue 5 takes a satirical look at a future where space tourism is a booming industry. The show’s subject matter may have some viewers wondering how scientifically accurate the HBO sci-fi series actually is; the answer is surprising.

Avenue 5 is no documentary, and the show is filled with some almost unbelievably-quirky characters; yet, the science presented in HBO’s TV series is fairly realistic. The show is clearly set in the future, where smart phones are wrapped around people’s wrists, screens (which are all over the ship’s walls) come in various shapes and sizes, and where Google has been replaced by the next tech giant: the Judd Corporation. Apart from the Avenue 5 itself, which is capable of completing a round trip to Jupiter from Earth in a month’s time, there is no fantastic technology to speak of: no human-like robots, cybernetic enhancements, or personal jet packs. The future in Avenue 5 looks very similar to today’s world.

Regardless of how mundane Iannucci and the creative team behind Avenue 5 made their depiction of space flight, the bottom-line is that this is speculative fiction: the kind of interplanetary travel the show’s plot is based on is still decades away from being a reality. Avenue 5 is then fundamentally not scientifically accurate because it presents a technology that does not exist; however, the science that the show presents does corroborate with the current space travel strategies — there’s no magic „warp drive“ powering the Avenue 5 — which adds a level of believability to the show.

The Avenue 5 is the Judd Corporation’s fifth interplanetary cruise ship, which takes passengers on a month-long journey to Jupiter and back. Although the specifics of how the ship’s functions are not described in the show, one important aspect of the ship is: how it travels through space. In the pilot episode, an unknown error causes the ship’s „gravity“ to flip — launching all 5000 passengers (not to mention the various objects onboard the ship) into the ship’s side.

The resulting impact from the gravity flip has a „knock-off“ effect, meaning it adjusted the ship’s trajectory by 2 degrees. Billie, the ship’s second engineer, struggles to explain the problem to the ship’s command crew, using her hands to gesture how even just two degrees has a significant impact to a path over time („that’s less than a right angle“ protests Judd, the ship’s owner). Back on Earth, the Judd Corporation’s Mission Control team calculate the ship’s new path, eventually presenting a diagram that shows the ship circling the Earth for 3 years.

At the TCA 2020, Iannucci described his choice not to go „mega-futuristic“ with Avenue 5, instead, suggesting that in his imagined future, “the only major advance has been that we can fly further in space and hopefully get back” (via The Wrap). Iannucci told the press that the space travel in Avenue 5 was based on current science, such as the „precise gravitational sling shots“ (via Slash Film) used to propel the ship rather than an engine that burns fuel.

Another thing HBO’s Avenue 5 gets right about science: space is cold. In the first episode, the first engineer Joe gets impaled while working outside of the vessel attempting to „boost“ the ship’s communication speed with Earth; the meaningless task is done at the insistence of the incompetent Judd CEO Herman Judd, and results in the death of an important member of the Avenue 5’s crew.

The ship’s captain, Ryan Clark (played by Hugh Laurie), suggests that Joe may still be alive because there’s no blood. The moment Joe was impaled, the structural integrity of his spacesuit was compromised. As second engineer Billie points out, there is blood: it’s just frozen. As soon as the body begins the thaw, blood spurts out in a spectacular fountain (proving once and for all that Joe is indeed deceased).

Although it’s not revealed in the pilot episode, there is another aspect of space flight that Iannucci includes in his brutal HBO satire: a poop shield. As Iannucci remarked to press during TCA 2020, he did research into space technology while developing the series, and was thrilled to learn that the current science for long-distance space travel involves using human waste to shield passengers from cosmic radiation (via Slash Film). Based on his comments, it would seem that the Avenue 5 has some sort of waste management system that doubles as a radiation shield.

The science behind this is legitimate: as New Scientist reported back in 2013, human waste does shield against cosmic radiation better than metal does, as does water and food. According to the 2013 article, dehydrated poop, placed in baggies and lining the walls, was being considered as a strategy to protect astronauts from cosmic rays during their flight to Mars. Nasa suggests real-life cosmic radiation poses a very serious risk to astronauts, from short-term illness to a lifetime increased risk of cancer and degenerative diseases — very unlike the fun kind of cosmic rays responsible for creating The Fantastic Four. For any human being spending a prolonged period in space, a radiation shield is essential.

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In his TCA 2020 comments, Iannucci indicated that something could happen to the Avenue 5’s human-waste shield. There’s a post-it note stuck to the navigational panel Billie is using while trying to „fix“ the communication delay during the premiere of Avenue 5; a close look at the scene reveals that the post-it reads „Cyrus bleed the wetsuit.“ Could this wetsuit have something to do with the ship’s radiation shield? Is there a chance the mysterious Cyrus did not, in fact, bleed it?

With an entire season to explore the chaos onboard the Avenue 5, there will likely be ample opportunities for the space-age technology to fail, likely because of human error. Whether or not the show can maintain it’s hard sci-fi approach remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: those watching Avenue 5 are in for one hell of a ride.

Avenue 5 premiered on HBO on Sunday January 19.

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