[imagesource: Discovery+]

Reaching the so-called final frontier will most likely not be all it is cracked up to be.

While the billionaire space racers – Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson to name a few – punt that living and working in space is a wild ride that everyone should want to be involved in, a fabled German father and son director duo have examined this quest more closely in their new documentary.

Narrated and executively produced by Werner Herzog and directed by his son Rudolph (also an award-winning filmmaker), Last Exit: Space dives quite deep into the complex and multilayered possibility of space colonisation.

The 80-minute documentary features Taylor Genovese, an anthropologist at Arizona State University saying, quite frankly, that living in space is most likely comparable to being holed up in an Amazon warehouse, per GeekWire:

“You won’t be able to actually see where you are,” Genovese explains.

“You’re going to be inside of a factory, and you’re not going to experience what you think you’re going to be experiencing — that is, the kind of awe of being on another planet and experiencing being off Earth. No, you’re going to be working inside of a cubicle.”

That unheard of perspective is exactly the kind of thing you can expect from this rather unconventional space doccie:

“I just like the edgy, quirky stories,” the younger Herzog, who’s built up his own portfolio of film projects, explains in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast.

“I think everybody knows about Elon Musk, and everybody knows what Jeff Bezos is up to. … I just wanted to show the incredible lengths people will go to, to live this dream of going to space.”

Space.com says the doccie offers a “glimpse at those many different layers and driving factors”:

Last Exit: Space goes to incredible lengths to bring viewers to Denmark to meet the amateur rocketeers of Copenhagen Suborbitals, to Israel’s Negev Desert for a visit to a simulated Mars base, and to Mauna Kea in Hawaii for reflections on the balance between earthly and otherworldly concerns.

There’s even a visit to Brazil for a look at the UFO religious movement known as Valley of the Dawn.

The Herzogs also interview a “space sexologist” and a geneticist thinking about how to grow spaceflight-friendly, radiation-hardened, and possibly even photosynthesis-capable skin.

“Even if we improved our bodies in a way and had some kind of crazy radiation shield,” posits Rudolph, “wouldn’t our minds be the obstacle to space travel?”

Of course, the documentary delves into tales that illustrate the many daunting trials and tribulations of getting to Mars, ultimately mentioning that we have a lot of things to fix here on Earth before we can even really think about space colonisation.

Last Exit: Space started streaming exclusively on Discovery+ on March 10.

[sources:space.com&geekwire]