[1] http://www.stoneaerospace.com/
[2] http://www.wired.com/2012/04/bill-stone-laser-powered-europa...
It avoids most genre cliches, apart from the very ending maybe.
Yeah, by being fully made of those. [SPOILER ALERT]
* lack of crew psychological cross-matching
* some ludicrously exoggerated hydrazine drama
* chloroplast-equipped organisms in the environment which ambient light spectrum is slightly inclined towards gamma radiation (not to mention the meat-packed space vessel itself, brightly shined up by very same light)
* _one_ central computer with sole purpose to be heroically repaired on the _outer_ shell of the vessel (you see, no EVA - no drama)
* (mentioned ending) transferring at least tens of gigabytes from Europe to Earth in a matter of seconds (via that special hero-driven central computer) despite being unable to establish uplink for past several months already due to the broken trasmitter (of course, unreserved)
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Well, I understand that this is just a movie, but look, why not to put it in agreement with some common sense?
Exoggerated drama (i.e. dramatic action out of nothing or due the course of highly regulated procedures (eg. EVA)) is harder to evaluate: sometimes that drama looks quite plausible. Nevertheless, action sci-fi without some sort of team member sacrificion/unexpected death is hard to imagine, at least for me. Hell, it is not even specific to sci-fi: just take a look into any action movie out there - pretty high chances to become a witness of the dramatic death.
Very frivolous treatment of the laws of physics in general. I am pointing out that instantaneous information transmission specifically. Well, pretty much of cliche either, isn't it?
Stupid reasons for "heroicity". Are you a script writer in a search for the rationale to balance around the case of dramatic death of one or more characters? Director struggling with producers demand for fancy attention-binding activity you might be. What to do? Easy! Just place some important peace of equipment in a morbid place and there you go - engineering have been favored out by thrill.
Life. Remember that in "Babylon 5" most of aliens were anthropomorphic? Well, 90th there were, no fancy CG, and, besides, convergention one may say, right? Second decade of XXI century, Wikipedia is here and accessible in a matter of keystrokes. Why not chemothrophs, why?! Although, phototrophs could be plausible even in a shady world, convergention one may say...
http://www.nasa.gov/content/titan-submarine-exploring-the-de...
http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_stone_explores_the_earth_and_s...