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An elite international team of astronauts must leave family and friends behind for a three-year crewed mission to Mars in Away, a new science fiction drama from Netflix, starring Hilary Swank. Created by Andrew Hinderaker (Penny Dreadful), the 10-episode series was inspired by a 2014 Esquire article by Chris Jones about astronaut Scott Kelly's year-long sojourn aboard the International Space Station with a Russian cosmonaut—the longest space mission in American history.

Per the official synopsis:

Away is a thrilling, emotional drama on an epic scale that celebrates the incredible advancements humans can achieve and the personal sacrifices they must make along the way. As American astronaut Emma Green (Hilary Swank, I Am Mother, Boys Don't Cry) prepares to lead an international crew on the first mission to Mars, she must reconcile her decision to leave behind her husband (Josh Charles, The Good Wife) and teenage daughter (Talitha Bateman, Countdown) when they need her the most. As the crew's journey into space intensifies, their personal dynamics and the effects of being away from their loved ones back on Earth become increasingly complex. ​Away shows that sometimes to reach for the stars, we must leave home behind.

The trailer opens with Emma's NASA engineer husband Matt playing the opening bars of Claude Debussy's "Clair de Lune" on a piano, as she presents their daughter Alexis with a gift: a necklace with three stones, representing Earth, the Moon, and Mars. "And the string is me making my way back to you. So just remember, the further away I get, I'm actually getting closer to being back to you."

Enlarge (credit: Jeff Martin/DOE)

Based purely on economics, there should be a lot more solar panels on roofs in the United States. With the dramatic plunge in the price of panels, solar systems have become competitive with the cost of electricity in a growing number of states, leaving the question of sun exposure to be the primary driver of whether adoption makes sense. Yet photovoltaic-equipped houses remain a rarity in the US, despite many states pushing for the adoption of renewable energy.

So why isn't that push working? To try to find out, a small team of researchers worked with a non-profit that promotes solar installs, helping test out two different message. One message focused on self-interest and emphasized the economic benefits of installing panels. The other was what's termed "pro-social," meaning it emphasized that installation of solar would bring benefits to the community. As the researchers found, self-interest was king—even after the promotion was over. But self-interest did have a side benefit in that the systems that were installed tended to get the most energy out of their panels.

Scripting Solarize

The work relies on a program called Solarize. Solarize runs town-level programs that include a single installer that provides the entire town with a group rate. Program ambassadors also run pro-solar programs within the town, encouraging adoption. These programs were the ones targeted by the researchers, who arranged an experiment based on the message delivered by these ambassadors. Some towns received messages that focused on self-interest, like “save thousands by installing solar.” Others were more community-focused—“Our community is doing something together to have more clean energy,” for example. The researchers worked with the program in Connecticut (one of the researchers is at Yale), which has expensive electricity.