BLAST! documents an international team of astrophysicists who study the birth of stars with a balloon-borne set of telescopes and light detectors. Emmy-winning filmmaker Paul Devlin followed the scientists as they prepared their unmanned mission for its ascent from the icy plains of Antarctica into the outer limits of the Earth's atmosphere.
Devlin conducts many interviews with participants, which digress (mostly with great interest) from the project at hand through family matters to the aesthetic and spiritual dimension of cosmography. Some of the team members see the hand of God behind the fantastic architecture of a universe with no end in sight; others are agnostic in terms of the cause behind such immense beauty. BLAST! also shows that applied science is comprised of lots of grease and grunt work.
In the 19th century Edgar Allan Poe imagined a balloon ascent to the moon. Given budget cutbacks and austerity around the world, it's possible that for at least the near future, space exploration might rely on the less expensive option of balloon-borne experiments rather than rocket-lifted satellites. BLAST! is out on DVD.
