Dreaming of spaceships and things

This is going to be the final dream from last night I'll write about. What a productive night it was to be able to remember three dreams! This one was the most high-key and made-for-movies. Likely my subconscious trying to move me into writing this into a story or some crap but haha my subcon doesn't know me well enough does it.

So there's a spaceship with a large number of people that goes to Mars. Includes a couple of research scientists. The point is to run a series of experiments, make sure the non-researchers can acclimatize, do the psych studies, social interactions etcetera for a couple of days and then come back. Except something bad happens -- unclear what it was -- and the spaceship has to take off from Mars, leaving the several research scientists behind. There's enough food in the spaceship for the passengers, and there's enough food in the research base for scientists [since the others were supposed to spend a longer time], but now they're abandoned in the red planet.

The return trip goes uneventful, but during re-entry, something goes wrong and an engine catches on fire so it has to be detached from the lander, and then the brakes fail and everyone's worried they're going to crash and die but the pilots successfully glide the plane into the longest landing strip, which they overshoot but that's fine because they have one of those 'collapsing concrete' things at the end of the strip that basically stops the lander by digging it deep into the ground.

The spaceship's destroyed and there's no plans for future missions in the foreseeable future. In the resulting press conference, the first thing the commander of the ship and the navigator say is this: we'd be more than happy to risk our lives, and give them if it comes to that, to rescue the scientists from Mars. They are our responsibility, and we'll get them back no matter what the personal costs to us are. Everyone cries and people make plans for an immediate mission. There's a duplicate ship that was to be used as a backup in case the primary had something wrong with it, and there's plans about taking that to Mars. The concern is, if the original ship faced problems due to structural deficiencies, the same problem could manifest itself in the backup, and the rescue mission itself might fail. The captain and the navigator consider that to not be a problem at all, and state that it's a risk they are willing to take, even if it meant the entire crew consisted of just the two of them. Their crew members back them up, that they're willing to risk themselves for the journey. Then there's other backup astronaut teams who say the original team should not have to risk themselves twice, it was not their fault, it's a joint responsibility, and it should be them who should go for the rescue mission.

Because the mars researchers have internet (despite the high latency) and video messages and everything, they keep sending hi-def video messages from Mars, they look quite happy and content, and are getting a lot more research than they would otherwise have. Some people think that the researchers are having more fun than they would have had in the original trip and some are suspecting a sabotage on their part, but no one takes them seriously.

And then I had to get up to use the restroom, or I turned over, or something, and the dream kind of faded away.