‘Salvation’: How Much Of The New CBS Series Is Based On Actual Science?

“Salvation” executive producers Craig Shapiro and Liz Kruger don’t consider the new CBS series as a science fiction show because they believe that they had tried their best to ground the story in as much real science as possible.

“We like to say this isn’t a science fiction show. This is a science fact show,” Shapiro said in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly. “We take the science super seriously, and we try to do as much research as we can and bring reality to it.”

“Ninety percent of what we do is based on the actual science of today, and 10 percent is us trying to advance that science, and that’s where the fiction part comes in,” Kruger added.

READ: Jennifer Finnigan on what drew her to “Salvation”

“Salvation,” which premiered last Wednesday, follows tech billionaire Darius Tanz (Santiago Cabrera) and MIT grad student Liam Cole (Charlie Rowe) who secretly team up with Pentagon press secretary Grace Barrows (Jennifer Finnigan) to prevent an asteroid from colliding with Earth in six months.

Kruger said that the trio can either break the asteroid into pieces before it hits Earth or knock it off course. Shapiro added that they can either use a kinetic impactor to break the asteroid or a gravity tractor to divert it. How either one of those pieces of technology will reach the asteroid in time is where the aforementioned 10 percent comes in.

In tonight’s Season 1, episode 2 of “Salvation,” Darius and Liam decided to invent an electromagnetic propulsion drive (EmDrive), which could possibly cut the travel time of either the kinetic impactor or the gravity tractor into space. The EmDrive is a real invention but it’s still uncertain how it could potentially function because it breaks Newton’s Third Law. “Since nobody has solved the EmDrive, our science is a little speculative,” Kruger said. “So, we had to get creative and come up with a fictional way to crack the problem. [But then] again, the foundation for it is real.”

To help Shapiro and Kruger make sure that “Salvation” is grounded in as much real science as possible, they consulted with a friend of Krueger who works at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The duo also tapped astrophysicist Phil Plait, who writes the popular space blog “Bad Astronomy,” to serve as a science adviser for the show.

In a recent interview with Space.com, Plait commended the show’s writers for their efforts to get things right. Plait shared that he would receive frequent phone calls from the writers particularly in the early days of the production to answer their question about asteroids, methods for finding them and other science topics related to the show.

“Salvation” airs every Wednesday at 9 p.m. EDT on CBS.