Movie 'The Martian' Preview is out

Hello Charybdis. I sped red the story. Very interesting. Remember this was written way back in the 1950s. Given what the author new back then about future history, the story is a very powerful reminder of the fine edge of success and disaster in the environment of space. The pilot did the right thing. But ... he should have done it much quicker. After the fact he could have greaved about what he had to do. Just horrible me. HB. no speell chzk.

I do hope that in the future we have a little bit more margin.

HB of CJ wrote:Hello Charybdis. I sped red the story. Very interesting. Remember this was written way back in the 1950s. Given what the author new back then about future history, the story is a very powerful reminder of the fine edge of success and disaster in the environment of space. The pilot did the right thing. But ... he should have done it much quicker. After the fact he could have greaved about what he had to do. Just horrible me. HB. no speell chzk.

I do hope that in the future we have a little bit more margin.

When I read it many years ago I was haunted by the image of her floating away. Since then I rationalised that it called for some lateral thinking, must have be some way to fix things.

Daryl wrote:

HB of CJ wrote:Hello Charybdis. I sped red the story. Very interesting. Remember this was written way back in the 1950s. Given what the author new back then about future history, the story is a very powerful reminder of the fine edge of success and disaster in the environment of space. The pilot did the right thing. But ... he should have done it much quicker. After the fact he could have greaved about what he had to do. Just horrible me. HB. no speell chzk.

I do hope that in the future we have a little bit more margin.

When I read it many years ago I was haunted by the image of her floating away. Since then I rationalised that it called for some lateral thinking, must have be some way to fix things.

I've come across several different versions of the basic "Cold Equation" story, but my fave is this webcomic version (24 pages long, includes a bit of a rant on why governments are bad at running businesses).
A few of the minor points (and characters) may prove confusing unless you read the whole thing from page 1, although the Cold Equations story arc starts at page 113 (or 112, depending on if you count the first cover).

Well, the Movie is out and I just got back from it...and I hugely enjoyed it. It keeps to the spirit of the book, albeit skipping some things (or the movie would have been 4 hours long) and changing one or two details, but Matt Damon is great in the role and all the other characters fit in just fine...and in the end, they tell a superb story.

Go see..if need be, steal someone's lunch money. But go see it.

I'm taking family to it today.
Report latet.

ERR

Since the closest good walk in movie house is over 25 miles and nearly 40 minutes away and when the total expense of taking the entire family to go see a great, (or not) film with all the extras is included, what we will do is just wait some time ...

... until it comes out on Blue Ray and rent it for one night at $3.00 bucks. The home made pop corn and iced tea is nearly $free$ also. Just another way of enjoying good stuff at 10 cents on the dollar. Works for us. We tend to be cheap bastards.

The whole premise of the Movie is laughable. Mars has 1% of the 'air' density of Earth. For the wind to blow over the recovery rocket, even with the 30% of Earth Gravity, is laughable. Mars has 2000 mph winds? 200 mph winds on Earth even with sand contributing to density and the weak gravity the wind speed on Mars would be 11 mph equivalent. So Matt is stuck on Mars for no reason.

The ship with the tiny crew 6-8 is also laughable. The ship is too small to have centripetal gravity sections that would help the crew at all. to create 1 Earth G of artificial gravity one needs a 200+ metre radius swing. 400+ metre diameter. the swing rate for their tiny ship would have a rotation rate that would make everyone sick within minutes to have 1 G simulated gravity.
http://www.artificial-gravity.com/sw/SpinCalc/

now some would argue that the spin rate can be acceptable with lots of training, again for the ship within the movie it appeared to have a radius of 25 metres this would require an angular velocity of 6 rotations per minute. yet the movie shows a velocity closer to 1 rotation per minute. Which would produce 0.0278 G. at your feet and 0.0257 G at your head. Hardly any gravity at all. certainly wouldn't do much of anything for the astronauts health. For 1 rotation per minute the craft would have to be more that a mile around for the 1G Centripetal gravity. for Mars gravity a 1/3rd of a mile around.

Gravity on Mars and Solar radiation would be well much different. Potato plants would grow 3.33 times taller. Potatoes might even grow bigger. Designed for Earth as they are.

Still don't get how they made air? I figured he would run out of air long before food.

They astronauts trip can't be extended another 800 days without bad consequences for them, radiation and gravity problems alone would leave them cancer riddled or physically dilapidated. But then again the wind doesn't blow hard enough to affect them or their rocket... So many other things could have had one left for dead, and make the movie and the book so much better.

The movie does illustrate why a Mars mission is a bad idea. Why sending 6-8 Tourists to Mars is bad and why any future space mission should be about building larger ships and moving hundreds of explorers to Other worlds not 6-8. Multi country exploration funded by all associated countries in station keeping ships that can facilitate large groups and return gravity and radiation protection. O'Neill Cylinders or Torus rings not space rowboats.

The E wrote:

HB of CJ wrote:I did read the book and did not like parts of it. Sometimes the hardest thing for mankind to do in a terrible situation is ... to do nothing. In the novel they should NOT have done what they did.

Very sad but very true. The first thing we need to learn and understand about space and alien planets is that good people will die. Don't make it worse. Sometimes you gotta cut and run.

That's rather callous, if you ask me. It's easy for humans to do nothing when entire countries on the line (the whole "one person is a tragedy, a million a statistic" thing), but if it's one person? One person who is doing heroic feats of pioneering? One that the entire world watches through satellite cameras? There's an emotional connection that gets build that overrides economic decisions.

The whole moral of the book is that certain tragedies cause humans to work together. It is intentionally set up to be uplifting in that sense, and the pragmatic solution would have made for a crappy story, to be frank.

I'd much rather live on a planet of people who are willing to go to great risks to save each other than one ruled by cold pragmatists, all things considered.

H.B., you are forgetting one thing that struck me doing the movie... NO MAN LEFT BEHIND!

I enjoyed the movie. As I do anything regarding Mars.

What I'd like someone to comment on is how the movie stacks up to the book? I haven't read the book yet. Does the movie do it justice?

cthia wrote:What I'd like someone to comment on is how the movie stacks up to the book? I haven't read the book yet. Does the movie do it justice?

It's a pretty faithful adaptation.

Of course, there are differences, but they're usually minor; Book Whatney explains a lot more things than Film Whatney. A few characters are shifted around a bit, a few scenes which would have made the movie longer (but not better) were not adapted, basically the usual stuff you'd expect to see in a book adaptation.

What the film adds is a really good sense of space. Mars is breathtaking, and the space scenes are really good too.

I have read the book but have not seen the movie yet. Also do not want to spoil the movie for those who also have not yet seen it but have NOT yet read the book either. It would be so easy to ruin both for others so I will try not to.

Sosss ... generally speaking and with not giving too much away from the book only, yep, like already said by cthia, (I think) is that no man will be left behind. Exactly correct. That is a good reason why the book failed big time. Just me.

They should have made sure the guy was dead dead dead. Then retrieved his dead body before lift off. They did neither. Wow! Epic fail in my opinion. Also in the book they waited way too long before leaving. Another epic fail.