The Martian

Great fun to watch, but I somehow forget the ending. The list of impossibles is endless, but people thought much the same of Star Trek. It's endless, and many plots have come close to prophetic.

Bottom line is to consider how much energy is needed for such a thing. We could not even establish a viable colony on the moon. I'm a dreamer/optimist, so I add 'yet'.

Watch Ex Mechanica for some excellent fun.

ps...consider the film Westworld. Total Recall made a concept better than leaving home.

Westworld was awesome.

As regards The Martian, I think the 'technical incongruities' spoiled it for me. They were too many and too glaring, too 'Hollywood' and I just couldn't shake the feeling that I was watching actors playing roles on a well-done set. Like when the tech comes up with the idea of a gravity assist but has to explain what that is to the NASA director? Like having to explain what tires are to a race-car driver? The whole premise of Damon's character being stranded - a windstorm violent enough to hurl rocks about as the ship lifted up through them, when the reality is that Mars' atmosphere is so tenuous that a strong wind there would scarcely ruffle a dry leaf? I don't mean to rain on anyone's parade, but for me the film's 'science' was just too Armageddonesque, too Hollywood. Worst, it does nothing to inform the public as to what the scientific realities of Mars really are. It leaves an uninformed public thinking Mars is like the American southwest when nothing could be further from the truth.

Spot on. Westworld is one of those iconic inspired films.

The Martion seems to involve Damon in being able to do some poop-recycle thing. It sort of revolves on trials such as that dome in Arizona or wherever it is. Hard enough to live within a biodome on Earth, let alone a chunk of rust or whatever it is.

Some of the best bits in my rock colection are from Tuscon, so I ain't saying too much !

My father and I were involved with building the glass and space frame structures for the Biosphere II project in Arizona (Oracle Junction).

The difference between what they were trying to do in Arizona is considerably more involved compared to that of "The Martian". The Biosphere II project tried to make a completely self-sustaining Earth-like environment (it had a salt water ocean, rain forest, agricultural area etc.) whereas the Martian needed only to produce useful soil.

I made the mistake of reading the book before seeing the movie and so, was pretty disappointed with the film. The book goes into much greater detail and addresses many more problems than the movie.

I don't think it is ever a mistake to read the book first. It's bound to be better, but I was still quite impressed with the film portrayal.

I used "mistake" rather loosely. A book is always my first choice in entertainment.

I would like to spend a couple of days with a screenwriter just to see what is involved in translating a book to the big screen, I would imagine it is a fairly frustrating task (providing one actually wants to stay true to the book).

I really enjoyed reading "The Martian" and for what it's worth, I believe Andy Weir did a pretty good job of dealing with technical issues. The people on this forum could spend months discussing the problems a "Martian" would encounter, might be a fun venture.

I have decided that I like watching the movie first then reading the book, I have yet to be disappointed that way.

I have determined that I want off this planet and if given the opportunity to colonize the Moon I would jump at it. Otherwise I plan on retiring as soon as I can afford it and living on a sailboat so I can get away from stupid humans when I need to!

Drew K

Former Navy Seal friend of mine, told me upon his retirement (from work) that he and the wife were going on a Transatlantic cruise in a sail boat. Knowing him, they probably are in Italy now.

Now, that guy was one smart cookie.

I would stick with the sailboat idea. On the Moon you'd be stuck in the pressure dome (or whatever) along with everyone else. If you learn subsequently that you don't particularly enjoy their company you can't just step onto a boat and sail off into the sunset, such as it is.

A sailboat sounds soooo much nicer, IMO. Even before then, though, I'd greatly limit the TV and Internet*, both of which a lunar colony would also have.

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* and probably much more reliable Internet than mine here - when I get it at all. This is 21st-Century Texas, after all. My ISP assured me (via post) that they will soon be upgrading to this fancy new communications technology called 'Morse code.' I can hardly wait. This smoke makes my eyes water so much I can't see to read the replies.

Yes, but on the moon couldn't you fly with just a wing suit? How cool would it be to build a colony in a huge underground cavern and just fly down from your balcony to the office?

Drew K

_{I will let you know when I find the cavern!}

It would be awesome. As I recall, it was Robert Heinlein who mentioned something like this that the (penal) colonists did for entertainment in his novel, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. However, you'd brought up the need to get away from people, not sailing for entertainment necessarily, no? I was still speaking in that context.

I read every Heinlein book I ever found and loved them but so many stories have begun to merge in my memories as memorable scenes from different books and authors. Like the guy who was working on computers on the moon and discovered one was sentient he would bash around leaving tool marks on panels then just talk to it and find out what went wrong. Or the patches of grass protected by laser grids that supposedly fried anyone who jumped in but were actually holograms and the good guys used them to escape the oppressors. I think it might have been stranger in a strange land that they made their own satanic religion for some relevant reason and burned a footprint on linoleum and said it was his but said it happened before linoleum was invented...I could go on and on...lol.

I just think if I can't escape humanity I might just like the ones who would be qualified and desire to go to the moon also better than the London "hoodies" and Jersey Shore shirtless who will eventually inherit this planet.

Drew K

You can't exactly fly, even with a wing suit, on the Moon, because it has no atmosphere. On the other hand, because of the low gravity you could jump a surprising distance.

Read his comment again. He is not talking about flying through an airless volume, but inside a cavern in which a colony has been established. One would presume such a space would be pressurised, no? Such ideas for lunar colonies have been proposed by others as early as the 1950s and possibly earlier. Heinlein mentions such in his 1957 short The Menace from Earth.

It's your presumption that the entire cavern is pressurised, but not mine. I would be pressurising only the living/work space.

The problem is that duct tape will never hold gutmonarch's mouth shut. Nor will it make a good ad hoc repair in space.

On the other hand, I can't even get flex seal to fix a watering trough.

A safe presumption in this case. Read his comment again.

That is so cool to be involved in such a project. I am more than a little jealous. The UK has a few biodomes, but nothing that comes near to Oracle.

It was so long ago now that it feels like it took place in a different life.

I have since moved on in other directions, now I do mostly "one off" speciality work in the Tar Sands of Northern Alberta. The company I work for actually pays me to do what I love, learning about virtually any topic that interests me and applying that new found knowledge to develop new ways of doing old things.

Good grief - never let me know where you live, I'd be on your doorstep within hours ! To get payed on top of stuff you love is as good as it gets.

Same issues here.

The covering the huge hole in the living facility with a tarp and duct taping it shut then having it not only not blow out given the pressure differentials it should of been subjected to but actually flap in the wind was too much of a stretch for me.

Even at 1/4 ATM that tarp would have had the equivalent pressure force of the weight of a large truck on it.

I would love to see what Stanley Kubrick would do with this story were he alive.

The lowest atmospheric pressure humans can survive for extended periods is about 475 millibars, or about 47% of atmospheric pressure at sea-level. Comparable to an altitude on Earth of somewhat greater than 18,000 feet.

Meanwhile the atmospheric pressure on the surface of Mars is around 7.5 millibars, average. At the minimum survivable pressure of 475 millibars the force on the tarp would be about (475-7.5)*14.7/1013 = 6.8 psi.

The force on, say, a 16' x 20' tarp would therefore be about 156.3 short tons or about the weight of 2.3 M1 Abrams tanks.

Quite. Apart from that, it's a good film.

It's not the absolute pressure which is a threat to human existence; it's the partial pressure of oxygen. If the percentage of oxygen is sufficiently high the ambient pressure could be lower still. It might get a little tricky around 200 mbar.

OK. 70 short tons, then, or the weight of a small railway locomotive.

This is where I need help with the calculation, because it is not the actual pressure difference but the resulting wall tension which becomes critical. Taking some arbitrary parameters of P = 3psi and dome diameter = 200 feet

T = PR/2

T = 3 x 1200 / 2

T = 1800lb

Tensile strength of (an earthbound) Duck tape = 22lb. Does this mean that the dome-tarpaulin junction must be uniformly covered with 82 layers of Duck tape? It would certainly help if the tarpaulin was allowed to bulge.

Intuitively, it would be easier to patch a small hole than a large one, yet the calculation of wall tension is independent of the size of the hole. Why is this?

Speaking of oxygen, he had plenty to burn (literally). Where did it all come from? Why burn the hydrogen from decomposed hydrazine to make his water when Ridley Scott had learned of the presence of water on Mars months before the film's release? Water makes up at least 5% of Martian soil by weight and in some places much more. Far more believable had Damon's character gotten the water from than through heating and distillation. Then he cultivated crops in raw, untreated Martian soil chock full of toxic perchlorates? A real person in his situation would have been dead in under a month.

Mark Watney may have had to "science the shit" out of his situation, but it would have been much better had the film's producers done likewise. It is possible to make a film scientifically accurate AND entertaining at the same time. Stanley Kubrick did it and on a smaller budget (2001: A Space Odyssey. $10.5 million in 1967 dollars - about $76 million today). The Martian's budget was $108 million.

Quick! Name the symphony the theme music for 2001: A Space Odyssey is based upon.

I noticed the other day, while taking my new LENR calorimetry enclosure to a friend's place in the country, that this was playing on the local NPR station.

By "Symphony" in 2001, do you mean the fanfare at the point where the early hominids discover bashing stuff with bones (and at other points where the monoliths have passed down some knowledge)? That is "Also sprach Zarathustra" (Thus spoke God), Op. 30, tone poem by Richard Strauss, composed in 1896 and inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophical novel of the same ... I am acquainted with it from numerous performances in which I participated. Has a really uncomfortably high flugelhorn part..... I digress. There was a lot of other music in the movie, mostly atonal or polyphonic stuff of various description, but that is the piece that most people associate with it.

Zarathustra was not so much a god as the founding prophet of Zoroastrianism

Thanks. You obviously have a great deal more cultural knowledge than I do.

I am just a redneck with a calculator that is bichin.

I don't remember the exact math and estimates but, yea, the forces involved at any stretch of the limits of reality were way beyond what any high grade canvas tarp and super spaceman duct tape would stand up to.

Same with the wind speed estimates to cause the assorted wind movement effects in the movie given the low atmospheric pressure. Unrealistically crazy high velocities could be involved.

Read the book!! It is far better. "Duct tape is magic"

One problem I had with the book is the computers. He tries to take a laptop out to a rover and freezes the screen, but after the hab blows up all the computers still work.

Drew K

I'm sure Dorothy had a far better chance of getting picked up by a tornado and landing in Oz, than Matt Damen had in surviving Mars.

Sort of interesting, but not likely to work. The movie represents some testament to the ingenuity of some humans when presented a desperate situation, and that is indeed when the highest creativity needs to be released.

The truth is this: Every place in the Universe we inhabit is in the process of killing us. If not quickly, then gradually, and either way, we must all eventually pay the reaper. Choose wisely where you engage in battle with the Universe, and do not let her choose for you.

I've entered "The Martian" in the Duct Tape Challenge.