The Martian

[Andy44]

NO SPOILERS (YET)

Just saw it in 3D tonight.

The verdict?

See this film.

No it's not perfect (more on this later), but more than any other space-related film in recent years this one takes the science and orbit dynamics much more seriously. The plot is good and the main character is likable, the script and story pacing is done right.

I understand this is a Ridley Scott film? If so, it's almost like an apology for the awful mess that was Prometheus.

The visuals are fantastic, the tech is believable (except for the part where Congress actually funds it, but we can dream?).

As I said, there are a few nitpicks and one major science flaw which drives the plot. I will forgive it, but the author of the book this is based on did so much homework it makes me wonder why. I guess writing good hard SF books is difficult, else we'd all be doing it. I also didn't care much for the choice of music in the soundtrack, but that's subjective of course.

Overall, this is the "hardest" SF movie I've seen in a long time. See it.

More later, when I'm comfortable discussing spoilers.

 

[Notebook]

Well, once upon a time I would ask if you enjoyed the book, but now its the Kindle and I did! Glad you enjoyed it, was hoping the film was good.

N.

EDIT
Ridley Scott, not a bad lad, think Alien...other things....https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Mq59ykPnAE

 

[Andy44]

Well, once upon a time I would ask if you enjoyed the book, but now its the Kindle and I did! Glad you enjoyed it, was hoping the film was good.

N.

I purposely avoided the book for fear it would ruin the film. In my experience, reading the book later works out okay.

Plus I won't be one of those insufferable types who constantly whine about how "in the book it was different/better" etc.

 

[Notebook]

Please do, be insufferable, and whine till you say how the Kindle was better...We are sill waiting in the UK.

 

[Andy44]

Please do, be insufferable, and whine till you say how the Kindle was better...We are sill waiting in the UK.

"Kindle" is something I do to start a fire in my fireplace. I should post a picture of an actual paper book in the retro-cool technology thread...:tiphat:

---------- Post added at 10:11 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:09 PM ----------

EDIT
Ridley Scott, not a bad lad, think Alien...other things....https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Mq59ykPnAE

Yes, he has been really good, which is why I was puzzled at the awful thing that was Prometheus. I guess he deserves a mulligan here and there. Spielberg had his 1941, after all.

 

[Pipcard]

I saw the movie today, it was amazing.

 

[Thunder Chicken]

I'm going to the theater on Sunday to see this with a couple friends. I haven't been to the theater in years. Fake butter smell and sticky floors. I'm so excited!

 

[MaverickSawyer]

Just going to drop this here...

Howard Taylor reviews The Martian

"The movie is never as good as the book."

Actually... not never.

The Martian just cleared that bar.

And in an even more amazing, and seemingly impossible twist on that thing everybody knows, not only is The Martian movie as good as The Martian book, The Martian movie is as good a movie as The Martian book is a book.

 

[Andy44]

I'm going to the theater on Sunday to see this with a couple friends. I haven't been to the theater in years. Fake butter smell and sticky floors. I'm so excited!

I ponied up and saw it in one of the newer theaters with the reclining leather seats and carpeted floors. Worth it.

 

[Thunder Chicken]

I ponied up and saw it in one of the newer theaters with the reclining leather seats and carpeted floors. Worth it.

Cheap tickets, college town with girls in yoga pants. I'll take the sticky floors. :thumbup:

 

[Lisias]

The book I think says explicitly the idea was that the crew should be able to walk when they get to Mars, not when they get back. In fact moving people from 0.4g Mars to 1g spacecraft on the trip back would be pretty dumb...

It would make sense the spacecraft gradually and controllably increase the gravity on the return trip, in order to get the crew somewhat readapted to Earth?

I doubt that 7 months would be enough to full rehabilitation, but arriving home being able to sustain 0.6 or 0.7G would be less traumatic than 0.4, I guess.

 

[kamaz]

It would make sense the spacecraft gradually and controllably increase the gravity on the return trip, in order to get the crew somewhat readapted to Earth?

I doubt that 7 months would be enough to full rehabilitation, but arriving home being able to sustain 0.6 or 0.7G would be less traumatic than 0.4, I guess.

But that requires a heavier ship. You need either a bigger habitat at the same rpm or a habitat spinning with more rpm so it has to be stronger. Either way more mass.

Plus, contrary to Apollo, the MTV pilot is going to go down to the surface because (1) sitting in Mars orbit for months is no fun and (2) why waste consumables in MTV for someone just sitting in orbit doing nothing. So you want the crew to be able to work after they get back from the surface. Moving them suddenly from 0.4g to 0.7g will not help. What you could maybe to is spin the ship up gradually from 0.4g upwards during the return trip. But this means that the ship needs to be designed for higher rpm, so again, we're back to the mass problem.

The crew needs to go to rehab on return anyway and their flying career is over due to accumulated radiation dose.

This is the dirty secret of Mars mission planning: the crew is single-use and on return will require long and expensive rehab and has increased chances of dying of cancer. This is in part where the allure of "Mars-one-way" comes from: if you're going to die of cancer anyway, then spending your remaining time on Mars digging habitats or whatever is more meaningful than going back so you can die in hospital.

 

[Lisias]

What you could maybe to is spin the ship up gradually from 0.4g upwards during the return trip. But this means that the ship needs to be designed for higher rpm, so again, we're back to the mass problem.

That was what I meaning.

I was thinking on an idea I read once, where the vessel detachs on the CoG center, while connected by a strong cable. If you can control the length of the cable, you can control the G without increasing RPM.

But yet, the cable (and the control mechanism) "costs" mass.

The whole structure would be engineered to sustain the "worst case" scenario, near 1g - and this still demands mass.

And your considerations below about radiation still renders the whole idea useless. Unless..

The crew needs to go to rehab on return anyway and their flying career is over due to accumulated radiation dose.

And a radiation shield strong enough to prevent that would make the mission unfeasible by the outrageous amount of mass, I'm presuming.

This is the dirty secret of Mars mission planning: the crew is single-use and on return will require long and expensive rehab and has increased chances of dying of cancer. This is in part where the allure of "Mars-one-way" comes from: if you're going to die of cancer anyway, then spending your remaining time on Mars digging habitats or whatever is more meaningful than going back so you can die in hospital.

Not to mention that staying there would increase life's expectancy as the hazard exposure would be cut by half.

Besides cancer, what are the remaining considerations for a returning crew?

I had read about researches on drugs that can increase the body's ability to detect and kill cancerous cells by some orders of magnitude. Assuming such researches being a success and a drug can be used to simply "hot treat" the crew on the journey, what would remains to be dealt to mitigate the problem of the "expendable crew"?

 

[kamaz]

Assuming radiation was no issue, there is another problem:

For psychological reasons, you want to send older people (still in good shape, but not prone to extra risk). So, say that the mission launches when the average crewman in 50. When the mission returns, he is 52.5. You need time to rehab and debrief, and launch windows are every 2.1 years, so you can refly him at at age of 54.2, but I don't think < 2 years of rehab is enough. More like he has to wait one more window, which would make him 56.3 at launch. And that is near the upper end of the optimal age window. So you can at most refly people once before they get too old.

On top of that, it is extremely likely that the Mars program would take all funding for human operations, so reflying crews risks a mutiny in the astronaut corps ("Hey, he gets to ride twice and I don't get to ride at all. That's unfair!").

And finally, step back for a moment and observe what you are doing when reflying crews. You move people from 1g environment to 0.4g environment for 2.5 years, then back to 1g environment for 4.1 years, then back to 0.4g environment for 2.1 years and the finally back to 1g environment.

If you want to get people back so they share their experience with the next group, then observe that crew #2 must take off exactly when crew #1 returns, unless you give up a launch window. (Mission takes 9 month out + 6 months on Mars + 9 months return = 24 months, while launch window occurs every 25 months). So, if you are aiming for permanent base, then it's best to do the training camp on Mars. The first group goes out, stay on Mars for one orbit. The second group arrives at the next "out" window, 25 months after the first group arrives. Now you have both old and new guys on Mars and 6 months until the "return" window which you can use for in-situ training. Then the first group returns, but by that point they have clocked in 4.1 years in space, so they only qualify for retirement.

---------- Post added at 11:01 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:47 AM ----------

And the amusing part here is this: as far as mass budget (cost) per flight is concerned, Mars-Direct and Mars-One-Way end up being comparable (actually, Mars-One-Way may end up needing more mass because you need better equipment and more spares which more then compensates for the MAV mass). This is what I have used in the past to argue against Mars-One-Way: you expend people for no net mass/$$$ savings.

But once you realize that Mars-Direct crews cannot be reused and your end goal is colonization then it becomes tempting to dive in head-first...

 

[Kyle]

Going to try to see this movie today. Really hoping it lives up to the book. I want to see Watney's RTG antics on screen

 

[Nicholander]

Saw it on Friday, it was great! But there's one little, but annoying inaccuracy I noticed. (Kind of spoilers-ish.) (I obviously saw other inaccuracies, such as the way to big windows on the Hermes, and some other stuff, but I wanted to say this thing I noticed.)

In the mission control scene when Iris I is getting launched, why does the spacecraft diagram on the left show the Iris II ship? Iris II is an orbital resupply spacecraft, not built for reentry and landing on Mars, so why is Iris I exactly the same? It would have to have a heat shield and such, but that diagram doesn't have any.

 

[Hlynkacg]

As far as radiation risk is concerned, I think it's worth noting that I exceeded the NASA career accumulated radiation dose several times over during my time in the Navy. As has pretty much every naval aviator and carrier flight-deck crewman since the invention of radar.

Those standards really are laughably conservative considering just how dangerous space flight in general is. We'll let people fly the space shuttle but somehow a 10% increase in cancer risk is a show-stopper.

 

[kamaz]

As far as radiation risk is concerned, I think it's worth noting that I exceeded the NASA career accumulated radiation dose several times over during my time in the Navy. As has pretty much every naval aviator and carrier flight-deck crewman since the invention of radar.

What does radar have to do with ionizing radiation?

Those standards really are laughably conservative considering just how dangerous space flight in general is. We'll let people fly the space shuttle but somehow a 10% increase in cancer risk is a show-stopper.

Indeed, but the radiation dose is illegal.

 

[Hlynkacg]

Standing on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier during flight ops will net you 2 - 5 mSv of ionizing radiation per hour if our TLDs were to believed.

I was in for 8 years and logged 283 days of carrier flight ops. At 8 hours per day. That would put my estimated career dosage somewhere between 4.5 and 11.3 Sv, not counting all other incidental exposures. The max career dose for an astronaut is supposedly 4 Sv. :thumbup:

 

[DanM]

I saw this thursday night. I'm not always one for comparisons, but IMHO it blew Interstellar out of the water. The casting was spot on, it's definitely what sticks out the most in my memory. Some of the science stuff (i.e. silence in space) had to be changed for the sake of the movie, but that was mostly pretty forgivable, as were the liberties they took with the book.