The Martian
POSTED BY: JEWELSTAITEFAN
UPDATED: Thursday, November 5, 2015 08:45
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Quote:The movie makes NASA into dumb-asses. The real NASA would never contemplate abandoning a hundred billion dollars worth of equipment already on Mars just to avoid reminding the public one last time that Watney is still as dead as he was at the Watney memorial service earlier that same day. NASA is not that stupid and cynical.
Originally posted by Wishimay:
Ummm... No. They's jes' dumbbass 'Mericans.
In an abort, the REAL NASA, not the movie NASA, would never have Hermes leave Mars orbit within twenty-four hours. This is from the book: "The orbital dynamics made the trip safer and shorter the earlier you left, so why wait?" Why, indeed. The REAL NASA would have pointed every camera in orbit at Watney's last known position. Ridley Scott can keep the movie tragedy rolling along as before if NASA still can't see Watney, after looking. It is nonsense for the movie version of NASA to not even look for months.
But that is what The Martian does. The movie plot really should have deviated from the book's plot. It would have been very realistic to point the satellite camera at the Ares 3 landing and NOT see signs that Watney was alive. NASA could easily have misinterpreted what the photo shows because smart people "know" Watney was dead. The President said so. It would be more dramatic, too. Watney's chances for an early rescue are built up in the audience and then are dashed. Oh, the agony of defeat.
Here is what the book says and the movie copied the book, more or less:
Quote:
Venkat leaned forward. “Ares 3 was a failure, but we can salvage something from it. We’re funded for five Ares missions. I think we can get Congress to fund a sixth.”
“I don’t know, Venk…”
“It’s simple, Teddy.” Venkat pressed on. “They evac’d after six sols. There’s almost an entire mission’s worth of supplies up there. It would only cost a fraction of a normal mission. It normally takes fourteen presupply probes to prep a site. We might be able to send what’s missing in three. Maybe two.”
“Venk, the site got hit by a 175 kph sandstorm. It’ll be in really bad shape.”
“That’s why I want imagery,” Venkat said. “I just need a couple of shots of the site. We could learn a lot.”
“Like what? You think we’d send people to Mars without being sure everything was in perfect working order?”
“Everything doesn’t have to be perfect,” Venkat said quickly. “Whatever’s broken, we’d send replacements for.”
“How will we know from imagery what’s broken?”
“It’s just a first step. They evac’d because the wind was a threat to the MAV, but the Hab can withstand a lot more punishment. It might still be in one piece.
“And it’ll be really obvious. If it popped, it’d completely blow out and collapse. If it’s still standing, then everything inside will be fine. And the rovers are solid. They can take any sandstorm Mars has to offer. Just let me take a look, Teddy, that’s all I want.”
Teddy paced to the windows and stared out at the vast expanse of buildings. “You’re not the only guy who wants satellite time, you know. We have Ares 4 supply missions coming up. We need to concentrate on Schiaparelli crater.”
“I don’t get it, Teddy. What’s the problem here?” Venkat asked. “I’m talking about securing us another mission. We have twelve satellites in orbit around Mars; I’m sure you can spare one or two for a couple of hours. I can give you the windows for each one when they’ll be at the right angle for Ares 3 shots—”
“It’s not about satellite time, Venk,” Teddy interrupted.
Venkat froze. “Then…but…what…”
Teddy turned to face him. “We’re a public domain organization. There’s no such thing as secret or secure information here.”
“So?”
“Any imagery we take goes directly to the public.”
“Again, so?”
“Mark Watney’s body will be within twenty meters of the Hab. Maybe partially buried in sand, but still very visible, and with a comm antenna sticking out of his chest. Any images we take will show that.”
Venkat stared. Then glared. “This is why you deNOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Really enjoyed this. I read the book when it first came out and loved it. Glad the movie followed it closely.
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www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/NASA-final
ly-talks-Mars-budget-and-it-s-not-6562388.php
NASA finally talks Mars budget, and it's not enough
By Eric Berger
October 9, 2015 8:20pm
A human mission to Mars may be cost-prohibitive for NASA, experts say.
On Thursday NASA released a glossy 35-page report on its "Journey to Mars," reaffirming its intent to put human boots in the planet's red, dusty soil by the 2030s.
But the plan did not address the specific cost of a human mission to the Red Planet, which has been standard practice for the space agency in the five years it has been talking about it.
To get some idea of how NASA intends to pay for its Martian dream, one would have had to be in attendance at a Space Transportation Association luncheon on Capitol Hill earlier in the week where Robert Lightfoot, NASA's associate administrator, essentially declared it could be done without raising the agency's current budget.
That may have been the analysis Congress, which has more or less held NASA's human exploration budget steady at $8 billion annually and is disinclined to raise it, wanted to hear. But it also probably means NASA isn't going to Mars any time soon.
The National Research Council has studied this budget scenario in depth and concluded in its 2014 Pathways to Exploration report that "With current flat or even inflation-adjusted budget projections for human spaceflight, there are no viable pathways to Mars."
At the Capitol Hill luncheon, Lightfoot said a Mars program would have to be accomplished with a budget that is one-tenth of the budget that sent Apollo astronauts to the moon.
"From a NASA perspective it'll be done for about one-tenth of the budget that we were doing back then," Lightfoot said, according to Space News.
Congress frustrated
A NASA spokeswoman said after Lightfoot's speech that he was comparing the Apollo budget and the agency's current budget based on percentages of the overall federal budget. NASA received 4 percent of the total federal budget during the height of the Apollo Program, and today NASA has 0.4 percent.
"We intend to carry out our current ambitious exploration plans within current budget levels, with modest increases aligned to economic growth," NASA's Lauren Worley said.
The release of the "Journey to Mars" report that contained no specific budget for a Mars mission frustrated some members of Congress.
"Regrettably, this proposal contains no budget," Lamar Smith, a San Antonio Republican who chairs the House Science Committee, said Friday. "It contains no schedule, no deadlines. It's just some real pretty photographs and some nice words. That is … not going to get us to Mars."
Another Republican, Dana Rohrabacher, of California, was more blunt: "We don't even have a budget? This is insane."
In declaring that with the current budget there are no "viable pathways to Mars," the National Research Council cited several reasons. Among them are the high costs of developing Mars hardware, low flight rates - if NASA doesn't fly often stakeholders wonder what it is doing, and it's difficult to keep employees engaged - and maintaining a program across multiple presidential administrations.
With its current human exploration budget, plus inflation, the influential Pathways report found that the agency would only accumulate about $100 billion between now and 2040 for Mars-related work.
Without a clearly defined plan or the types of rockets, spacecraft and landers needed to pull it off, it is impossible to estimate how much it would cost to land astronauts on Mars. But industry sources offer rough estimates that, using NASA's current practices, the cost is likely between $200 billion and $400 billion.
A daunting task
Last year Mitch Daniels, the former Indiana Governor and current Purdue University president who co-led the Pathways report, said what struck him
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:The movie makes NASA into dumb-asses. The real NASA would never contemplate abandoning a hundred billion dollars worth of equipment already on Mars just to avoid reminding the public one last time that Watney is still as dead as he was at the Watney memorial service earlier that same day. NASA is not that stupid and cynical.
Originally posted by Wishimay:
Ummm... No. They's jes' dumbbass 'Mericans.
In an abort, the REAL NASA, not the movie NASA, would never have Hermes leave Mars orbit within twenty-four hours. This is from the book: "The orbital dynamics made the trip safer and shorter the earlier you left, so why wait?" Why, indeed. The REAL NASA would have pointed every camera in orbit at Watney's last known position. Ridley Scott can keep the movie tragedy rolling along as before if NASA still can't see Watney, after looking. It is nonsense for the movie version of NASA to not even look for months.
But that is what The Martian does. The movie plot really should have deviated from the book's plot. It would have been very realistic to point the satellite camera at the Ares 3 landing and NOT see signs that Watney was alive. NASA could easily have misinterpreted what the photo shows because smart people "know" Watney was dead. The President said so. It would be more dramatic, too. Watney's chances for an early rescue are built up in the audience and then are dashed. Oh, the agony of defeat.
Here is what the book says and the movie copied the book, more or less:Quote:
Venkat leaned forward. “Ares 3 was a failure, but we can salvage something from it. We’re funded for five Ares missions. I think we can get Congress to fund a sixth.”
“I don’t know, Venk…”
“It’s simple, Teddy.” Venkat pressed on. “They evac’d after six sols. There’s almost an entire mission’s worth of supplies up there. It would only cost a fraction of a normal mission. It normally takes fourteen presupply probes to prep a site. We might be able to send what’s missing in three. Maybe two.”
“Venk, the site got hit by a 175 kph sandstorm. It’ll be in really bad shape.”
“That’s why I want imagery,” Venkat said. “I just need a couple of shots of the site. We could learn a lot.”
“Like what? You think we’d send people to Mars without being sure everything was in perfect working order?”
“Everything doesn’t have to be perfect,” Venkat said quickly. “Whatever’s broken, we’d send replacements for.”
“How will we know from imagery what’s broken?”
“It’s just a first step. They evac’d because the wind was a threat to the MAV, but the Hab can withstand a lot more punishment. It might still be in one piece.
“And it’ll be really obvious. If it popped, it’d completely blow out and collapse. If it’s still standing, then everything inside will be fine. And the rovers are solid. They can take any sandstorm Mars has to offer. Just let me take a look, Teddy, that’s all I want.”
Teddy paced to the windows and stared out at the vast expanse of buildings. “You’re not the only guy who wants satellite time, you know. We have Ares 4 supply missions coming up. We need to concentrate on Schiaparelli crater.”
“I don’t get it, Teddy. What’s the problem here?” Venkat asked. “I’m talking about securing us another mission. We have twelve satellites in orbit around Mars; I’m sure you can spare one or two for a couple of hours. I can give you the windows for each one when they’ll be at the right angle for Ares 3 shots—”
“It’s not about satellite time, Venk,” Teddy interrupted.
Venkat froze. “Then…but…what…”
Teddy turned to face him. “We’re a public domain organization. There’s no such thing as secret or secure information here.”
“So?”
“Any imagery we take goes directly to the public.”
“Again, so?”
“Mark Watney’s body will be within twenty meters of the Hab. Maybe partially buried in sand, but still very visible, and with a comm antenna sticking out of his chest. Any images we take will show that.”
Venkat staNOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:I lived in Astronaut William Pogue's house in El Lago, Texas. I have a high opinion of the people at the real NASA, but not Hollywood's NASA. The real people at NASA have excellent manners and would never publicly make rude comments about Hollywood's NASA. But the real people are aware of the flaws in The Martian.
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
You have a very low opinion of "smart people" at NASA.
Some people at NASA are smart. You seem to have confused them with the deadwood bureaucrats installed by Democrats and other liberals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_R._Pogue
This review by Chris Bateman was published yesterday:
The Martian as Robinsonade
http://onlyagame.typepad.com/only_a_game/2015/11/the-martian-as-robins
onade.html
Contains spoilers for the 2015 film The Martian, and one moderate swear word quoted from it.
The 1964 film Robinson Crusoe on Mars proudly declares on its poster: “This film is scientifically authentic! It is only one step ahead of present reality!” You can guess, simply from the year and title, what we would make of this claim today. Fifty years later, Ridley Scott’s The Martian plots exactly the same vector, just from a different starting point.
The most realistic aspect of Scott’s The Martian, adapted from the self-published novel by Andy Weir, is that its protagonist, botanist and astronaut Mark Watney, never questions his faith in the power of science to save him. Beyond this earnest depiction of contemporary non-religious zeal, the movie’s claims to showcase anything that might be called ‘real’ evaporate. This, indeed, is inevitable: the lesson from The Martian, should we choose to accept it, is that ‘realism’ describes accordance with whichever mythologies we align with our concept of ‘reality’. That does not mean nothing is true: it just highlights the problems entailed in trying to assert terms like ‘realistic’ in connection with imagined events.
The Martian is real to positivists (those who put their faith in the sciences) in precisely the same way something like The Greatest Story Ever Told is real to Christians – right down to the way either cultural cohort would approach nit-picking the content. There is a quasi-religious fervour to the way ‘scientific inaccuracy’ is reported in connection with films such as this, a duty to educate on the back of entertainment, all while extolling the need to witness the film in question for its edifying qualities. While there is no denying (for instance) that the Martian dust storm that serves as the inciting incident would be harmless because of the thinness of the atmosphere on Mars, as the author of the original book acknowledges, I was personally more bothered by the internal problems this creates. If killer storms are an aspect of Mars in the fictional world of The Martian, it cannot be the case that the rockets for departure are recklessly sent by NASA years in advance and ready-to-fly, a key plot device upon which hangs the resolution of the film’s crisis. Mind you, none of this matters in terms of claims to this being a ‘realistic’ story, since such a claim is not about what could happen but about how we conceive reality.
To call The Martian a Robinsonade i.e. a tale in the form of Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel, is perhaps not too surprising. Surely many expected they were going to see Castaway in Space, rather than Apollo 13: Martian Edition. But herein lies the insurmountable rift at the centre of any claim to realism leveled against the film; not that physics, chemistry, and biology are neglected (rather, they are lavishly worshiped, however inaccurate some details may be), but that the central character is not a character, but a mere cipher through which the miracles of Science are channeled. I would compare Mark Watney to Moses, if it were not for the fact that Moses could barely believe the incredible superpowers that flowed through him. Like the preacher upon the pulpit, Watne
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