MOVIE- THE MARTIAN
SUMMARY
•During a manned mission on Mars, a team of astronauts is hit by an
unpredicted storm and have to abort their mission and leave for Earth.
•During the evacuation one of the crew members, Mark Watney, is hit
by a projectile due to the storm and is thrown away. The sensors detect
no signs of life so the crew is forced to leave him thinking he died due
to rupture in his space suit, But actually his sensor was damaged.
•However, Mark survives and finds himself stranded and alone on the
hostile planet. He knows that it'll be at least three years till the next
mission arrives and he has no means to communicate and his supplies
will only last a year.
SUMMARY
•So with his ingenuity, wit and spirit he finds a way to signal to
Earth that he is alive. Being a botanist he manages to cultivate
potatoes and made water by using available resources. He also
scavenged parts of Pathfinder which was a previous Mars mission.
•NASA soon learns about him and attempts a daring and nearly
impossible mission to bring him back to earth.
OPINION ON THE ACURRACY OF INFORMATION
•There were many things the film got right, including the
aesthetics on Mars, the spacesuits, the use of solar panels,
the Hermes spacecraft, the life support systems, growing
food on mars, Synthesizing water.
•On the other hand, there's some of the thing they got it
wrong, such as the dust storm, finding pathfinder and
maybe the speed at which the astronauts go from the
Hermes spacecraft into space without proper preparation.
SYNTHESIZING WATER
•Mark uses hydrazine from the rocket fuel and to dissociate it into
nitrogen and hydrogen which are two constituent elements.
•Afterwards, he takes the hydrogen and burns it with oxygen
present in the cabin to make water. In this way the making of
water definitely worked, so the movie got that part right.
•Although that strategy is applicable, If a person is stranded
on Mars, a much more convenient and less resource-guzzling
procedure would be the extraction of water from the soil
itself.
SYNTHESIZING WATER
•The natural state of the water available on the Mars is in
the form of ice, either soaked into the soil or in the
permafrost state.
•It is fact that the soil of mars consist about 5% of water by
weight at lower latitudes and up to 60% of water near to the
poles.
•Which increases the chances of survival considerably, and
saves the time of dealing with rocket fuel to create water.
GRAVITY
•On Mars, gravity is almost 1/3rd of the gravity which is
experienced here on the Earth. That means if someone weighs
90 lbs would weigh roughly 30 lbs on the red planet.
•However, Even while wearing all the astronaut gear, it wouldn’t
feel that heavy, but in one particular scene, Mark is seen
exerting himself while climbing a ladder.
•Climbing a ladder, or even walking around, would require
much less exertion on Mars due to its lesser gravity as
compared to Earth.
THE STORM
•On the Mars, the atmospheric pressure is very low due to which the
wind is almost negligible, although the dust can be harmful.
•There are dust storms certainly occuring on Mars, the winds blown is
excess of 100 mph (160 km/h), But a 100 mph wind on Mars would be
about an 11 mph (18 km/h) wind on Earth because the atmosphere is
very thin, has the same inertia and dynamic pressure down at the
surface. One can fly a kite in certain conditions, but it cannot knock
you down.
•In the movie it is portrayed that the large objects are knocked down
easily which is quite not possible because it needs a lot of energy.
FINDING PATHFINDER
•When watney recovered the Mars Pathfinder, which was buried under
a huge pile of dust. In the film, after that NASA follows Watney’s steps
using imaging from satellite, mission control scientists have also been
monitoring the landing sites of Mars spacecrafts, including Pathfinder.
•Measurements at the landing site of the Mars lander Pheonix have
shown that dust settles out of the atmosphere at a rate of about 0.1 –
1 thousandth of a millimetre per Martian day.
•Over the 23 years Pathfinder has been on Mars, that only amounts to
between 1 mm and 10 mm of accumulated dust. So, in reality, Watney
wouldn’t really have needed to do much digging at all.
REFERENCES
1. https://www.scienceabc.com/humans/movies/movie-science-how-scientificallyaccurate-is-the-martian.html
2. https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/martian-perfect-balance-scientificaccuracy-and-gripping-fiction/
3. https://www.iflscience.com/space/how-accurate-martian-9-things-movie-got-rightand-wrong/