Former NASA Mission Controller James Oberg Lauds 'The Martian' 55
At IEEE Spectrum, James Oberg gives high praise to the upcoming film The Martian (release date: October 2).
Oberg doesn't have much to say about the acting; he concentrates on the physics and plausibility of the plot and the technology portrayed, which beat those of most Hollywood space epics, and notes in particular "There’s no cheating on even highly-technical spaceflight topics, as shown in the treatment of the so-called “Rich Purnell maneuver,” wherein the Hermes slingshots past Earth back to Mars for a desperate pickup attempt. ... The basic strategy of the Rich Purnell maneuver is not fictional—a crippled Japanese Mars probe named Nozomi actually used a similar Earth-flyby scheme to set up a second chance for its own faltering unmanned Mars mission a dozen years ago."
Oberg's background gives his appraisal some weight -- he's a former NASA mission controller who specialized in orbital rendezvous maneuvers. He has some quibbles, too, with the way mission personnel are depicted, and notes one excursion into "fantasy mode" near the fim's close, but concludes that it's a fair trade for the overwhelming sense of realism.
Just read that piece a few hours ago... (Score:2)
It was short but very interesting. I like how he gave a "spoiler alert" without actually revealing much. I haven't seen the film yet, but I'm looking forward to it. His only complaint was that Mission Control personnel jumped up and cheered upon liftoff of the mission, which would never happen in real life. Other than that, he pretty much loved it.
Re:Just read that piece a few hours ago... (Score:5, Funny)
It's good when the science is accurate, that doesn't happen often enough. I remember watching the Ninja Turtles movie and practically screaming at my wife:
Me: They just got bled almost dry and now they're being given ADRENALINE?! That wouldn't wake them up, it'd put them into cardiac arrest!!!
Her: It's a movie about sewer dwelling mutant turtles, taught by a mutant rat, fighting a ninja war in America, and THAT'S your plot hole?
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also, you know, turtle physiology probably isn't your forte.
Re: Just read that piece a few hours ago... (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re:Might still be a disappointment (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm hoping for just the opposite. I read as much of the book as I could stomach. The plot idea was excellent, but the writing was terrible, like an 15-year-old boy wrote it, and the level of understanding of science about equal to that of your average 15-year-old. Almost every page made me want to hit my head into a wall.
However, I'm hoping that the movie will be better, and there's some signs that maybe it will be. For example, compared to the laughably absurd way in which the potatoes were grown in the book, in the trailer for The Martian one can see a grow tent with light coming in from the skylights. Anyone who knows anything about plants can still see that there's still way too little space and energy input to produce enough to keep a person alive, but at least it's not the 2-3 orders of magnitude off like in the book (among literally dozens of other reasons that plot point alone as presented in the book wouldn't have worked, among dozens of other plot-points that were head-wall-bangingly bad). I'm hopeful that they've gone through and fixed most of the plot holes and bad science, and will be left with an at least somewhat plausible movie based on the (quite good) "castaway on Mars" premise.
It's not a documentary. (Score:2)
It makes me cringe. (Score:2)
I've only read fragments of the book and seen the trailer.
But the writing... Your 15-year-old boy writer may be having some development issues.
E.g. That bit about "space pirate"... that's just... retarded.
I get the context, really I do. And I'm not even gonna go into the whole "The Egg" thing.
But a grown human acting like that in that situation would NOT be in that situation cause that human would not pass the psych tests.
Besides that... It is twaddle that serves no other purpose but to make the character o
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WOOSH! (Score:2)
You missed the point completely. Reread what I said.
Poster used to promote movie is without any kind of emotional or factual or logical information.
And what IS there - is contradictory or meaningless.
"Bring him home."
Bring who home? Why? From where? Whose home? What for? Is this a commercial for something? For what?
Who is this emotionless, expressionless guy and why should I care? Is he an actor? A historical figure?
Is he real? A robot? What is he selling? Is he the product? Who? What? How? Where? When? Why
One example (Score:2)
I'm more than a little put off by the cringe-worthy "science the shit out of this thing" line from one of the trailers. Ugh.
Prometheus (Score:2)
Yeah, had Ridley hired decent scientific advisers for Prometheus, it could have been a decent film.
Luckily the Martian was written by a person who's got a scientific background and the scriptwriters didn't butcher the book.
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*snicker*
In the same way The Flintstones was written by a paleontologist.
Re:Prometheus (Score:5, Insightful)
*double snicker*
For me, the experience of reading it was the scientific equivalent of MST3K - at least one hilariously bad science error per page when stuff is actually happening. Sometimes numerous. Protagonist not noticing that the hydrogen levels are Mickey Mouse-voice high and the oxygen levels unconsciousness-levels low? Check! 2-3 orders of magnitude too little light to grow crops? Check! Not even understanding how photosynthesis works? Check! Fraction-of-a-percent-as-dense-as-Earth atmosphere wreaking havoc in a windstorm? Check! Page after page of the same confusion between moles of a substance and liters of it? Check! Giant rant full of superlatives about how dangerous the radiation of 238-Pu is? Check! And a thousand more checks, just over and over again. If I wrote up a book describing all of the science errors in The Martian, it'd be longer than The Martian.
I guess the book is more enjoyable to people who this stuff doesn't jump out of - to me it was like the author kept interrupting the book to hold up a sign reading "I Got A D Average In My High School Science Classes". Then again, even if the science hadn't been so terrible, the author's writing probably would have ruined it for me anyway. All of the characters have the same "voice", which comes across like that of a teenage boy. In the case of our protagonist, that of a "botanist" who hardly ever uses a single scientific term but is obsessed with his butt. And with all of the scientific equipment given old school pulp sci-fi names like "oxygenator" and such.
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Can you do a huge favor for those of us who thought The Martian was, relative to most other science fiction, well-written both in technical and in literary terms? Suggest some better books that will entertain us as well without having so many problems as you have identified in The Martian. This probably sounds sarcastic, but it's really quite sincere. I cannot be the only person reading Slashdot who wants to read something like The Martian except better. Thank you!
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"Mission of Gravity", by Hal Clement.
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That most people gloss over the inaccuracies without any basis in current reality says more about the state about our current education than anything else. Good Sci-Fi can't ignore things we already know, such as how gravity works, how atmospheric friction occurs and all that.
Imagine you read a book where one protagonist gets electrocuted by touching a single AA battery. Wouldn't that kind of disrupt the reading of the next few pages ?
It didn't disrupt me, because I didn't make the connection of a wind storm on Mars having much less inertia than on Earth. Even though I know Mars has negligible atmospheric pressure (relative to Earth's), I just hadn't make the connection to 150kph Martian wind storms having no punch when I was reading the book. I only went "oh, right" when I watched the author give a Google talk a couple years ago when he said he decided early on to have the wind storm cause the situation even though it would be like a mi
Doing the Math (Score:2)
SPOILER ALERT: Spoilers about the first chapter of the book follow! (Because someone [wikipedia.org] is likely to complain about that kind of thing.)
Has anyone actually done the math on this? We are not talking about a man being blown around in a windstorm, really. We are talking about equipment that NASA launched to Mars getting blown around in a windstorm. The ascent vehicle getting blown nearly over is a stretch, for sure, but perhaps the injury that befalls the protagonist is not. It was inflicted on him by a piece of
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SPOILER: What I was expecting in the prelude to the rescue attempt was somebody realizing that this trashed at least one future Mars mission, for relatively little scientific gain. The astronauts seemed to be deciding based on risk and hardship for them only (and, under those circumstances, the result was believable).
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Please consider to make a web-page or wiki, where you list the inconsistencies - I think it's worthwhile to dissect the fiction from "The Martian" since it's praised to have so little inconsistencies.
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You are all interplanetary Cows. Cows say Mooooo. MOOOOOOO! MOOOOOOOOOOOO cows MOOOOOOOOO! Moooooooooo say the cows. YOU COWS!!!
Mars cows say MOOOOO. Space Cowboys say
Come in, come in mission control
Give us guidance for our souls
With eyes that scan the universe
No more talking time to land
You give me hope, you understand
Our future lies beyond this earth
Someday we'll live among the stars
Maybe own a ranch on Mars
A ranch full of Mars cows that say moo.
Getting the essentials right not all that hard (Score:2)
It wouldn't be all that hard to impress with the tech if the producer cares. Just get the basics right.
1) Do the thrusters go "chuffff", "chuffff" out in space when they activate?
2) Do you hear the rocket motors out in space?
3) Does it avoid Magic Gravity inside the space ship in space?
4) Are there stupid fins to support fake maneuvering in space?
5) Does the rocket motor thrust all the time, and if it stops, does the space ship act about to crash?
Some; far from all; of the early space opera was surprisingly
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Spoilers! (Score:1)
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He "dies" at the end, and then gets reborn as a fetus, slowly turning his head to look at the camera.
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Like it spoiled much of anything if you watch the movie. It certainly isn't something like telling people Luke is Darth Vader's son or that Princess Leia is his sister (which really makes watching Star Wars episode IV sort of awkward in some scenes).
I just want to see how many times Matt Damon drops the f-bomb in the movie? Andy Weir uses it about a dozen times in the first chapter and is even the first word of the book.
The Audiobook is... (Score:1)
Great! I'm about half-way through the audiobook and it keeps cracking me up. The plot is great, but the character in the book "Mark Watney" has such a great sense of humor that he displays during stress (and he pretty much is constantly stressed considering his situation.) that it is a riot to listen to his log narration.
So far, great audiobook. No complaints.