The Martian [SPOILERS]

[n122vu]

I think after coming back from a multi-year near-death survival experience on Mars eating only boiled potatoes grown in human poo, some fresh McDonald's french fries would hit the spot, followed a few hours later by a pizza and a six pack, while sitting in a park under a beautiful blue sky overlooking a blue river under green trees and gulping in actual breathable air with wind blowing in my hair, and watching girls walk by, actual girls, not pictures on a NASA laptop or the same 2 astronaut women I had to look at for the last however many months it took me to get back here on the Hermes. I would never listen to disco again, but I'd have headphones on with some Miles Davis.

But that's just me.

Exactly what I was thinking. Reminded me of the scene in the first Iron Man when Tony Stark returns home from being held hostage. First thing he wants is an American cheeseburger on the way to the press conference. BK for the win.

 

[Notebook]

Not sure its headed this way, but looking forward to it. Did read it on my Kindle, not sure that is cool these days...

N.

 

[mojoey]

Went and say it Sunday, I am suitably impressed. I'm slightly disappointed they left out the Rover crash and substituted Vogel for Lewis, but all in all, probably the second best book-movie adaptation out there.

 

[Thunder Chicken]

One point which was not mentioned in the plot ... What happened to his IRS fillings?

I'm sure all of them (remember the crew of the Hermes) would get an extension for being out of the country (way, WAY out of the country), just like Jack Swigert on Apollo 13.

 

[RGClark]

Not to derail the thread but two instances were discussed in the film where unmanned cargo ships were mentioned to send up supplies to extend the time Whatney or the crew of the Hermes could survive.

This brought back painful memories. It's such an obvious answer. In the space shuttle Columbia disaster NASA rejected a possible rescue because Atlantis could not be readied in time within the 16 days the Columbia's supplies would run out.

So since "nothing could be done anyway" there was no need to do accurate imaging to even find out if the wing damage was survivable.

Note in the movie they had to use China to do the resupply mission to the Hermes. If NASA had ordered the Columbia imaging, finding the damage unsurvivable, all the space-faring nations in the world, which are at least five, would have been working hard to send up a cargo mission to meet up with Columbia within the 16 day time frame.

But they never were even given a chance to try.

Bob Clark

 

[Artlav]

Just finished the book.
It's better than the movie, but only just.

Speaking of the rescue, in both of them, why such a hurry?
He wasn't going anywhere, and had 24+ hours of air in his suit, shouldn't it be better to take their time and rendezvous slowly?

Guesstimating 1mm/s2 ion engine, it would take them 3 hours to match the initial 12 m/s difference, plus an hour to cover the distance (9+3 hours if it's -12m/s), and voila - no bombs or other shenanigans needed.

 

[Michael_Chr]

One thing that kept me puzzled was the resupply mission that was to RV with Hermes as it does its slingshot maneuver around the Earth to get back to Mars. I guess this mission plan for Hermes calls for the lowest possible periapsis with regards to Earth...that is after long accelerating coast from Mars to Earth. So the question is...is it possible to create a trajectory for the resupply mission that will create a RV opportunity at or near the Earth. As I see it the dV requirement for the RS mission would exceed the normal Mars dV requirements and would involve sending the resuppply pod out in advance - let Hermes catch up and then do some intricate burns to align the resupply pod for a RV with Hermes with alignment both in terms of position but also in velocity not the least). But what would the dV requirement be and is that possible with a presumably conventional launch system (its the Chinese space agency that does it). Maybe someone can anyone create a scenario for this?:thumbup:

 

[Andy44]

Interesting questions.

3 hours to catch up with him that deep in Mars' gravity well would likely do some screwy things to Hermes' trajectory, maybe?

Or possibly they were not using the nuclear-ion drive during the rescue phase because the astronauts, in particular Watney, would've been outside the rad shield shadow and would've received a fatal does of neutrons? In that scenario, you'd scram the reactor and coast through Mars periapsis, using only the chemical jets.

Also, unless they despin the centrifuge, turning the ship fast enough to vector the electric jet for a Watney rescue might take too much time. And that centrifuge must carry an awful lot of angular momentum to dump; that would eat deep into the RCS fuel.

 

[Cairan]

Not to derail the thread but two instances were discussed in the film where unmanned cargo ships were mentioned to send up supplies to extend the time Whatley or the crew of the Hermes could survive.

This brought back painful memories. It's such an obvious answer. In the space shuttle Columbia disaster NASA rejected a possible rescue because Atlantis could not be readied in time within the 16 days the Columbia's supplies would run out.

So since "nothing could be done anyway" there was no need to do accurate imaging to even find out if the wing damage was survivable.

Note in the movie they had to use China to do the resupply mission to the Hermes. If NASA had ordered the Columbia imaging, finding the damage unsurvivable, all the space-faring nations in the world, which are at least five, would have been working hard to send up a cargo mission to meet up with Columbia within the 16 day time frame.

But they never were even given a chance to try.

Bob Clark

Indeed, the shuttle had intact life support systems and propellants, it could very well have rendez-voued with a small cargo launched on, for example, an US EELV or an Ariane ...

Citing the Columbia Accident Investigation Board report, volume 1, page 176:

The NASA team deemed this timeline realistic for sev-
eral reasons. First, the team determined that a spacewalk
to inspect the left wing could be easily accomplished. The
team then assessed how the crew could limit its use of con-
sumables to determine how long Columbia could stay in
orbit. The limiting consumable was the lithium hydroxide
canisters, which scrub from the cabin atmosphere the carbon
dioxide the crew exhales. [emphasis added]After consulting with flight sur-
geons, the team concluded that by modifying crew activity
and sleep time carbon dioxide could be kept to acceptable
levels until Flight Day 30 (the morning of February 15). All
other consumables would last longer. Oxygen, the next most
critical, would require the crew to return on Flight Day 31.

From the Space Shuttle Reference:

The cabin air from the cabin fan is ducted to the two lithium hydroxide canisters, where carbon dioxide is removed and activated charcoal removes odors and trace contaminants. An orifice in the duct directs a specific amount of cabin air through each lithium hydroxide canister. The canisters are also located under the middeck floor. They are changed alternately every 12 hours through an access door in the floor. For a flight crew of seven, the lithium hydroxide canisters are changed alternately every 11 hours. Replacement canisters are stored under the middeck floor between the cabin heat exchanger and water tanks.

In 2003, while Columbia was up in orbit (or could still have been by stretching supplies on hand), the following payloads were launched from the US or from Guyana:

25 January 20:13 - Pegasus XL - Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) with a mass of 315 kg

29 January 18:06 - Delta II 7925-9.5 - GPS IIR-8... mass of 2032 kg

15 February 07:00 - Ariane 4 4L - Intelsat... mass unknown but at least 2000 kg

Darn. This hurts.

 

[Andy44]

Interesting...the resupply package is like the dog with the little keg of brandy that finds lost skiers to tide them over until a rescue is made.

This concept would've bought enough time to safely prepare a rescue shuttle without having to rush so much, and could've been used on future missions as well, such as the last HST repair.

Even so, it wouldn't have been that easy for Columbia. You have a number of things to consider.

What is your supply module? Something off the shelf? If so, what?
Will it have it's own propulsion system?
If so, who's going to fly it? Prepare the flight plan? Set up the flight software?
If not, can you put it into an orbit so that Columbia could reach it easily? What kind of planning does that take?
How would Columbia's crew get the supplies from the brandy keg into the cabin? That needs to be planned out.

The movies make it seem so easy to throw a mission like this together, but in real life it's actually huge systems engineering problem, as with any satellite launch. Simple satellite missions are years in the making.

In The Martian they had a fair amount of time to do it, but they did make a point of saying the JPL guy was being pressured to go way faster than usual.

 

[Lmoy]

All things considered though, I feel there's a strong possibility Columbia could have been saved. And even an attempt at it would have been preferable to how the situation ended up being handled.

 

[Cairan]

Interesting...the resupply package is like the dog with the little keg of brandy that finds lost skiers to tide them over until a rescue is made.

[...]

What is your supply module? Something off the shelf? If so, what?
Will it have it's own propulsion system?
If so, who's going to fly it? Prepare the flight plan? Set up the flight software?
If not, can you put it into an orbit so that Columbia could reach it easily? What kind of planning does that take?
How would Columbia's crew get the supplies from the brandy keg into the cabin? That needs to be planned out.

I've read a little more on the subject in the past hour, actually it's a refresher because I remember reading the CAIB report cover-to-cover twice when it came out...

The supplies were limited first in terms of CO2 removal canisters, which would have required a lot of effort (or lack thereof) from the crew to strech it to 30 days. The next showstopper was the oxygen supply one day later, thus also electrical power (remember those fuel cells, they run on both hydrogen and oxygen)...

So if a brandy keg could have been devised, the most important item was lithium hydroxide canisters. Those could be stored in an unpressurized container on top of a dumb payload with a radar/radio transponder for the shuttle to lock on and rendez-vous with. Grapple it during an EVA. Add a couple of oxygen candles in the mix. You're left with heat and power to resolve... Columbia wasn't equiped with the station-to-shuttle power transfer system, but maybe something could have been hacked by backfeeding a solar panel through SpaceHab connexions to the orbiter's systems for basic operations (read: 1 GPC running, telemetry, some fans, heaters to prevent the water from freezing).

Think "Apollo 13"... dark, cold, but much closer to Earth.

 

[Andy44]

Okay, I think we Orbinauts should officially coin the term "brandy keg" for this type of emergency resupply...

 

[Lmoy]

Thinking about saving Columbia makes me really sad, but i want to make and/or do a scenario for that now.

 

[perseus]

Interesting site with the technical aspect of the hypothetical mission.

Inside The Spaceflight Of 'The Martian

 

[Loru]

Pretty interesting panel with Adam Savage, Andy Weir & Chris Hadfield.

 

[Cairan]

Well I've just finished reading the book ... The one thing which tripped my suspension of disbelief is this plot point:

Who the did the PR woman to get her job?! :facepalm:

Aside from this bad-mouthed science-illiterate annoyance, it's been an enjoyable read. Zapping Pathfinder was a nice turn the film didn't explore ... Too bad, it would have made a great scene in the movie, just before cutting to the "montage" of the characters while he was in transit towards the MAV...

I did that myself with a Raspberry a few months ago, forgot I had linked all the grounds of an experiment together, and probed the wrong wire in my messy setup... Poor thing died instantly... and yeah, the 2 A fuse did to prevent damage... it only prevented melting wires...

 

[Soheil_Esy]

Stolen Martian? Russian screenwriter claims Hollywood’s blockbuster is plagiarism, goes to court

4 Nov, 2015 21:18

Though Astronaut Mark Watney, Matt Damon’s character from the popular movie ‘The Martian,’ may have had his share of bad luck on the Red Planet, the film may now be in a non-fictional trouble, as a Russian author claims the screenplay is literary piracy.

A Russian screenwriter has filed a claim in a Moscow court, asserting that the idea for ‘The Martian’ directed by Ridley Scott was stolen from him. Mikhail Raskhodnikov alleges that he wrote the story the film was based on years before the US author and demands that copyright for the 2015 film be assigned to him.

The court will hear the plagiarism case this month, a court spokesperson told the media, saying that the screenwriter is demanding 20th Century Fox CIS cease distribution of the motion picture and pay him 50 million rubles ($800,000) in moral damages. Raskhodnikov is also demanding a public apology.

The author claims that it is he who originally wrote the script and that he had produced a film having the same name in Russia years before the Hollywood blockbuster based on Andy Weir’s bestselling book hit world screens.

Russian cosmonaut Maksim Suraev backed the claims in an interview with Vesti FM, saying Raskhodnikov had read his blogs and asked for advice and clarifications in conversations in which he had shared his experience and emotions of what it feels like being in space. The two had even been talked about featuring Suraev in the film, the cosmonaut told the radio station, adding that he thought the American project was “pure plagiarism.”

Raskhodnikov’s lawyer, Shota Gorgadze, said that the outline, plot, and characters of the US Martian are “very similar” to the ones allegedly fabulated by his client in 2007. He asserted that the film company had probably stolen the idea after screenwriter had offered the project’s concept to 20th Century Fox CIS at that time, postulating that the film industry giant may have illegally assigned the story to a different author through its international channels.

They have already directed their complaint to the film company’s regional office, the lawyer said, but the company allegedly refuted the claim, saying that the American author of the story had never been to Russia, didn’t speak its language, and had never seen Raskhodnikov’s script.

“I have been working on film adaptation of my story for seven years, and finished filming it in 2012, but unfortunately it’s still in post-production. Now it’s a big question whether the audience will want to watch my Martian,” Raskhodnikov told Russian super.ru news portal, adding that he would fight till a happy end, “just like the story’s main character.”

The Russian screenwriter allegedly started working on his film project about a man left alone to survive on Mars around the same time as the programmer from the US wrote his sci-fi story. Weir first published it on his website chapter by chapter, and then – following requests from the growing number of fans – made the full story available on Amazon’s Kindle for the minimal download price of 99 cents. The rights for both the book and the film were then bought from the author by a major book publisher and a film-making company.

https://www.rt.com/news/320776-martian-film-copyright-court/

 

[PhantomCruiser]

I figure the guy should have thrown the flag earlier on (if the claim were legit). With Weir having his stuff freely available online, and given the popularity of it, I'm not surprised that someone would say "Hey! That's my idea!"

A dude left alone on a planet isn't exactly breaking new ground for science fiction. Really the only thing "new" is the humor and visuals.

 

[MikeB]

I think the guy is wrong - I'd watch his film, even if it doesn't involve growing potatoes, rigging Pathfinder, or heroic orbital dynamics calculations!