Former NASA Mission Controller James Oberg Lauds 'The Martian'

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.

Comments

Re:Just read that piece a few hours ago...

[MrNaz]

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?