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What Ridley Scott Has To Say About the Science In "The Martian"
An anonymous reader writes: Sciencemag has an interview with the people behind the movie The Martian. Director Ridley Scott, author Andy Weir, and Jim Green, NASA's director of planetary science and an adviser on the film talk about the technology and the science in the movie. Scott says: "Almost immediately [after] I decided to do it, we started to have conversations with NASA about process, the habitats, the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV), the suits and everything. And they sent us pictures, almost like photographs, of what they hoped it would all be. If there had been anything in [the screenplay] that actually was suspect—they are not shy—they would have said so."
It is factually inaccurate. For one, last I checked this Matt Damon guy is an actor, not an astronaut. For the life of my I cannot believe NASA let that one go by!!!
Also I noticed that they were using things manufactured before 2015, which this being a movie about the future, likely they would have at least one item manufactured after this date. At this point I couldn't take it any longer and I had to walk out.
From what I gather from the trailers, this wasn't a colonization mission, so why, if they sent seeds and fertilizer, did they send seeds and fertilizer?
This is neatly covered in the plot. The crops he grows are potatoes, grown from supplies sent along for preparing a Thanksgiving dinner. (Most of the meals are preserved packets with no viable seeds, but the mission planners thought it would be psychologically beneficial for them to prepare a meal from raw ingredients for a special occasion.) The growth medium is a few handfuls of proper soil, sent along for an experiment to test the growth of (inedible) plants in Martian gravity, which supply the necessary soil bacteria; a whole lot of Martian dust for structure and minerals; water synthesised from leftover rocket fuel; and his own shit, generated while he's still living off the leftover meal packets.
There are technical inaccuracies in the book (and presumably the movie), but this isn't one of them. Okay, there is one inaccuracy here: he'd have to rinse the Martian soil to rid it of perchlorates, which isn't mentioned in the book.
And this is why there's so much hype about it. It's close enough to reality that I learn a bit of science by reading it. And even when it's wrong, I learn a bit more science by reading about why it's wrong. Star Wars doesn't do anything like that.