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Review: The Martian
Let's briefly discuss the book, first. If you haven't read it, I recommend doing so. In short: near-future astronaut Mark Watney gets stranded on the surface of Mars, and must figure out how to stay alive using only the limited resources at hand. This is hard science fiction. Weir meticulously researched all the problems facing Watney, without giving him magically advanced technology to defeat them.
The story is largely told through Watney's journal updates, which read remarkably like following a brilliant engineer's blog while he solves fascinating problems. Weir also infuses Watney with dry humor and an unwillingness to be told that the right way is wrong. For being so dense with science and engineering, the book manages to have a rapid pace.
Fortunately, that pace made the transition to film a bit easier, as did the book's narrative form. Watney's thought processes tend to be spoken, rather than a typical internal monologue, and this keeps it more conversational and brief. In the novel, when Watney has to "do the math" — for example to figure out the hydrogen levels in his living space — you follow along as he actually does the math, then as he develops a procedure to safely lower those levels. The movie tackles this complex scene by making him discover the problem right when it begins, with a small amount of hydrogen igniting dramatically. It keeps the science and the problem-solving, but conveys it quickly and moves on.
That's the real triumph of this movie's creators — they accelerate the plot while maintaining the book's love and respect for science and for thoughtful engineering. They embellish for interesting visuals, like the martian wind, and for dramatic license. But they never go over the top. It's... refreshing, to say the least.
One thing the film does even better than the book is bringing intensity to particular scenes. It's one thing to read Watney's account of how he dealt with an emergency in past tense — it's another to see it as it's happening. The first scene of Watney alone on Mars is incredibly tense and visceral.
This is largely due to Matt Damon's performance as Watney (and to Ridley Scott, for enabling that performance). Damon does a great job coming off not as a movie superhero, but as a funny, capable guy you might run into at your local makerspace. The other roles in the film are well cast and performed, too. Jeff Daniels as the director of NASA is the closest the movie gets to having a 'bad guy.'
He's the one who tends to raise the practical and ethical questions surrounding Watney's predicament. How many resources should be allocated to helping a single man? What will be the cost to future missions if they don't? They're impossible questions to answer, but they deserved to be brought up and debated.
One of the big reasons to see this film is for its cinematography. If you're a space buff, you'll really enjoy the long, lingering shots of the Martian surface. The graphic artists really deserve commendation. They make the landscape look both desolate and fascinating. They had lots of source material to work with from all the rovers and orbiters we've sent to Mars, and they used it to fill each scene with incredible detail. Look carefully and you'll see one of Mars's lumpy moons in the background of a shot on the surface, or a dust storm slowly flowing across a vast mesa when looking down from orbit.
The Martian, much like Apollo 13 twenty years ago, inspires us to cheer on our civilization's brightest scientists and engineers to solve hideously complex problems. NASA has been falling all over itself to help promote the film, and for good reason. I think the reception of this film will show support is still there from the general public to go and do really challenging missions. The Martian the best movie I've seen all year, and I highly recommend it.
>> support is still there from the general public to go and do really challenging missions
Sure, it's there until the next commercial break when we're told we're awful people for trying to pay for it by cutting back on military/social/pork. The answer always seems to be "we need more taxes"...
It was one of those movies where the audience actually applauded at the end. I thought it was extremely well done -- compelling story, great acting, phenomenal FX. Ridley Scott made a great movie. The one scene that really shocked and made me question the science behind it was when they used a parachute to cover the open nose cone of a rocket for a space launch from Mars. Is that really possible? Mars has an atmosphere, wouldn't anyone inside the capsule be killed?
I'm going to write a book about me flying on a plane and landing in London and driving on the wrong side. I'll spend entire chapters describing the turbines and materials of the floor.
Fuck me but you nerds have simple tastes in your entertainment.
Find a way to have yourself face certain death with no hope of rescue unless you can manage to drive on the left side of the road, and you've got a bestseller there.
I mean seriously how many more promotional articles you gonna post about this "martian"?
I liked the movie a lot, and I was surprised about how almost everything in the book made it into the movie. Then I realized it was because the book was short. The Lord of the Rings is great, there is no way to put all of the material into the movie when you have 10 times the words that the script needs.
Of course there were a million nits, technical and otherwise, but they made a good movie from a good story.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
Facepalm.
I really enjoyed the movie adaptation of the book.
For me, the cut the right bits, had a wink and a nod for those that had read the book. They kept the movie manageable and enjoyable...
Except that I didn't like their choices in the last 15 minutes. Without spoilers, an idea dismissed as ludicrous in the book was nonetheless implemented in the movie, and it annoyed me a bit.
That said, read the book. See the movie. And if you are in to that sort of thing, the audiobook is really quite enjoyable as well.
I have heard the opposite from a few people; that the movie is better than the book. Eye of the beholder I suppose.
I read the book twice and was kind of apprehensive of how Sir Ridley would take this on. Would he neuter the science to make it more accessible? Introduce stuff that wasn't in the book at all to make it more blockbuster-y? Would there be some love interest stuff that isn't in the book? Would he remove the gory details of the potato farming to not gross out the audience?
Nope, it stayed very very true to the book. And the scenes at NASA were very very good, I did not get impatient and think "come on get back to Mars". They really captured Watney's personality while giving the audience a real appreciation of the situation he was in. I went to see it twice, it was that good.
Matt Damon nails it. I know it's hip to hate on him but he's a damn fine actor and also the Bourne movies were great, he can pull off the action hero very well.
The supporting cast does a great job. Commander Lewis (Jessica Chastain) is true to the character in the book as are all the NASA people. Jeff Daniels is phenomenal. The only tiny teeny complaint I have is they changed the Venkat Kapoor character to be named Vincent Kapoor, but very capably played by academy award winner Chiwetel Ejiofor. They should still have kept his character as Indian but I guess they didn't want to give him an accent, that would have been much worse. Annoying debate has raged on this point on the IMDB boards ever since the casting choice was made but final consensus (by non-SJW reasonable people) is that it was simply a matter of availability of actors who could pull off the role. Chiwetel Ejiofor was a great choice.
I hope this movie gets all the Oscars coming to it. Best picture, best director, best actor. 10/10. Fantastic.
Jesus what a terrible review.
>by somebody with an obvious love for NASA
I was with you up to that point. Nerds that 'love' NASA today are not worthy of being called nerds. NASA hasn't deserved anyone's love for several decades. NASA today is all about theater & FUD that begs funding so they can keep looking under the bed for monsters that don't exist. Your nerd is nothing but a shill, then. We won't get into what that makes you, but if you come to your senses, you might save your brand.
After seeing some of the London roundabouts, I'm sure this already happens daily.
Isn't that called Mission: Impossible?
Although the biggest problem of the movie was totally obvious right from the start -- there are no violent sandstorms on Mars.
But apart from that, good movie.
just one book?
James Burke got TWO books and two TV series using that formula.
I think you've misjudged the market.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The Martian did it.
The Martian was My Favorite
The force, not the movie.
I was hoping this would be the first sci-fi movie to get the gravity right on Mars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvnDIDqcfGI
I have no idea how they could have accomplished this from a SFX perspective and maybe it wouldn't have added to the story. I was disappointed with the scene where he was disassembling the MAV and the pieces were falling to the surface at a very Earth-like speed. Seemed like a easy place to add a little SFX magic to mimic Mars gravity.
Great movie overall though!
An excellent talk by Andy about his start at writing, his job as a coder, and how the book and movie came to be. Very entertaining viewing. Super down-to-earth guy (heh...)
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
Mars' atmosphere has about 0.6% of the pressure of Earth's atmosphere at STP
The Stone Temple Pilots aren't going to Mars, so I don't see what that has to do with anything.
Maybe one or two fewer plot twists like the space capture at the end. That was too much like Gravity.
Can anyone who read the novel (as I did) remind me what the normal mission mode is for the Ares? It would seem to me it would take a huge Delta V for the mothership to enter near Mars orbit while the excursion module goes down for a month, yet it would take a huge Delta V for the excursion module to go down if the mothership doesn't decelerate to Mars orbit, and an even higher Delta V for it to catch up with it after a month.
... is nobody going to decry the fact that this is neither news... or interesting?
yay blog posts.
These modern remakes always change things for no good reason. I much preferred Robinson Crusoe on Mars. After all, you gotta love the plot:
Stranded on Mars with only a monkey as a companion, an astronaut must figure out how to find oxygen, water, and food on the lifeless planet.
And it even has Adam West in it (and no - he's not the Monkey)
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Watched it last night. Didn't read the book.
How in the name of all stupid plot devices does each and every space suit, vehicle, structure and other large chunk of habitat equipment not have its own, independent up-link to the multiple Earth-Mars radio relays we already have in orbit around that planet? I squirmed for the first hour because that was too much disbelief to suspend; over the years as habitat equipment appeared on the surface prior to habitation a big collection of radio equipment would unavoidably accrete; they'd be tripping over redundant radio gear.
Maybe the book has some rationale for the mystifying lack of otherwise ubiquitous radio equipment and we can pin it on bad movie making. If the book tries the "lack of funding" trope I'll laugh; so the habitat isn't monitored because Republicans or whatever, yet NASA instantly picks up a signal some (now) ancient lander? Pfft.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
You know why this isn't true? Because it ain't his fucking business, that's why!
it's a well made film, I'll give it that but boy is it a snooze fest ! zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
While I loved the repairing the cracked visor with duct tape scene, I have to say the repairing the blown out hatch with duct tape and polyethylene film stretched credulity to the breaking point.
We are to believe that patch could hold the difference between basically full vacuum and one Earth atmosphere air pressure.
Then why is the rest of the hab apparently made of apparently 3+ inch thick metal / carbon fibre or whatever?
Also, with an open hatch patched with a thick plastic bag, the heating system of the hab wouldn't be able to cope, and also the outside cold would probably render the affixing tape and polyethylene brittle and useless after a short time.
Other than that I agree it was an awesome hard sci-fi movie, with great plot, acting, and science.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
But, I was seriously disappointing in the film. Not due to the book, since I have not read it. But because it gave the impression it was going to have some sort of scientifically-accurate veneer on it.
But as the story unfolded, I immediately started to shake my head and smack my forehead in disbelief at the blatant nonsense of the film from a science standpoint.
It would take an immense post to cover all of the things that wrong both scientifically, practically or procedurally. For those interested, I'll cover as many as I can before fatigue sets in. This is based on the film, not the book.
Launching a space-ship in a violent storm. So violent that it is pushing the dang thing over. Obviously one could argue it was designed for that, but I see no reason to believe it was from the movie.
Watney is hit by debris and whisked away. An astronaut asks how long he could survive if his suit was breached (or something like that). A) That question would not be asked, they would know. B) The answer is not whatever they said (1 minute or something) but rather 3 minutes (max, which is what they'd be concerned with).
Watney is in left on the surface, and wakes up the next.... day, I guess. O2 is low, apparently, but otherwise in pretty good sleep. Suit or no, he would have faced freezing to death. Quite often the film deals with cold one moment and then ignores it the next.
Funny thing... he used a normal Hero camera to do his vlogging... yet the results as shown were 3D. :)
Watney talks about the awful things that can go wrong. The final one he says something like, "... and if the hab fails... I'll implode!" Implode? You don't implode in a thin atmosphere! Or even zero-atmosphere. Your bowels and bladder would evacuate. You'd lose consciousness pretty quick, and die in 3. If you held your breath your lungs would rupture. But you don't frikin implode. He must be thinking of... the bottom of the sea or something? Mr. science astronaut guy would never say anything so lame-brained.
Hollywood's rediculous portrayal of computers, even the kind everyday people use, is on full display. Sure, some of us appreciate the shoe-horned in nod to Zork 2 and Leather Goddesses of Phobos (especially, given it's Mars), but takes nothing away form everything else shown. When Watney goes around talking about "Hex-Y-Decimal" spoken like someone who's never picked a color for a web page before, I just cringed.
It wasn't clear, but it also looks like he tried to point the communication dish at Earth? It is true Pathfinder had the ability to communicate directly to earth through both a low and high gain antenna, but the way it would work is the low-gain is omnidirecitonal, and once signal is received then they remotely determine how to orient the high-gain which is more focused. That is more of a quibble.
Some basic of Mars are wrong, like gravity. Sure, hard to get right.... but still wrong.
There were many scenes on the Hermes where EVA was treated very poorly. I was really amused when the one guy pop'd the hatch to watch the docking operation. Maybe he was going to help out instead of what was really happening.... putting himself and the mission in ridiculous danger. The whole EVA crawling around the space station was just shy of Gravity-level ridiculousness.
Basics of space wrong: There is no sound in the vacuum of space. Sure some sounds could be heard in the suits from things happening to the suit (things dinking off the helmet or whatnot) but there was way more sound than that going on.
The Hermes itself was not believable. It had these parts with gigantic glass picture windows. That's not a likely design feature. Needing a bomb to open a hatch... okay maybe, but mostly just seemed a way to try and figure out how to "science up a bomb" on screen than anything.
I'm sorry to disappoint, but poking a hole in your glove does not make you Iron Man. How do I know? Because this has happened before. Know what really happens? Your skin seals the hol
David Whatley
Watched it last night, and it was good. Interstellar was 10x better though.
They probably used polyethylene film for the movie, but in the book, it's described as some kind of super-plastic sheeting. And it's not just duct tape. I agree, they probably should have made it look different in the movie.
Any good despite the lead actor? :)
Another post noted that the gravity on Mars was not depicted properly in the movie.
The author admitted that the windstorm was not plausible.
One other big thing - the sun. The sun was too big in the film. There is a scene shortly after Watney is stranded, and he is watching the sun set over the ridges and mountains in the distance. The sun was its size as seen from Earth, not as it would be seen from Mars.
Loved the movie anyhow, of course. Go see it if you haven't!
If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law;
We saw this a bit ago (we're film press) and enjoyed it thoroughly. There were a few scenes that were patently ridiculous, but that's almost to be expected from Hollywood. I found Damon to be perfect for the role. The visuals were, of course, stunning. http://slashcomment.com/entert...
He was supposed to be using hab material (and later they showed the same stuff as hab material) not just polyethylene. Also, he used some aviation tape (my guess from visual, it wasn't duct tape) which would be stronger tape than the duct tape he uses on his facemask.
However, when a scene later the dust storm is blowing the patch in and out...yeah...not possible. The atmosphere isn't that much to be able to invert the patch, or make it flap in the wind.
The hab is supposed to be made out of a laminated fabric with rigid metal ribs, it isn't 3" thick at all, and was actually the reason for the airlock failure in the book (the pressure cycling was WAY more than design, and caused a slowly spreading rip to form which then failed catastrophically).
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
To me the great thing about this movie is that there is no magical unicorns. (Or as little as possible). Everything is based on current or near term science. I have almost given up on science fiction when Robert Silverburg claimed that fantasy has dragons, SF has robots. Very depressing.
Real SF authors I like are
Jules Verne
Robert Sawyer
Neal Stephenson
Any other suggestions?
Saw this image on the web last night:
Damon as Private Ryan
Damon in Interstellar
Damon in The Martian
How many more millions are we going to spend rescuing Matt Damon?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Spoilers below: I agree liked the movie. Good science on the orbital mechanics and many of the issues. The ending was far fetched. The small amount of mass expelled by blowing the hatch would have little effect on the speed of the ship.The risk of unintended irreparable damage would be massive. Why not use attitude thrusters or just turn the ship around and use the main engine sounded like they had plenty of fuel. I would think they would have considered needing to make course adjustments before hand and stopped the habitat rotation so attitude control was easy. I was disappointed when he used plastic sheet and duct tape to replace the airlock that blew off the habitat. No way a thin sheet of plastic is going to hold 12psi needed to make the habitat habitable over that 8 ft diameter hole. Similar issue with the bubble taped to the rover for storing supplies. Might be possible with some kevlar fiber reinforced material but not the clear poly sheet he appears to use. Sealing the plastic to the habitat and rover adequately would be just about impossible. Still liked the movie and may read the book.
Note that a standard bicycle tire is inflated to 2+ atmosphere net pressure. As high as nine atmospheres for racing tires. A one atmosphere pressure differential isn't really all that big in the Real World (tm).
And consider a one inch (2.5cm) diameter hole. Slap ducttape onto it and try to push your finger through the hole (from the side with the tape to the side without. One atmosphere net pressure implies, by the by, about 11 pounds of actual force across the total area of the hole. Think the ducttape will push through if you do a ten pound push? Or even a 15# push? Guess again....
Would the ducttape provide an airtight seal? Doubt it, but not completely impossible. Is it strong enough to handle a one atmosphere differential? For a small hole, easily.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
...this, certainly, but actually anything. And eventually -- probably sooner than we know -- the open ended credit cars are going to be pulled. When that happens we might as well have some "things" to show for all the debt. Once again, it isn't as if there is any point AT THIS POINT in trying to trim the budget. We --- and really the entire world -- are already economically doomed and no amount of "budgeting" now could possibly get us back to a safe position before the whole Ponzi system implodes. So, by all means, we should create more IOUs for a hundred billion or whatever, and "go where no man has been before!"
It should be noted that the duct tape scene with the helmet used standard gray duct tape while the tape used on the hatch was reflective and smooth textured rather than gray and bumpy as the other tape. This led me to believe that it was utilizing the same resin that he uses in the book which is 2030 Earth's best adhesive with an undescribed backer for structure. The whole scene is different in the book but I would be willing to suspend disbelieve based on the fact that they use different forms of tape for the two scenes.
A Mars expedition wouldn't carry duct tape, but aircraft speed tape. Think of it as being Duct Tape Pro.
Please do.
But you better make sure not to make a single scientific or technical mistake. Otherwise non-nerds will laugh at you for being nerdy and nerds will laugh at you for failing at it. And beware, nerds are better at spotting these than Wikipedia.
What, as opposed to the bullshit claim that by cutting the taxes of corporations and the wealthy somehow that improves everybody's lives?
Actually cutting taxes and closing loopholes could work quite nicely, the later offsetting the former, generating the same revenue for the government.
What does not work so well is what we are currently doing. Having high tax rates and lots and lots of loopholes. The former allowing some politicians to make "we're getting money from the rich" claims while the later simultaneously lets corporations and people not actually make those payments implied by the former.
The current system is an incredible engine of corruption. Letting politicians created special taxes, tax exceptions and various loopholes is license to punish opponents and reward friends. That's one of the benefits of some flat'ish tax system (not literally flat, phases in to give those of lower incomes a break) with no deductions. It prevents politicians from engaging in social engineering and political corruption via the tax system. A lower rate does not have to generate less revenue. Take current revenue, calculate the effective tax rate after credits and deductions, make that the "flat" rate with no deductions (again, slightly more complicated than that since it phases in to give lower incomes a break but its still an easy computation for macro economists). Lower rate, same revenue.
Ah, yes. 401(K)s. I sure want to put my retirement in the hands of the same people who created a bubble market in the US ...
You do realize that investing in a 401k does not require you to invest in stocks and bonds? An interest bearing cash option is available, much like a savings account. Even with the historically low average interest rate your return will most likely outperform social security, especially with employer matches.
Of course if you are decades away from retirement bubbles aren't a problem. When stock prices crash when the bubble breaks your 401k deductions are buying stocks at a cheaper price. That 2007 crash, any stocks you owned already were recovered in about five years judging by the DOW and S&P500 indexes, anything purchased in that timeframe was at a discount and showed a huge gain. Using a NASDAQ index your recovery would have been a little faster. And FYI, you don't have to pick stocks of companies - guess at winners and losers, you can invest in funds that track the previously mentioned indexes. The "averaging in" that occurs via your paycheck's 401k deductions moderate and average out a lot of market volatility.
So no, you are not highly vulnerable to the idiots on wall street unless you try to play their game, pick winners and losers rather than go with an index fund, or are less than ten years from retirement and needing the money.
I kinda preferred the book's ending but my main (and still tiny) quibble is that when they are walking on the ring they were definitely walking down a slope, instead of around a ring that was spinning to provide gravity. Along side this they were able to redirect themselves unnaturally in zero g. They could just make a course change without touching anything. So pretty much the special effects people on set simply had no idea about how things work in a zero G environment. These slipups weren't momentary but repeated many times. It kind of ruined the whole suspension of disbelief for a moment. I noticed that when on mars, that there was a scene here and there where they would make a nod to the lower gravity of mars but then go right back to 1G. But most annoyingly there were moments where I could effectively imagine the wires and others where I could picture the ring movie set and which actors were in earth's gravity and which actors were pretending not to be.
I liked the movie a lot, and I was surprised about how almost everything in the book made it into the movie.
Actually quite a bit was left out. In particular note the "7 months later" notice that is briefly on the screen.
Was it 7 or did I misremember the number of months? In any case many months of activity and drama were skipped. If someone reads the book after seeing the movie there will be plenty of new interesting stuff.
Still, a very reasonable compromise given time constraints and overall a very good adaptation of a book IMO. Only one somewhat regrettable hollywood'ism near the end of the rescue. Quite forgivable given the quality of the reset of the movie.
Enough said....PASS!
I'm surprised more people didn't find sealing the habitate with a tarp implausible after a rip blew up one of the pods.
The opening is at least 6ft, so at least 4000 square inches. The air pressure on mars is under 0.1 psi.
I'm not sure what's the lowest air pressure you could reasonably have inside the habitat. A person doesn't really need the full 14.5+ we have most places on earth. The top slope in a ski resort in Colorado is around 8-9 psi, and maybe 4.5 psi at the top of mount everest. So even if we're pretty generous and suppose the pressure inside the habitat could be taken down to 4 psi and still let a person live, that's still 16000 pounds of pressure on the tarp. Sorry, but no way.
Anybody know if my estimates are right about how low a pressure a human could reasonably survive in?
Dumping a pile of dirt on the floor seems to be a very inefficient way to grow a small bed of crops. Why not use potted plants? Makes efficient use of small space.
Worst line: "I'm going to science the shit out of this!" (Not in the book). Best line: "You've got smoke coming off of you" (That line wasn't in the book but it was mentioned that he stunk). Unfortunate that Ridley changed the ending. The lame Ironman routine sucked big ones. Watch his hands after he cuts his suit, he would have been dead by the time he got to the airlock. On a positive, I liked the book and the movie as moderately scientific sci-fi. Mars' radiation would still kill you if you had been on it for 2 years in a tent though.
I do not believe there would be enough poop bags (as shown in the movie) for Matt Damon to survive that long with the poop bagging machine still working. Did he start squatting over the field or what? Seemed silly that poop would be bagged in that manner to begin with. Using a non-renewable resource to bag the poop with makes no sense.
YOU say "hosts=bad" (but they add security, speed, & reliability) & bitch on admin privelege to UPDATE vs. threats:
"So, have you figured out why privilege escalation is a bad thing yet?" - by Coren22 on Tuesday September 22, 2015 @05:15PM (#50577809)
Hypocrite - You admit you use admin priv
&
How else can I programmatically update hosts minus it in Windows?
---
"Of course it requires elevation to write to the hosts file" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday September 23, 2015 @05:35PM (#50585879)
You FINALLY later admit there's no other way!
FACT:
Even MalwareBytes AntiMalware (best one) DEMANDS you use admin privelege (you saying it's "bad" too?) it can't do its job fully otherwise, like many security tools do!
---
Aryeh Goretsky NOD32/ESET says hosts = good security-> http://it.slashdot.org/comment...
Oliver Day (Symantec) does-> http://www.securityfocus.com/c...
MalwareBytes' hpHosts hosts & recommends my APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit-> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl...
---
* HOW MANY SECURITY PROS DO I NEED TO KNOCK THE CHOCOLATE OUTTA YOU?
---
Those security pros INCLUDE me: I work w/ guys from malwarebytes' hpHosts on a regular basis!
I've professionally worked for decades as a combined domain-wide network admin & software engineer since 1994 (Even showing you HOW to migrate a hosts across an enterprise-> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... )
I've also been securing computers + WRITING GUIDES using CIS Tool (who took fixes from me too http://slashdot.org/comments.p... - bonus) http://www.bing.com/search?q=%...
You told me you learn from guides? I write good ones that MILLIONS USE & was PAID FOR IT http://pcpitstop.com/news/winn...
+ WARES TO PROTECT USERS endorsed & hosted by security pros -> http://start64.com/index.php?o...
You did all that? No & that's a small part of what I could put out.
APK
P.S.=> You're all TALK -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... & a "ne'er-do-well" as far as security
...apk
After all the hype about scientific accuracy I was excited to be wowed by it. I wasn't. Not only that I was irritated by a number of things. If all the hype hadn't got me in the mindset that I was about to watch one of the best done science plausible movies ever I could have given a pass on all this in exchange for being entertained. However, due to the hype I went in expecting that the entertainment value would be delivered in the form of scientific accuracy to delight my pedantic inner geek. I am disappoint.
Motion in Hermes #1: Everyone looked like they were flying on wires. Which they were, but after the astounding work done on Apollo 13 with weightless motion, the bar was pretty high and I expected better from 'one of the most scientifically accurate movies ever'. If not for that hype I wouldn't have been irritated by it because wires are the way it's done.
Motion in Hermes #2: When they were flying through the hub and got to the ring spokes, do I recall incorrectly or were the spoke access ports stationary relative to the hub? Shouldn't they have been rotating around the hub? (I admit I could be remembering wrong here.)
Motion in Hermes #3: Why were there curved trajectories every time someone went down into a spoke access port? You don't get sucked in like a vacuum cleaner hose. Granted there would be a slight breeze caused by air circulation and gravity does increase as you move from the hub centerline, but neither of those things could account for the radical accelerations seen in those scenes.
Growing potatoes: Wouldn't they have been irradiated prior to stowage due to the long storage time and therefore no longer be viable?
Gut bacteria = composting bacteria?: I don't know about this one but it seemed not right to me. I find it difficult to believe that the gut bacteria in his crap would have been suitable for composting said crap for use as fertilizer and be safe for application to food. Seems a stretch, but maybe someone could correct me if I'm wrong.
All this said, I will sustain one point of hype: the 3D was very well done. Not obtrusive, felt natural (camera focus was always at story focus), and most of the time I never thought about it. Very nice.
So firstly I loved both the Book and the Movie. The book for the hard science portrayal (excluding the dust storm, OK) and the Movie for bringing it all home by showing what living on 1/3 rations will do to a body.
But, in going from the Book to Screenplay and to the Movie there are a number of induced goofs that make the final work nonsense, as an example (more to follow later)
In the book and in the movie there are Potatoes, sourced from a box labelled "Do Not Touch Until Thanksgiving", which Mark relies upon for survival . From internal calculation for the book and shown in the movie it is known that the Mars landing in both cases occurs on Nov' 8th 2035. BUT, while in the book the storm blows up on SOL 6 (>=Nov' 14th) 1 week before Thanksgiving. In the movie it is stated to occur on SOL 18 (>=Nov' 26th) which is at least 4 days after Thanksgiving 2035 (Nov 22nd).
So where did the potatoes come from 4 days after they were due to be eaten by the crew as part of a team prepared, thanksgiving day meal?