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TheMaestroso posted:Yep, definitely an opinion that should be taken seriously by people and not mocked or anything. Because...?
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Oct 6, 2015 14:46
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Ravel posted:The idea that the China subplot is pandering is a bit weird considering the rest of the film is a long love letter to NASA and American sensibilities of discovery and exploration. The Martian is a movie about a dude left behind and stranded all on his own on a planet millions of miles away. In what way is this a love letter to NASA, discovery, and exploration? We don't even get the exploration part, the film just skips right to the part where said dude is left for dead. People keep saying this is a pro NASA movie and that makes no sense. It did the exact opposite for me.
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Oct 6, 2015 15:26
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TheMaestroso posted:Yep, definitely an opinion that should be taken seriously by people and not mocked or anything. It's right? The movie focuses much more on the development of people and the human connection as being a source of strength rather than the tension of problem solving. It is better for it.
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Oct 6, 2015 15:34
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I said come in! posted:The Martian is a movie about a dude left behind and stranded all on his own on a planet millions of miles away. In what way is this a love letter to NASA, discovery, and exploration? We don't even get the exploration part, the film just skips right to the part where said dude is left for dead. People keep saying this is a pro NASA movie and that makes no sense. It did the exact opposite for me. Because story is not plot, mainly. The literal events of the plot are that this guy is stranded and in danger and that's a bad thing, but almost everything that happens in the span of the movie is an ode to how much is possible - and how much is worthwhile to pursue - if we all pool our genius and ingenuity and indomitable human spirit of compassion. Yeah, at the end of the movie you can claim that we spent countless dollars and hamstrung our future exploration efforts (they make point of noting that Watney has to strip out everything from the MAV that actually lets it function as a scientific exploration vessel, after all), but the framing and tone of the movie absolutely rejects that that's what actually matters. Here's how you can tell this movie is relentlessly optimistic in its tone: Neil DeGrasse Tyson loves it, with a caveat that it's slightly too optimistic, and dude's like, Space Optimist in Chief. Don't get bogged down in plot here.
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Oct 6, 2015 15:42
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I said come in! posted:The Martian is a movie about a dude left behind and stranded all on his own on a planet millions of miles away. In what way is this a love letter to NASA, discovery, and exploration? We don't even get the exploration part, the film just skips right to the part where said dude is left for dead. People keep saying this is a pro NASA movie and that makes no sense. It did the exact opposite for me. And the part of the trip where he talks about how he's the first person to do all these things, and be all these places, and see all these sights. So that there's no real need to guess about how it relates to the drive to explore and just lays it all right out there for anyone watching.
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Oct 6, 2015 15:51
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I'd say that the book and the movie are both good and the changes made were needed to adapt to a different format.
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Oct 6, 2015 16:36
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All the events make me wonder what contingencies NASA built in for Ares IV. While Watley didn't end up bringing any samples back, his journey provided a lot of valueable information- -The hab and both rovers had insane endurance tests which likely factored into other equipment.Knowing an astronaut can survive in a hab for two years and roll up 3200km on the rovers odometer is very handy. -The MAV was capable of reaching escape velocity with extensive modification. -Extensive farming can allow an astronaut to survive for potentially years. -Hermes enduring two consecutive round trips. The purnell maneuver meant a far more rapid turnaround in emergencies. Watley set the stage for the potential to establish semi permanent facilities on Mars, much like Antarctic bases on Earth or the ISS. Watley did a lot with the limited square footage of the Bab. Imagine a purpose built bio dome for growing crops on Mars. Joint US China missions would have far more resources and minds behind a common mission.
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Oct 6, 2015 17:36
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Jenny Angel posted:Here's how you can tell this movie is relentlessly optimistic in its tone: Neil DeGrasse Tyson loves it, with a caveat that it's slightly too optimistic, and dude's like, Space Optimist in Chief. Don't get bogged down in plot here. It's definitely pro-NASA (which I think is a good thing), but I don't think NDT is as optimistic as you think. He's very realistic about NASA's nonexistent budget and how much that limits the chances for manned exploration beyond Earth. That's the biggest thing that's unrealistic about this movie; in 2035, only four Senate terms away, NASA will in no way, shape, or form have the budget for the equivalent of Apollo on steroids. Maybe in 2135. quote:All the events make me wonder what contingencies NASA built in for Ares IV. While Watley didn't end up bringing any samples back, his journey provided a lot of valueable information- Yeah, at the very least I would think his experiences would teach them "send some more non-processed vegetables, and maybe some seeds, for emergency survival." Nail Rat fucked around with this message at 17:58 on Oct 6, 2015 |
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Oct 6, 2015 17:53
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Just a small quibble, but the MAV is not a scientific exploration vehicle but rather just a one use spacecraft designed with the sole goal of getting a six man crew out of Mars gravity and docked with the Hermes. The modifications are made because the MAV is designed to reach an orbiting Hermes and not one that is conducting an extremely high speed pass The film is absolutely an ode to NASA, though. Watney being left behind for dead on Mars is due to conditions completely out of control of his crew mates or Mission Control (in fact this is mentioned as why the author chose an unrealistic dust storm as the initial disaster over anything that involves a human component). What follows is over two hours of the brilliant astronauts, scientists and engineers at NASA, finding clever ways to keep Watney alive and bring him back alive. Plus, there's the fact that not only has NASA landed a manned mission to Mars by 2035, this is the third such mission.
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Oct 6, 2015 18:03
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Mars4523 posted:Just a small quibble, but the MAV is not a scientific exploration vehicle but rather just a one use spacecraft designed with the sole goal of getting a six man crew out of Mars gravity and docked with the Hermes. The modifications are made because the MAV is designed to reach an orbiting Hermes and not one that is conducting an extremely high speed pass It had an obviously Apollo 13 vibe to it- Not the flagship mission, unexpected problem, Nasa engineers busting their collective asses trying to solve a problem, etc. In the book Watley admits he's just the eighteenth person to set foot on Mars. They also mention the gajillion safeguards Nasa built into every system.And of course nobody planned a "what if one guy got stranded there?
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Oct 6, 2015 18:22
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Nail Rat posted:It's definitely pro-NASA (which I think is a good thing), but I don't think NDT is as optimistic as you think. He's very realistic about NASA's nonexistent budget and how much that limits the chances for manned exploration beyond Earth. That's the biggest thing that's unrealistic about this movie; in 2035, only four Senate terms away, NASA will in no way, shape, or form have the budget for the equivalent of Apollo on steroids. Maybe in 2135. Sorry, space optimist might be a misleading term - I mean less that he legit thinks we're gonna be on Mars tomorrow, and more that he's super-excited about space travel and that, importantly, he views an excited and engaged public as a key element for making space travel possible, e.g. that manned missions are important because they create public heroes like Neil Armstrong that are a lot less possible when you're sending unmanned probes. According to both him and The Martian, people should get excited about space, and the space dorks within, because that excitement is a key component of what lets us accomplish these things.
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Oct 6, 2015 18:35
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I'm thinking about what Nasa would do to prevent another similar disaster on future missions: -Build the hab around the mav so the astronauts wouldn't have to Eva to leave Mars. Having to don spacesuits run to the mav and fire it up has too many points of failure. Under a normal mission they would dismantle the hab first then launch. But if they were in a hurry they could blast off. -Redundant communication systems outside of both hab and mav. Redundancy isn't helpful when your spares all got destroyed or left with the primary systems. -If the mav is capable of making fuel on its own, I wonder how feasible an auto farm would be. Future astronauts could arrive on Mars greeted to the sight of tons of freeze dried potatoes. All the instant mashed potatoes you could ever want! -Space out each mission site so that a stranded astronaut doesn't have to make a 3200 km schlep in an emergency.
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Oct 6, 2015 18:51
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Panfilo posted:I'm thinking about what Nasa would do to prevent another similar disaster on future missions: With the real NASA, such a disaster would never have happened in the first place. The worst dust storm Mars could ever actually muster would barely rustle a sheet of paper held at arm's length. The atmospheric pressure is so low the wind has almost no force at all. Beyond that, even if such a storm were actually possible on Mars, NASA would never approve a design for a lander that could be tipped over so easily, particularly if it was sent several years early to be the astronauts' only ride home. They would demand something short and squat that could anchor itself to the ground after landing. Even then they would have a fully redundant backup system, just because they're NASA and everything is always maximally redundant whenever they design anything.
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Oct 6, 2015 19:18
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Deteriorata posted:Even then they would have a fully redundant backup system, just because they're NASA and everything is always maximally redundant whenever they design anything. Yup, NASA would never put people on a complex system that required everything to work basically perfectly and had essentially no options for abort or escape if something went haywire at just the wrong time, and---  Oh. Oh yeah.
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Oct 6, 2015 19:30
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Panfilo posted:-Space out each mission site so that a stranded astronaut doesn't have to make a 3200 km schlep in an emergency. That's got the problem of wanting different missions to explore different places. More detailed maps/some sort of longer-range nav beacon could be in the cards though.
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Oct 6, 2015 19:50
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Seeing both the film and the book has left me with a few more questions: -While a fictional Ares series of missions was laid out, we're never told the locations of the first two. It got me wondering because Mars isn't that big comparedto Earth- just 1/3 our surface area. Watleys journey alone crossed 1/7th of the way around the planet, and that's how the Martian crow flies. He probably drove even more avoiding the dust storm and navigating craters. I'm surprised the Ares I and II were presumed too far to go to salvage stuff like radio antennas. -While two existing Martian probes are mentioned, its a little strange there aren't any others they sent out.given that Opportunity crapped out in 1997 I would assumed there were more. They mention fourteen pressupply probes each mission. Id assume one would survey the landing site before the mav arrived. -I'm surprised there was no contingency for stranded astronauts. Everything hinged on the mav working perfectly. If it tipped over,malfunctioned, etc six people would be trapped instead of just one. -Also surprised the Hermes was left vacant while the rest of the crew was on Mars.many if not all of the Apollo missions had a crew member stay on the spacecraft. This kept a human element onboard for emergencies. How would they operate the Mav if Martinez was out of comission? Also, if someone had stayed on the Hermes, there's a remote chance they would have known Watley was still alive before they left. Loitering in martian orbit, they could have rescued him much sooner.
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Oct 6, 2015 20:18
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Panfilo posted:Watley Oh my loving god.
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Oct 6, 2015 21:26
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Deteriorata posted:With the real NASA, such a disaster would never have happened in the first place. The worst dust storm Mars could ever actually muster would barely rustle a sheet of paper held at arm's length. The atmospheric pressure is so low the wind has almost no force at all. The dust storm was obviously caused by a micro-blackhole moving at relativistic speeds! Totally unforeseeable bullshit
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Oct 6, 2015 23:30
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Space is stupid. stay out of there
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Oct 6, 2015 23:34
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I do wonder why the crew wouldn't orbit in Hermes for at least a few days, let the dust settle, if for nothing else than to take high res photos of the site to see what's left for NASA (since sat photos seemed bad quality). Then they would have seen Watney. Sure, they wouldn't be able to go get him, but they probably could have sent some supplies down or dropped comms gear, or something.
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Oct 7, 2015 00:36
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Panfilo posted:-While two existing Martian probes are mentioned, its a little strange there aren't any others they sent out.given that Opportunity crapped out in 1997 I would assumed there were more. They mention fourteen pressupply probes each mission. Id assume one would survey the landing site before the mav arrived. Yup, that's actually a bit of a plot hole -- in one of the little "life of a particular sheet of hab canvas" vignettes, it specifically says that the supply mission announced its successful landing to Earth. That radio would probably have been a lot easier to rig something up to than a decades-old busted probe. I suppose those radios might have been destroyed in the process of unpacking the probes, but that's kind of a stretch. Panfilo posted:-I'm surprised there was no contingency for stranded astronauts. Everything hinged on the mav working perfectly. If it tipped over,malfunctioned, etc six people would be trapped instead of just one. During Apollo, everything depended on the LM ascent stage. If the ascent engine doesn't light, two astronauts die. Full stop. Panfilo posted:-Also surprised the Hermes was left vacant while the rest of the crew was on Mars.many if not all of the Apollo missions had a crew member stay on the spacecraft. This kept a human element onboard for emergencies. During Apollo, the CM pilot had all sorts of jobs to do - mostly taking photos and turning experiments on and off. That's the sort of thing we'd have a computer do these days, and in fact the short-lived Project Constellation back-to-the-moon plan brought all the astronauts down to the surface, with no one but the computer minding the store on the orbiting mothership. Panfilo posted:Loitering in martian orbit, they could have rescued him much sooner. How? Even if Watney had started modifying the rover on day one, it still would have taken months at least for him to reach the other MAV. The crew has limited food aboard the Hermes, and their launch window back to Earth is going to close sometime.
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Oct 7, 2015 01:06
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That was a really disappointing movie. No tension, no drama, lots of bad acting and worse dialogue. Cliche after cliche. Cool shots of Mars though. I had read a few snippets of the book that set off some red flags and thought Ridley Scott was a good enough director to cover them up. I was wrong.
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Oct 7, 2015 04:40
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Hot Dog Day #82 posted:I enjoyed the movie, particularly the "epilogue" at the end. While I enjoyed the book, I wasn't a huge fan of how it ended with Watney's (presumably cut) speech from one of the earlier trailers about how humanity pulls together when one of our own is in peril. I much prefed the way the movie ended, showing what the crew of Ares III, Watney and all, moved on to do with their lives. The film had better closure and I think I'm more likely to give it a second viewing than I am to give the book another read-through. The weirdest ending is from the original version of the book when it was originally just available as a pdf on his site. The book ends with Watney sat out on that bench, and a kid comes up all impressed asking if he would like to go back to Mars. Watney promptly tells the kid gently caress no, what is wrong with him Jenny Angel posted:Because story is not plot, mainly. The literal events of the plot are that this guy is stranded and in danger and that's a bad thing, but almost everything that happens in the span of the movie is an ode to how much is possible - and how much is worthwhile to pursue - if we all pool our genius and ingenuity and indomitable human spirit of compassion. Yeah, at the end of the movie you can claim that we spent countless dollars and hamstrung our future exploration efforts (they make point of noting that Watney has to strip out everything from the MAV that actually lets it function as a scientific exploration vessel, after all), but the framing and tone of the movie absolutely rejects that that's what actually matters. Regarding the MAV, they were single use anyway.
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Oct 7, 2015 06:17
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Senor Tron posted:The weirdest ending is from the original version of the book when it was originally just available as a pdf on his site. That would have been an amazing post-credits stinger.
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Oct 7, 2015 06:22
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One long handjob to people who like I loving Love Science, xkcd and the more obnoxious of the SMBC comics.
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Oct 7, 2015 07:22
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Deteriorata posted:Yeah, it was largely enjoyable. It's still science fiction and Hollywood, so I know not to look too closely. The ending was standard Hollywood. Just a launch, rendezvous and capture would be too boring. To a small selection of people the science and the accuracy of that science was a selling point. To the other 90 percent of people who saw it, it was Matt Damon being cool in space.
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Oct 7, 2015 08:20
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I love astronomy and have a science degree, and I thought this was amazing while Interstellar was hot garbage.
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Oct 7, 2015 16:18
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Panfilo posted:I'm thinking about what Nasa would do to prevent another similar disaster on future missions: I'm at a loss for words to describe how spectacularly BAD every one of these ideas are. The exception being the redundant comms system, where I would point out we see they have one and it gets destroyed in the opening scene
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Oct 7, 2015 16:59
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Elendil004 posted:I do wonder why the crew wouldn't orbit in Hermes for at least a few days, let the dust settle, if for nothing else than to take high res photos of the site to see what's left for NASA (since sat photos seemed bad quality). Then they would have seen Watney. Sure, they wouldn't be able to go get him, but they probably could have sent some supplies down or dropped comms gear, or something. Because their ability to return to earth is time limited based on the orbit. They weren't supposed to have a return window for another few months, as it was they were only able to hit this one because it was so soon after arrival. Waiting longer makes it much harder to get back and stretches their supplies.
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Oct 7, 2015 17:02
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I thought The Martian was a cool and good movie that was about 70% as entertaining and good as the book, which I very much enjoyed mostly due to Watney's irrepressible snark which was sadly toned down in the film. Things I liked Matt Damon's performance, mostly Jessica Chastain's face Sean Bean not dying Things I didn't like Donald Glover's proto-sperg behavior Some of the necessary plot cuts for the sake of screen time (Sojourner comms shorting out, dust storm, rover rear end-over-teakettle) Ending changed for the sake of changing it (Commander going out instead of Beck, Watney having to puncture his suit after all)
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Oct 7, 2015 18:58
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Fried Chicken posted:Because their ability to return to earth is time limited based on the orbit. They weren't supposed to have a return window for another few months, as it was they were only able to hit this one because it was so soon after arrival. Waiting longer makes it much harder to get back and stretches their supplies. Except they evacuated at Sol 6 of a 31 sol mission. Meaning they theoretically had three weeks of staying in orbit and still making their return window. But I guess they were so convinced he was dead they didn't want to push their luck and have something else go wrong only to find out he still was dead. Fried Chicken posted:I'm at a loss for words to describe how spectacularly BAD every one of these ideas are. The exception being the redundant comms system, where I would point out we see they have one and it gets destroyed in the opening scene Care to elaborate? Building the hab into the mav has tons of advantages- you don't have to Eva to get back to the mav. You can reinforce the mavs supports with the hab structure. On normal egress, the hab is dismantled and they launch in the mav. But in an emergency they can board the mav, decompress the oxygen out of the hab and launch without having to make a dangerous hundred yard sprint through a storm. If food could be passively sustained it gives missions much more endurance in emergencies. Leapfrogging the missions so that leftovers supplies could be reused on other missions also keeps things safer as well.
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Oct 7, 2015 19:06
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Panfilo posted:Except they evacuated at Sol 6 of a 31 sol mission. Meaning they theoretically had three weeks of staying in orbit and still making their return window. But I guess they were so convinced he was dead they didn't want to push their luck and have something else go wrong only to find out he still was dead. Minus side: All of your daily activities take place attached what is essentially a controlled bomb that is also distilling it's own fuel. The safe distance from a shuttle launch in case of an on-pad explosion is something in the vicinity of three miles. That's a non-starter from an acceptable risk perspective, especially considering the grossly exaggerated storms in the book/film.
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Oct 7, 2015 20:15
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Palladium posted:I love astronomy and have a science degree, and I thought this was amazing while Interstellar was hot garbage. Opposite here. I wanted to avoid making the comparison since The Martian is an adaptation while Interstellar is an original screenplay. I guess what disappointed me the most about The Martian is that there was zero tension. The whole thing felt as safe as a Star Trek episode. Even having not read the book, I never felt like Watney was ever in any real danger, that they'd figure out how to get the Hermes back to Mars in time, and that the additional "554 days in space" and the dangers that accompany a return trip that Chastain warns about are handwaved away with a "7 months later" line of text. Even understanding this is written into the book it felt really sloppy and trite. Interstellar felt like there were very real stakes, both on a micro level for multiple characters (Cooper seeing his daughter, Brand seeing her father) and on a macro level for the species given the back story established that the Earth is dying. I even thought Matt Damon's acting in Interstellar was better, showing how hosed someone's mental state could get after such prolonged extreme isolation and the willingness to do anything to get back home. In The Martian, it just felt like annoying character traits of Watney. Even with all the theoretical wormhole/black hole stuff I felt like Interstellar had a much more realistic take on what happens when poo poo fucks up in space and hundreds of millions of miles away from help, including the very real consequences of death and never getting to see one's family again. In The Martian it was just "oh well, there's always a solution waiting to be engineered out of super-botanist Watney's back pocket"/a NASA MacGuffin/Chinese space booster. I was bored halfway through. Also WE GET IT RIDLEY SCOTT, the mission commander likes disco. It doesn't have to be repeated throughout the loving movie over and over and over again. ex post facho fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Oct 7, 2015 |
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Oct 7, 2015 20:24
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a shameful boehner posted:Also WE GET IT RIDLEY SCOTT, the mission commander likes disco. It doesn't have to be repeated throughout the loving movie over and over and over again. To be fair, this was brought up ad nauseum in the novel as well. Not an excuse, since it was slightly irritating, but it wasn't all on Scott.
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Oct 7, 2015 20:36
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CommanderApaul posted:Minus side: All of your daily activities take place attached what is essentially a controlled bomb that is also distilling it's own fuel. The safe distance from a shuttle launch in case of an on-pad explosion is something in the vicinity of three miles. That's a non-starter from an acceptable risk perspective, especially considering the grossly exaggerated storms in the book/film. True. I was just thinking in terms of of Watney getting stranded; -Dangerous Eva in the middle of a storm -Danger of the mav tipping over -No other immediately available communication equipment. What steps could Ares IV take to prevent another similar disaster from happening again? -Safer ways to evacuate the planet -Even more redundancy with communication
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Oct 7, 2015 20:40
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a shameful boehner posted:Interstellar felt like there were very real stakes, both on a micro level for multiple characters (Cooper seeing his daughter, Brand seeing her father) and on a macro level for the species given the back story established that the Earth is dying. I even thought Matt Damon's acting in Interstellar was better, showing how hosed someone's mental state could get after such prolonged extreme isolation and the willingness to do anything to get back home. In The Martian, it just felt like annoying character traits of Watney. Other way around for me. Interstellar felt like a really bad star trek episode with the ending twist poorly telegraphed in the opening  "oh, let me guess, this is him talking from the future, and nobody is going to give a poo poo that there are 'aliens' speaking english or attempt to communicate with them in any way"Interstellar would also have been better if poo poo had gone wrong for reasons other than 'we did a dumb thing that was obviously a bad idea, and look! It was a bad idea!' The ripped-from-your-greataunt's-facebook scene in the school with the moon landing denial was pretty execrable too.
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Oct 7, 2015 20:45
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Powered Descent posted:
Martinez remotely pilots the Ares IV mav as close to the Hab as possible. Watney uses the fuel plant the Ares III left behind to process and refuel the MAV and strips it down. It only has to reach Martian orbit and stripping it down can offset whatever fuel is missing. Hermes, still in orbit, picks up the mav.
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Oct 7, 2015 21:02
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Someone on reddit asked what would happen if Lewis had stayed out looking for Watney and been left on Mars. Weir gave an answer.quote:Let's say they had to launch due to MAV tip while Lewis was still out looking for Watney. This strands both of them. That's the scenario. The water plant, atmospheric regulator and oxygenator can deal with Watney and Lewis's air and water needs indefinitely. The problem is food. Originally, Watney had food to last 400 days (with rationing). Now it would be 200 for the pair of them.
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Oct 7, 2015 21:13
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Interstellar and The Martian were both visually stunning films. I loved them both.
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Oct 7, 2015 21:22
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Tunicate posted:Someone on reddit asked what would happen if Lewis had stayed out looking for Watney and been left on Mars. Weir gave an answer. Cool, this is similar to my guess.
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Oct 7, 2015 21:30
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