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Pick posted:Worse than Moon and Gravity, better than Interstellar. It's fine and worth seeing. Total NASA propaganda film, but why not? American Sniper got to be made too. IMO it made NASA look pretty drat stupid. Why the hell would anyone at NASA approve a lander for an alien planet that had to sit there for multiple years and be capable of being blown over by a bad storm? That's above and beyond how dust on Mars is as fine as talcum powder and a 200 mph wind could barely ripple a trash bag due to the low pressure. They lost me in the first minute because of that stuff. If it was supposed to be just some generic alien planet, fine, but making it specifically Mars destroyed the illusion. I enjoyed most of the rest of the film, but for all the talk about its scientific accuracy, it really put me off.
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Oct 5, 2015 18:41
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Nail Rat posted:I think part of the problem that was being presented in the movie wasn't just getting escape velocity and a trajectory for Mars insertion during a bad launch window, but having a lot of excess velocity to get there sooner because time was critical with Watney slowly starving to death. Also with how such a thing as gravity assist would need to be kept under wraps as this totally radical weird thing nobody had ever heard of or believe.  That was another part of it that made NASA look really stupid, IMO. In real life, using a gravity assist to send the parent ship back to Mars would have been one of the first things thought of and thus on their list of options when deciding what to do, so it being presented the way it was made it seem like NASA is run by a bunch of nitwits. Also, as a chemist I laughed out loud at his water-making apparatus. First of all, his contraption would have leaked incredibly toxic hydrazine vapor, killing all the plants and Watney together. Second, hydrogen burns with a colorless flame, so the big yellow torch was absurd. Third, it was all completely unnecessary as hydrazine will burn with oxygen directly to make water vapor and nitrogen, so there was no need of it in the first place.
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Oct 5, 2015 19:27
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old dog child posted:That's the one thing the author made up intentionally to establish the story. He needed to find some other way to establish the story if he was going to make it about Mars. Something like a micrometeorite strike causing the lander to start leaking fuel, meaning they had to launch in 10 minutes or all of them would be stuck there - while Watney was off on some remote mission and incapable of getting back in time. That's at least moderately plausible and gives an even better ethical dilemma to start the film with. As it was, any suspension of disbelief was destroyed the instant the film started.
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Oct 5, 2015 19:48
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Fried Chicken posted:The film is actually better about it than the book, talking about the force of the wind rather than the wind speed. Of course to get that force you are talking something like the Great Red Spot on steroids on Mars, but it isn't the blatant problem like in the book. And the super tornadoes we see in the background would be consistent with the insane storm 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. It's just that one of the big selling points with this one was its supposed scientific accuracy, and to start it off with something so completely absurd was rather off-putting. Like starting a film set in the Sahara with a flood as the primary plot device or something. We know way too much about Mars to get away with stuff like that. Anyway, I'm done bitching about it. The science was far worse than I had been led to believe, so I was kinda pissed but I'm over it.
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Oct 5, 2015 21:01
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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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Tunicate posted:Yeah, and that's sorta counterbalanced by all the trouble he had getting water, when really he'd just have to dig down a bit and grab some ice. Even that trouble was more than necessary, as hydrazine will burn directly in oxygen, so there was no need for his catalytic decomposition apparatus. I guess the point was getting laughs for him blowing himself up, but even that could have been done another way. It also seems like hefting along enough drinking water for 6 people for 30 days would have been unnecessary - having a water generator on the surface making it for them in advance would have been much smarter. Hence, he should have had almost unlimited water already available, unless the book goes into some reason why that wasn't done - I haven't read it.
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Oct 9, 2015 16:21
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Panfilo posted:The water recycler can only reclaim existing water. He needed a lot of water for the potatoes. So just using what he had on hand wasnt enough. My point was that hauling all their water with them was inefficient. If NASA was going to send a fuel-production module ahead of time, they could send a water-production one just as well. The amount of water in Mars' atmosphere varies a lot, but there's enough for there to be visible frost and water-ice clouds. Extracting potable water from it wouldn't be that hard, even if they landed at a spot without much subsurface ice. Thus the whole water shortage plot item seemed a bit contrived. It made for good fun in the movie, but if people want to get into "how would this work in reality?" it seems like a hole.
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Oct 9, 2015 20:43
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Powered Descent posted:So because they're aware of the concept of a gravity assist, they'd automatically and immediately think of an entire mission plan that's totally the opposite of the obvious one? The first thing they would do is hold a meeting to discuss all their options. Getting Hermes back to Mars ASAP would be #1 on their list. While it's certainly possible that the idea of using a gravity assist would be overlooked, it seems rather unlikely. Much more likely would be an argument over which method to use. The gravity assist method would probably have been rejected due to having only one shot and if anything went wrong they'd risk losing everyone. On the other hand, they might risk it since they'd have plenty of time to get several resupply vessels in orbit so that they'd have multiple chances to rendezvous with the Hermes. It wouldn't have happened like in the movie in any event.
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Oct 13, 2015 03:37
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MikeJF posted:Nah, he's talking about the part where it didn't blow up, but Mark realises that he's filled the hab with hydrogen and has to run to the rover and panic about how he nearly exploded and how hosed he is. And this is the part where Weir reveals he has no knowledge of chemistry, because hydrazine will burn with oxygen directly, making nitrogen gas and water - so there was never any reason to make hydrogen in the first place. There was no need for the entire section.
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Oct 22, 2015 22:41
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Dalael posted:I'm no chemist, so I'll take your word for it. His process for catalytically decomposing the hydrazine released nitrogen gas and hydrogen gas. The hydrogen was then burned to make water. There was no need to decompose it, he could have just reacted it with oxygen directly. Beyond that, hydrazine is incredibly toxic, so dripping it onto the catalyst in the open the way he did would generate a bunch of hydrazine fumes (because some of the hydrazine would evaporate rather than decompose) which would have poisoned him and all his plants. It was just another thing I had to not think about while I was watching it. It was nicely symbolic of the need for him to make do with what he had and scavenge whatever he could in clever ways, but it didn't make much actual sense in itself.
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Oct 22, 2015 23:17
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Simplex posted:So something I just don't understand. They have to abandon the mission and evacuate Mars because a large storm is coming through with winds strong enough to possibly tip their escape vehicle over, which would leave all of them stranded on Mars. This is a possible contingency that everybody knew about. Watney eventually gets off of Mars by using the escape vehicle from a future Mars mission. It is kind of half-assed explained in the movie, NASA plans ahead really far in advance so they land the MAVs years into the future of when the manned missions are due to arrive. This makes absolutely no sense to me. If you know the escape vehicle is susceptible to getting blown over by a strong gust of wind, why would you land it years before you need it? I enjoyed the movie quite a bit overall, but that seems a pretty major plot hole with the entire premise. Yeah, it's a massive plot fail right off the bat. Such a storm would not be physically possible on Mars, and simultaneously if it were, NASA would never send a lander that couldn't survive it. It had me almost laughing out loud at the absurdity of it. Once I gave up trying to believe he was actually on Mars it was a lot easier to enjoy it. That's completely on Weir as a failure of imagination. If he couldn't come up with a plausible scenario for Watney getting left behind on real Mars, he should have punted and gone for some other planet. He seemed to build the entire plot around the slingshot maneuver to get back to Mars and didn't try too hard on stuff other than that. Bottom line, it's a Hollywood Sci-Fi movie. Don't look too closely or you'll tear your hair out.
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Oct 28, 2015 18:54
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JohnSherman posted:This keeps getting brought up as though it's something people should actually care about, rather than a minor quibble exclusive to the worst loving kind of nerds possible who want to pat themselves on the back for their knowledge (or more likely, their ability to regurgitate some article) of atmospheric pressure on Mars. It's a visually impressive scene that gives a rational reason for a living crew member to be left behind. It's a visually impressive scene that gives a rational reason for leaving a crew member behind on some planet other than Mars. Since "being Mars" is a central element of the plot, though, it's a really bad scene. Your own ignorance doesn't change that. It just makes you gullible.
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Oct 28, 2015 20:24
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JohnSherman posted:Christ you must be awful to watch movies with. Good movies can have major plot holes. Most of them do. Pointing them out is not particularly unusual. It would be like watching Gladiator and noticing they're wearing Keds instead of Roman sandals. It's still a good fight scene, but some of the authenticity is gone.
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Oct 28, 2015 20:56
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Jago posted:Did no one else notice that in the whole movie Mars gravity is basically shown as 1 G? Best example is when they show on earth the drilling of the holes in the rover with the guy jumping on it and falling through, followed by Watney doing the exact same thing. Obviously he would need more holes in the top of his rover to make it fall by stomping it. I also feel like anything that was dropped or thrown or what have you hit the ground with an earth like acceleration. Yeah, I mentioned earlier that once I gave up trying to believe he was on the real Mars and just let it be an orange, dry Earth it got a lot better. Lots of great stuff in the movie overall, but the "being on Mars" part didn't really work if you know much about Mars.
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Oct 29, 2015 22:14
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