For the past decade, Disney has been the Teflon movie studio, remarkably adept at withstanding the tectonic changes impacting the film industry, and well fortified by its arsenal of key properties …
Speaking as a lifelong space nut, it's a pretty darn accurate movie, with two big exceptions:
The dust storm at the beginning can't happen the way it's portrayed. Mars' atmosphere is less than 1% as thick as Earth's. The most violent wind on Mars has about the force of a gentle summer breeze on Earth. No Martian storm could topple over a spaceship.
Martian soil has turned out to be unfortunately too toxic to grow plants without extensive processing to remove chemicals like perchlorates. This can't be blamed on the author though, this was not known until after the book was published.
There's some pretty neat stuff we've recently found with regards to growing plants in martian regolith. Interestingly, the problem with perchlorates isn't necessarily apparent right away. Mark Watney would have likely been able to grow potatoes, just really shitty ones. The second part of the problem shows up when you eat the potatoes and the perchlorates fuck your thyroid up.
There are some pretty neat ideas in terms of bioremediation, though, like growing nitrogen-fixing plants like alfalfa to add nitrogen, growing water hyacinths to draw perchlorates out, or using bacteria for both of these things. A big wrinkle though is that the heavy UV levels on mars may affect some of these chemicals in ways that make them more troubling to plants, bacteria, and people alike. Just really hoping for a sample return soon so we can get some truly accurate simulants to grow in.
The author of The Martian going back like the terf lady and her wizard book and deciding "actually, the astronaut died from perchlorate poisoning 3 minutes after the end of the book"
Speaking as a lifelong space nut, it's a pretty darn accurate movie, with two big exceptions:
The dust storm at the beginning can't happen the way it's portrayed. Mars' atmosphere is less than 1% as thick as Earth's. The most violent wind on Mars has about the force of a gentle summer breeze on Earth. No Martian storm could topple over a spaceship.
Martian soil has turned out to be unfortunately too toxic to grow plants without extensive processing to remove chemicals like perchlorates. This can't be blamed on the author though, this was not known until after the book was published.
There's some pretty neat stuff we've recently found with regards to growing plants in martian regolith. Interestingly, the problem with perchlorates isn't necessarily apparent right away. Mark Watney would have likely been able to grow potatoes, just really shitty ones. The second part of the problem shows up when you eat the potatoes and the perchlorates fuck your thyroid up.
There are some pretty neat ideas in terms of bioremediation, though, like growing nitrogen-fixing plants like alfalfa to add nitrogen, growing water hyacinths to draw perchlorates out, or using bacteria for both of these things. A big wrinkle though is that the heavy UV levels on mars may affect some of these chemicals in ways that make them more troubling to plants, bacteria, and people alike. Just really hoping for a sample return soon so we can get some truly accurate simulants to grow in.
Oh those are cool ideas. And yeah, a sample return would be amazing.
That, and also you'd need to bring your own Nitrogen cause Mars is fresh out, unfortunately.
The author of The Martian going back like the terf lady and her wizard book and deciding "actually, the astronaut died from perchlorate poisoning 3 minutes after the end of the book"