{"id":2526,"date":"2015-09-28T00:42:00","date_gmt":"2015-09-28T06:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/steamtrainsandghosts.wordpress.com\/?p=2526"},"modified":"2023-06-30T12:24:16","modified_gmt":"2023-06-30T18:24:16","slug":"the-martian-by-andy-weir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steamtrainsandghosts.com\/?p=2526","title":{"rendered":"The Martian by Andy Weir"},"content":{"rendered":"<body><p>Ever gotten a few pages into a book and recognized something you learned about from Kerbal Space Program? I didn\u2019t realize how awesome that would feel until I read <em>The Martian<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Some time in the near future, NASA has organized a manned Mars space program. The first two <em>Ares<\/em> missions go off without a hitch. On the third, a freak dust storm on the surface of Mars forces the crew to ditch the mission early. An antenna breaks off in the wind and impales astronaut Mark Watney. He goes down and his suit\u2019s vital signs blink out. The rest of the crew don\u2019t have time to recover the body, so they leave.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a problem. Mark Watney\u2019s still alive.<\/p>\n<p>Just \u2026 how did Andy Weir manage to make a space disaster thriller hilarious? Watney accepts the fact that he\u2019s probably going to starve to death with surprising aplomb. His mission log entries are the high point of the book. The book\u2019s told in a highly unconventional mix of first person (Watney\u2019s snark), third person (NASA officials, who are freaking out), and omniscient (what\u2019s going on with equipment and unmanned probes). Weir shouldn\u2019t get away with it, but he does because it\u2019s so very entertaining.<\/p>\n<p>You\u2019ll want to read this book if you want to know how a manned mission to Mars would <em>work<\/em>. Weir\u2019s thought the details through. This book sent me to Wikipedia a lot, and while I don\u2019t understand all of the science, it\u2019s rock-hard. Yet it\u2019s not dry and technical. Weir manages to make nail-biting tension out of Hohmann transfer windows.<\/p>\n<p>If you wanted to know what a mission to Mars would look like, though, you won\u2019t find out here. For example, here\u2019s a description of the <em>Hermes<\/em>, the spacecraft the <em>Ares<\/em> crew used to get to Mars:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The <em>Hermes<\/em> crew enjoyed their scant personal time in an area called \u201cThe Rec.\u201d Consisting of a table and barely enough room to seat six, it ranked low in gravity priority. Its position amidships granted it a mere 0.2g.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is the most extensive description of the <em>Hermes<\/em> in the book. The Martian surface doesn\u2019t fare much better.<\/p>\n<p>I also have a pet peeve about Vogel\u2019s broken English. His grammar is ridiculously bad for someone who has spent months of mission time and years of training time using English exclusively to communicate. If NASA had caught him saying things like \u201cVery important is thirteen centimeters,\u201d they would have kicked him off the mission.<\/p>\n<p>But that\u2019s a minor point. <em>The Martian<\/em> is the most entertaining hard science fiction I\u2019ve read in a long time.<\/p>\n<p>Edit: NASA just announced they found evidence of liquid water on Mars. The timing couldn\u2019t be better.<\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ever gotten a few pages into a book and recognized something you learned about from Kerbal Space Program? I didn\u2019t realize how awesome that would feel until I read The Martian. Some time in the near future, NASA has organized a manned Mars space program. The first two Ares missions go off without a hitch. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5826,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[45,114,519,520,735],"class_list":["post-2526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-andy-weir","tag-book-review","tag-mars","tag-martian","tag-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steamtrainsandghosts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steamtrainsandghosts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steamtrainsandghosts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steamtrainsandghosts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steamtrainsandghosts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2526"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/steamtrainsandghosts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5828,"href":"https:\/\/steamtrainsandghosts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2526\/revisions\/5828"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steamtrainsandghosts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steamtrainsandghosts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steamtrainsandghosts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steamtrainsandghosts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}