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The Martian by Andy Weir


sp1989

What did you think of the movie?  

117 members have voted

  1. 1. What did you think of the movie?

    • Out of this world 10 out of 10
      38
    • Really, Really Good
      63
    • It was an ok movie
      18
    • I really did't like it that much
      1
    • I absolutely hated it
      0


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28 minutes ago, tater said:

as if NASA would have no backup comms? In what reality?

Maybe they only had direct antennas because they didn't realize only relays would talk to the satellites. Ba dum, ching.

But no, you're right. It made for great storytelling but it's not that realistic. As many of the best aspects of storytelling tend to be.

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The UHF used for suit and rover comms would easily talk to a satellite overhead. The movie makes this worse since they landed near nasty hazards (hills), and minus direct LOS, the rovers would necessarily communicate with each other and the hab via satellite link.

It really is hard to come up with a mechanism that is realistic that strands him, AND eliminates communications, even briefly. The transfer vehicle would likely stay on orbit until the planned transfer anyway, because ti would be well planned. The crew could do other science on orbit (remove rovers?), and such contingencies would presumably have been considered (because NASA). The whole not telling the crew subplot would have to go away, and he'd be less alone. It's an interesting, but different story.

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3 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

If they couldn't communicate with the orbital ship, how did they rendez-vous and dock?

The MAV had comms. Realistically though there is no way the hab is 100% out of communications except maybe by having no power.

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It's literally mentioned on like the first page or two, the backup com antennas were all on the MAV, so they left with the rest of the crew, NASA hadn't anticipated any scenario where a crewmember would be left on Mars after the MAV departed.

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17 hours ago, Capt. Hunt said:

It's literally mentioned on like the first page or two, the backup com antennas were all on the MAV, so they left with the rest of the crew, NASA hadn't anticipated any scenario where a crewmember would be left on Mars after the MAV departed.

Doesn't matter, they don't need a HGA to talk to orbital craft. The antennas on the rovers would easily be able to do comms to orbit. Heck, suit radios might. 

Rig up whip antenna. Talk to earth. Profit.

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1 hour ago, Capt. Hunt said:

I'm pretty sure Watney says at some point that NASA's abort plan called for Hermes leaving orbit at the earliest possible return window.

All modern Mars Orbiters have UHF antennas for talking to robotic probes, and can be used as relays. Any Mars mission architecture where vehicles are pre-deployed would have coverage for them (so they can track ISRU, etc) instead of relying on direct LOS for HGAs on landed vehicles.

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