I just finished the book (tonight!) and really liked it. Funny, accurate for the most part, done with energy and style. My wife's turn next. She's the one who works with astrophysicists, we'll see that they say. But... It does seem odd that the rovers don't have independent communication capability. Remember the big dishes on the lunar rover? The horizon on Mars is a lot closer than it is on Earth, Mars has no distinct ionosphere, and unless they're erecting a kilometer-tall antenna at base camp, you'd be better off bouncing signals from orbiting satellites -- something that we could just about do right now. And... Mars' regolith is nasty stuff. Fine magnetic dust, sharp-edged fines (not quite as jagged on the microscale as the Moon, but still pretty bad) and perchlorate -- i.e. bleach -- as well as sulfur compounds just waiting to react violently with an oxygen atmosphere or with the dampness of your lungs. Going in and out will be not just wear and tear, but actually serve to introduce toxic dust. Not sure what months of exposure to that will do. Other things too, but those are the ones which really bug me. First off, Hanks is a little old. Watney's clearly a young smart-alec. And Matt Damon... sigh. I mean, Aren't there lots of extremely talented actors out there? One of the things that I really liked about the experience of reading the book is that there is, essentially, no physical description of Mark at all. What you know of him is from his journals. When they get a picture of him on the surface, he's got his mirrored visor down. He's "from Chicago" and that's about it. As a Black/White mix myself, I kept hoping that at the end of the book he would turn out to be a black kid who made it all the way up from the south side of Chicago. You know, pull off his helmet and a massive afro pops out. Chris Rock, anybody? He could handle the f-bombs.
