The postscript scenes showed Beck in the hospital with Johanssen and their newborn baby, and had an earlier scene where she kisses him on the helmet faceplate. Vogel had a wife and kids, not Beck. Martinez was single IIRC. I don’t think Lewis’ husband figured into the book, but she was wearing a ring in the film. So, no cheating went on.
OK, Thank you! 
Martinez had a wife and kid in both book and movie. Otherwise, you are correct. Beck and Johanssen were both single before they hooked up.
NM.
Another three decades or so into the Internet Age, I just don’t believe that.
Why not? You believe that someone other than NASA is going to hook up a transmitter powerful enough to reach nearly to Mars, just to spill the beans to the crew? I doubt that NASA made it public that they were not telling the crew about Watney, either.
I would expect them to have access to Earth news generally, and there’d be an uproar if their parents, spouses, significant others etc. had to submit personal messages for censorship by NASA. The space agency does nothing of the kind for astronauts aboard the ISS today, as far as I know.
Enjoyed it immensely and I will have to read the book some day. I would also love to read an illustrated “Science of The Martian” which explains the technical details of the various plot points.
I really enjoyed Gravity when it came out but I have to say this was so much better in terms of plot and character. I think I still marginally prefer Apollo 13 but this may well be my second-favorite space film. It’s making a lot of money so hopefully we should see more films of this kind.
How would it get transmitted to them?
I assumed they were all sat down and given The Talk about not the mission being far from over, and not distracting the surviving crew from getting home safely by telling them something they couldn’t do anything about except mope over.
Speaking of survival, I had half-hoped to see Johannson tell her Dad about being the crew’s Designated Survivor, if the supply-ship rendezvous had failed.
Serious question: could a spaceship halfway to Mars pick up Earthly radio or TV transmissions if it wanted to with its equipment, or would the signals be far too weak unless they were specifically targetted to them?
I guess the signal would be too attenuated out there, especially as more and more terrestrial television and radio moves to cable and satellite transmission. There’s a lot less signal going to where it doesn’t benefit the broadcasters
The historical documents … those poor people …
I think it’s a bit different for astronauts on the ISS – they are in orbit, and pretty close, and not in nearly as risky a situation as a interplanetary flight. I think it’s comparable to submarines, to some degree – and submarine crewmembers definitely have their emails read and censored. You can’t risk a crewman getting disgruntled or suicidal due to an angry/sad email from a loved on when disgruntlement or suicidal actions could kill everyone onboard very easily.
Tragically, we missed out on seeing Matt Damon roll around in the airlock like it’s a giant hamster ball.
I don’t have anything to back this up, but the book felt like it was 75% Mars/25% everything else. The movie felt closer to 50/50.
To be honest, the part about the crew-members not being told initially didn’t make a lot of sense to me. One would expect that their relief at finding that Watney was alive would overcome any guilt they felt about leaving him behind especially if given the chance to communicate with him. Also presumably the crew-members were selected for mental toughness and understood the risks involved and and so could be expected to take in their stride. And how much work did they have anyway on the return trip? I would imagine almost everything was automated.
I looked it up, and there are apparently 9 essential amino acids. There are a few more that are conditionally essential, but a healthy person can still synthesize these. From the figures that I can find, the 9 are all available in potatoes in reasonable quantity:
histidine: 33 mg
isoleucine: 59 mg
leucine: 86 mg
lysine: 99 mg
methionine: 29 mg
phenylalanine: 71 mg
threonine: 59 mg
tryptophan: 21 mg
valine: 96 mg
(figures are for a 125 g potato)
I couldn’t say if there are any limits to the bioavailability of these amino acids. Regardless, if I go with the figures from Wikipedia on recommended requirements, I get these figures (assuming Watney weighs 100 kg):
histidine: 1000 mg (3790 g)
isoleucine: 2000 mg (4240 g)
leucine: 3900 mg (5670 g)
lysine: 3000 mg (3790 g)
methionine+cysteine: 1500 mg (6470 g)
phenylalanine+tyrosine: 2500 mg (4400 g)
threonine: 1500 mg (3180 g)
tryptophan: 400 mg (2380 g)
valine: 2600 mg (3390 g)
The masses in parenthesis are the weights of potato that he has to eat daily to meet requirements. If Watney needs 2500 calories/day, he should already be eating 3270 g/day of potatoes, so he not really that far under for most of these. Less than a factor of 2 in any case, and while it’s not exactly healthy, I suspect that’s enough to avoid really serious nutritional deficiencies.
Also, Watney clearly lost a lot of weight by the end, so these figures should be scaled down somewhat over time.
Well, you can do what you want, but it was clearly a pretense of the movie.
The idea to slingshot around earth and send the ship back to Mars to get Watney was hidden in an attachment that was supposedly a picture of Martinez’ family. And that unauthorized transmission of information cost Henderson his job.
Agreed. I always felt like that was added in purely to add some conflict.
It’s only a relief if you haven’t condemned him to die alone on Mars. If you have, it’s worse than him being killed in the first place.