Huh. That’s a new one on me despite all the Brits I’ve known. I just thought Ralph was never a British name like never seeing Nigel in the US. (Now someone in Wyoming will probably tell me about his brother Nigel.) Never knew Rafe was actually Ralph.
Yeah, say that fast five times. :dubious:
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I’m not sure all British Ralphs pronounce their name as Rafe, but it was certainly common for a certain period. The hero of Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore, Ralph Rackstraw, is a “Rafe.”
Perhaps one of our Brit Dopers can tell us if the pronunciation is still common.
But there is also the name Rafe spelled Rafe, isn’t there?
Well, the Closed Captions on “Last Tango In Halifax” spelled Rafe that way, which surprised me when I saw it. Then I figured it was a nickname for Rafael or something.
The British actor Ralph Fiennes pronounces it “Rafe,” too.
Not sure what you mean. Anyone else?
In Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom books (A Princess of Mars, etc.), the Martians are described as having special prisms that break light up into nine colors instead of the Earthly seven, with the last two being used for antigravity devices and… something else (atmospheric processing, I think?). Which doesn’t make any sense at all, but then, that was the usual result when Burroughs tried to be scientific.
Huh. It took me long enough to learn that “Fiennes” is pronounced “Fines.” Now this! And Brits complain about our English?
They invented a language they cannot speak.
That is rather brazen of them, actually.
Very British, indeed.
No, it is not common. But it is posh.
Also Sara Crewe’s father in A Little Princess is named Ralph, at least in the novel.
A little late to this thread, I just saw the movie Saturday.
One little physics hiccup I noticed was in the ship when someone would “swim” down the core to head into the outer ring, which was rotating to simulate gravity. I saw this twice that I can remember. As soon as the swimmer would near one of the tubes in the core, they would be sucked in as if there were an actual gravitational field sucking them into the ring; they never touched the walls at all. This could be explained if there were air suction doing it, but I think more likely that the concept of how rotational motion simulates gravity was misunderstood.
I think one of the ethical issues is that this guy had heroically volunteered for a high-risk mission and I think there was some feeling that the world owed it to him to bring him back. “You’re there for us to we’re going to take care of you.”
I think she was one of the crew’s wife back home (Martinez? I don’t remember seeing it in the film). There was a shot in the trailer of her with a toddler on the ship’s monitor (oddly, it had a voiceover from Watney mentioning his family at the moment this shot was shown, but it wasn’t *his *family). Doesn’t seem to be named in the book.
Yeah, that was the wife of one of the astronauts. After they decide to go with the Purnell maneuver, they all call home to tell their loved ones that their business trip got extended and they’d be a little late coming home.
And the swimming through the ship looked fine to me. It looked like they were grabbing onto handholds to start down into the tubes.
Quote: “The reason liquid oxygen is so dangerous, is if it were to be spilled, then any combustible material it comes into contact with will immediately ignite.”
In thermo lab in college, we were given an extensive training session in handling LOX. The most memorable point: Don’t spill it on the floor, the vinyl tiles will burn! The force of impact would be enough to trigger a fire. Sugar is a lot more flammable.
Again, why is Kapoor staying near the mock rover??? Anything that comes in can be trivially routed anywhere in the world. It’s as if the Internet, phones, etc. don’t exist in that one location. All that he needed to do was to see it, understand what the situation was and leave. The boffins can take care of the rest.
My take: His own emotional support. By being as close as physically possible to all the astronauts, and the Pathfinder mission specialists brought back from retirement or layoff, he feels he’s doing as much as anyone can to work the problem. Communication is just smoother when it’s face to face, too. It isn’t rational, but it doesn’t have to be.
That’s how I took it, as well. Scientists can be (almost?) as superstitious and irrational as anyone else.
I am positive that the email attachment was called “Unsere Kinder” in the movie. I haven’t read the book, so I wasn’t recalling it from there. It was definitely in German.
Still no direct answer to this question here, but I’m listening to the audiobook now. Watney says that the fabric of the Hab acts as a shield against EM radiation. His potato crop’s only source of light is from NASA-provided grow lights.
No in universe reason. If he goes back to Houston, and really did he need to go to JPL in the first place, then there is nothing but text on a screen and possible the need for more characters that kind of dangle out there on their own. Kapoor acts as a storytelling device, and helps to shorthand some of the person-rover-person communication stuff. Notice once that is done, he moves back to Houston. The movie really did do an excellent job of translating the book to a new medium and even improved in a few spots.
Just heard, in the audiobook, mention of Vogel having an EU flag on his spacesuit’s arm. But it was definitely German in the movie.