Apparently the movie is up for "Best Comedy or Musical" at the Golden Globes.
Somebody in charge was either incredibly high or got hit in the head by a baseball or something when they watched it.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/la-et-mn-golden-globes-2016-nominees-winners-list-story.html
You're correct. I am a horrible person. I yell at small children. I kick dogs. I don't eat all my vegetables. All of this is true because I don't like my money being diverted from space exploration to subsidize the wealthy.
You're correct. I am a horrible person. I yell at small children. I kick dogs. I don't eat all my vegetables. All of this is true because I don't like my money being diverted from space exploration to subsidize the wealthy.
Space exploration requires funding.
Funding comes from the government (via the taxpayer).
If the government had it's way they would spend less on space exploration and more on war, or whatever their financial beneficiaries want this year.
The public are inspired by movies like The Martian, arguably more so than anything else.
The public, and pretty much the public alone can put pressure on the government to spend more on space exploration.
Ergo, movies like The Martian are a good thing for space exploration whether you like it or not.
Your grumpy old man position is untenable.
Listen here Mr. Jones,
Listen here Mr. Jones,
*LabSpokane turns around dramatically in his high-back chair, petting his black cat with his metallic hand*
Tim
it also contains a lot of toxic substances like Na2O, P2O5, K2O, SO3, CaO, NaClO4, and KClO4
If I remember correctly, he used potatoes meant for food, so I assume they were cooked? Cooked potatoes wouldn't be viable.
it also contains a lot of toxic substances like Na2O, P2O5, K2O, SO3, CaO, NaClO4, and KClO4
Cite?
When mineralogists discuss soil or rock or ceramic compositions, they do it in terms of bulk oxides. The form is certainly not pure isolated oxides! For example, pure Na2O and K2O would combine spontaneously with CO2 from the atmosphere, but more likely are present as salts with Cl- or SO4(2-), or combined in natural feldspars, or adsorbed as ions in clay-like compounds. The latter of which would be exceptionally helpful for plant growth (being measured as the CEC, Cation Exchage Capacity of a soil).
Perchlorate wouldn't be especially helpful, though.
That said, it's not as toxic as it sounds, in fact despite its oxygen-rich structure, it's rather harmless -- the main effect being displacement of iodine leading to hypothyroidism. The effect seems to be similar in plants: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23673920 I wouldn't really call millimolar levels 'strong', and I don't know offhand how much the soil has in it, but it's possible that potatoes would concentrate it in their leaves, leaving the tubers healthy.
Tim
Originally, Weir was going to use peas (because dried peas are their own seeds and viable--properly stored they can last for centuries!), but he switched to potatoes because they generated more calories per square meter in his farm. This necessitated a reason to have live potatoes along at all, but luckily they are traditional Thanksgiving fare in the US, hence the mission date chosen.
Another option for him would have been to cobble together a hydroponics-style garden, rather than attempting dirt farming. He had plenty of plastic/Hab Canvas around, he'd just need water.
IRL water would be no problem (and no one knew this at the time the book was written) because Martian regolith is apparently lousy with water, so he wouldn't have had to do the Hydrazine trick, but of course that would still work even if that patch of Acidalia Planitia proved dry. http://www.space.com/22949-mars-water-discovery-curiosity-rover.html
Incidentally, this is precisely the sort of conversation that can inspire kids. Classrooms could not only discuss Watney's options for survival, but try experiments etc. Science is best learned hands-on.
2) I know that astronauts are supposed to have 'the right stuff' but the guy finds a decades old space probe, brings it back to the habitat, plugs in the cables and the thing bursts into life. Whatever happened to different connectors, connectors being the wrong gender, different pinouts, different voltage levels and different communication protocols between the two systems?
As for not replanting, I think the plants were supposed to have frozen so badly they all died. However, he should have had some of the potatoes in his larder, so he should have had something to restart with.
So I'm guessing you didn't like it much
And then towards the end Mr Potato mostly disassembles a big rocketship with a K-Mart tool kit and lifts the 400kg nose cone off on his back. Living on half a potato for a gazzillion sol cycles obviously turned the dude into He-Man.
And then towards the end Mr Potato mostly disassembles a big rocketship with a K-Mart tool kit and lifts the 400kg nose cone off on his back. Living on half a potato for a gazzillion sol cycles obviously turned the dude into He-Man.
The 400 kg of mass would only weigh 400 kg on earth. On mars it would be more like 150 kg. Less if you use leverage to only lift one side before sliding. For a fit guy of his size, you don't have to be that much of a he-man to do it.
"The first cellular analysis of muscles from astronauts who have spent 180 days at the International Space Station shows that their muscles lost more than 40 percent of their capacity for physical work, despite in-flight exercise.
No matter how good their shape was before the astronauts left, they returned with muscle tone that resembled that of the average 80-year-old. In fact, the astronauts who were in the best shape before they launched were the most likely to come back with withered, or atrophied, muscles.
NASA currently estimates it would take a crew 10 months to reach Mars