The Martian. How accurate is it?

The Martian staring Matt Damon is story about an astronaut who gets left on mars by his crew and he has to figure a way to survive this planet until he can get help. The movie has been praised by scientists and even NASA because of how accurate the physics in this movie are. It's not completely accurate of course. Listed bellow are some of the most common misconceptions used in Hollywood movies from Phillip Plait's Bad Astronomy.


  • No Sound in Space- There are several scenes where you can here whooshing sounds coming from the space ships in The Martian and there no shame in it. At least from Star Trek the sounds were added after the studios wanted it added and The Martian embraces the sounds. Theres also a scene towards the end where the Captain Lewis is using the thrusters to retrieve Mark Whatney.
  • Dense Asteroid Fields- There are no scenes with asteroid fields but it actually give a pretty accurate representation of how empty space is as is almost every scene with the ships seems like they are barely moving. 
  • No air in space- There sent any scenes that show a spaceship giving a sense of aerodynamics like airplanes do. Star Wars ships have wings and make evasive maneuvers as if theres air to take in to count. The ships in The Martian are always moving linearity and actually uses gravity to send the Ship in a certain direction. 
  • You can't see lasers- There is no use of lasers in the movie so it doesn't apply here. It actually takes in a fact that it takes so long for signals to travel when Mark is communicating with Houston. 
  • Intergalactic Travel- The Martian only stays within our solar system and it actually has pretty accurate display of how long it takes just to go to Mars. We will not have near the technology in our lifetime needed to go to another galaxy or even solar system and it seems it will never be.
  • No more water- The only thing dealing with water from this movie is when Whatney is growing potatoes on a waterless planet. He uses hydrogen from resources he already has and burns it to make condensation.
  • Stars zooming by- The movie seems to be pretty close to show how big space is. The ship moves very slowly on screen and the stars are always still so it gets this right for the most part.
  • Explosions in Space- Towards the end the make  sugar bomb to propel the ship towards Whitney using the pressure and blow from the explosion. Im not sure how exactly the force of that type of bomb would act on such a ship but it seems very realistic. 
  • Phases of the Moon- This movie doesn't even show the moon so there is no way to compare
I give The Martian a PGP because its one of the best space movies in terms of science. It only has a few far-fetched points but every movie is excused at least a few flaws to make it enjoyable.

Comments

  1. You make some good points, but there are lots of typos and grammatical errors, and you could have incorporated more multimedia (film clips).

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