Andy Weir's 'The Martian'

700 Words2 Pages

The novel, The Martian, by Andy Weir, was written mostly from the point of view of American astronaut Mark Watney, who is accidentally left for dead stranded on the Martian surface. He has limited supplies, resources, and no way to contact Earth. Weir’s character within the novel figures out how he could survive under these conditions and get himself rescued.
About four years later, Ridley Scott did an adaptation of the novel and turned it into a film. Although The Martian, as a whole was fairly accurate, the author concedes a couple of scientific flaws. The first inadequacy within, The Martian, is the storm. According to G. E. Hunt from, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences:
Although …show more content…

Today’s astronauts stay in the safe confines of Earth’s magnetosphere, while the Apollo astronauts spent just a few days at the Moon. However, on Mars, each Ares crew was spending up to a month on the surface in the movie. Watney, who spends more than a year on the surface of mars and has nothing but his spacesuit for protection from radiation. In the article, “How Safe Is Safe Enough? Radiation Risk for a Human Mission to Mars”, fatal cancer risk has been considered the dominant risk for galactic cosmic rays (GCR), however, recent epidemiological analysis of radiation risks for circulatory diseases allow for predictions of REID(risk of exposure induced death) for circulatory diseases to be included in cancer risk predictions for space missions (Cucinotta et al. 9-10). Using NASA's, Space Radiation Cancer Risk Projections and Uncertainties, a model of risk and uncertainties; NASA predicted that central estimates for radiation-induced mortality and morbidity could exceed 5% and 10% with upper 95% confidence interval near 10% and 20%, respectively for a Mars mission. NASA's radiation standard limits astronaut exposures to a 3% risk of exposure induced death at the upper 95% confidence interval of the risk estimate (Cucinotta et al. 42-67). Although the radiation levels on Mars are less than expected, it’s possible Mark would have considerably increased

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