- Weir, Andy.
The Martian.
New York: Broadway Books, [2011] 2014.
ISBN 978-0-553-41802-6.
-
Mark Watney was part of the six person crew of
Ares 3 which landed on Mars to carry out
an exploration mission in the vicinity of its landing
site in
Acidalia Planitia.
The crew made a precision landing at the target where
“presupply” cargo flights had already landed
their habitation module, supplies for their stay on
Mars, rovers and scientific instruments, and the ascent
vehicle they would use to return to the Earth-Mars transit
vehicle waiting for them in orbit. Just six days after
landing, having set up the habitation module and unpacked
the supplies, they are struck by a dust storm of unprecedented
ferocity. With winds up to 175 kilometres per hour, the
Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV), already fuelled by propellant made on
Mars by reacting hydrogen brought from Earth with the Martian
atmosphere, was at risk of being blown over, which would destroy
the fragile spacecraft and strand the crew on Mars. NASA
gives the order to abort the mission and evacuate to orbit
in the MAV for an immediate return to Earth.
But the crew first has to get from the habitation module to the
MAV, which means walking across the surface in the midst of the
storm. (You'd find it very hard to walk in a 175 km/h wind on Earth, but
recall that the atmosphere pressure on Mars is only about 1/200
that of Earth at sea level, so the wind doesn't pack anywhere near
the punch.) Still, there was dust and flying debris from equipment
ripped loose from the landers. Five members of the crew made it to
the MAV. Mark Watney didn't.
As the crew made the traverse to the MAV, Watney was struck by
part of an antenna array torn from the habitation, puncturing his
suit and impaling him. He was carried away by the wind, and
the rest of the crew, seeing his vital signs go to zero before
his suit's transmitter failed, followed mission rules to leave him
behind and evacuate in the MAV while they still could.
But Watney wasn't dead. His injury was not fatal, and his blood loss
was sufficient to seal the leak in the suit where the antenna
had pierced it, as the water in the blood boiled off and the residue mostly
sealed the breach. Awakening after the trauma, he made an
immediate assessment of his situation. I'm alive. Cool!
I hurt like heck. Not cool. The habitation module is
intact. Yay! The MAV is gone—I'm alone on
Mars. Dang!
“Dang” is not precisely how Watney put it. This book
contains quite a bit of profanity which I found gratuitous. NASA
astronauts in the modern era just don't swear like sailors, especially
on open air-to-ground links. Sure, I can imagine launching a full
salvo of F-bombs upon discovering I'd been abandoned on Mars,
especially when I'm just talking to myself, but everybody seems to do
it here on all occasions. This is the only reason I'd hesitate to
recommend this book to younger readers who would otherwise be inspired
by the story.
Watney is stranded on Mars with no way to communicate with Earth,
since all communications were routed through the MAV, which has
departed. He has all of the resources for a six-person mission,
so he has no immediate survival problems after he gets back to
the habitation and stitches up his wound, but he can work the
math: even if he can find a way to communicate to Earth that he's
still alive, orbital mechanics dictates that it will take around
two years to send a rescue mission. His supplies cannot be stretched
that far.
This sets the stage for a gripping story of survival, improvisation,
difficult decisions, necessity versus bureaucratic inertia,
trying to do the right thing in a media fishbowl, and all
done without committing any howlers in technology, orbital
mechanics, or the way people and organisations behave. Sure,
you can quibble about this or that detail, but then people
far in the future may regard a factual account of Apollo 13
as largely legend, given how many things had to go right to
rescue the crew. Things definitely do not go smoothly here: there
is reverse after reverse, and many inscrutable mysteries to be
unscrewed if Watney is to get home.
This is an inspiring tale of pioneering on a new world. People
have already begun to talk about
going to Mars to stay. These
settlers will face stark challenges though, one hopes, not
as dire as Watney, and with the confidence of regular re-supply
missions and new settlers to follow. Perhaps this novel will be
seen, among the first generation born on Mars, as inspiration
that the challenges they face in bringing a barren planet to life
are within the human capacity to solve, especially if their media
library isn't exclusively populated with 70s TV shows and disco.
A Kindle edition is available.
November 2014 