PEDAUNT

2nd Nov 2017

The Martian (2015)

Other mistake: Rich Purnell explains his plan to redirect the Hermes to Mars in order to rescue Watney, positioning people to represent planets and using a stapler to show the trajectory of the vessel. He is talking to experienced, qualified engineers and technologists working at a very high level on the space programme. They don't need drama school play acting to be understand things like this. He could have explained his plan in the most complex and abstruse terms and they would have been way ahead of him.

PEDAUNT

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Suggested correction: This isn't really a mistake. Yes, the character oversimplified the explanation but, as is shown when the character is introduced, he doesn't exhibit typical social behaviour. To him it's probably normal to explain things that way to strangers (which is basically what the people he's talking to are).

I think this is one of those borderline mistakes. Movies and TV shows often have a character over-simplify things, especially when involving science, for the audiences' sake and not for any of the characters. This type of mistake is similar to when characters start a conversation, but the show skips time by having characters arrive at a new location in the next scene without showing them traveling, but then the characters continue their conversation for the audiences' sake.

Bishop73

4th Dec 2015

The Martian (2015)

Factual error: Towards the end of the film Watney is told to discard the heavy nose cone of the Martian Ascent Vehicle and replace it with a flimsy plastic sheet because the atmosphere is so thin that it will not be damaged despite the vehicle being accelerated to Martian escape velocity - nearly 14,000 kmh. But the storm caused massive damage earlier. It cannot work both ways - if the atmosphere is so thin that it won't dislodge a jury rigged plastic canopy from an accelerating spacecraft, it cannot possibly whip up a storm like the one we see.

PEDAUNT

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Suggested correction: Mars' atmosphere works very differently than Earth's. Near the surface, there are often heavy storms and winds. But go up near the edge of the atmosphere, it's drastically thinner. Earth's atmosphere doesn't differ THAT much; your logic would make sense for Earth. However, for Mars' atmosphere, the movie was accurate.

Absolute rubbish. It is a well established fact that the atmospheric pressure on Mars is 610 pascals, 1% of that on Earth. A 170 kmh wind storm on Mars (specified in the film) would be like a gentle, 18kmh breeze on earth. There is absolutely no way that a storm like the one we see at the beginning of the film could occur on Mars. The storm would barely scatter small pebbles about, let alone throw a spacesuited human body around. As for the atmosphere on Earth not differing form that on Mars... good grief, are you serious? Anyway, don't take my word for it. "No, it's not accurate!" Goddard cheerfully informed us (The Radio Times). "It's the one big buy of the movie, that because of the atmosphere, or lack thereof, Mars would never have a storm that big. But if we didn't do it, we wouldn't have a movie. It sort of kicks off the movie." You think Mr Goddard would be in a good position to comment. He wrote the screenplay.

You need to take the thickness of Mars' atmosphere into consideration.

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