The Martian

In February, I read The Martian by Andy Weir. This sci-fi novel tells of astronaut and botanist Mark Watney and his attempts to survive on Mars in the wake of the Ares III crew’s departure following a catastrophic dust storm. I chose to read this book because I had watched the movie that’s based off this novel several times, and my mom was also encouraging me to read it. And I have to tell you, it’s an amazing novel; it’s a perfect visual representation of this work of sci-fi. Mark’s my favorite character because I enjoyed his excellent sense of humor and his descriptiveness. On page 2, he describes how the pre-mission process works, and describes a little bit about how Hermes operates, “We got to Earth orbit the normal way, through an ordinary ship to Hermes. All the Ares missions use Hermes to get to and from Mars. It’s really big and costs a lot so NASA built only one.

Once we got to Hermes, four additional unmanned missions brought fuel and supplies while we prepared for our trip. Once everything was a go, we set out for Mars. But not very fast. Gone are the days of heavy chemical fuel burns and trans-Mars injection orbits.Hermes is powered by fuel ion engines. They throw argon out the back of the ship really fast to get a tiny amount of acceleration. The thing is, it doesn’t take much reactant mass, so a little argon (and a nuclear reactor to power things) let us accelerate constantly the whole way there. You’d be amazed at how fast you can get going with a tiny acceleration over a long time.

I could regale you with tales of how we had great fun on the trip, but I won’t. I don’t feel like relieving it right now. Suffice it to say we got to Mars 124 days later without strangling each other.

From there, we took the MDV (Mars descent vehicle) to the surface. The MDV is basically a big can with some light thrusters and parachutes attached. Its sole purpose is to get six humans from Mars orbit to the surface without killing any of them.” I think a reason for Mark’s descriptiveness is because he is writing in a log, and also because some regular person may read them, and he doesn’t want them to be confused. My favorite line can be found on the last page, page 369, “This is the happiest day of my life.” I liked this sentence because it represents Mark’s joyous mood because he is finally going home after a year and a half of hanging around the red planet.