- In a way, The Martian is just
The Hangover, in space,
'cause they left a guy behind.
(dramatic music)
One of the things that they did really well
in the movie was the time it takes
to communicate with Mars.
- [Voiceover] We've got an incoming message.
- Takes, like, 15 minutes just to send a signal to Mars,
and 15 minutes to get a signal back.
- I'm a botanist.
- The terraforming was probably one of the most
accurate things in the movie.
Growing potatoes with poop, martian soil,
water from exploding rocket fuel,
that is all totally feasible.
- [Voiceover] Anyone gets lost,
hone in to my suit's telemetry. You ready?
- Ready.
- The funny thing about the tarp at the end
was the movie kind of contradicted itself.
It said oh, the atmosphere's not that thick,
we can just put a tarp on the top,
but then there was a giant sand storm
that knocked over a rocket and impaled Matt Damon
with a tiny spear.
So, which one is it, guys?
- [Voiceover] Hey!
- [Voiceover] Watch out!
- Mars does have storms,
but they're just not quite as violent
as depicted in the movie.
There is an atmosphere,
there is wind, sometimes the dust blows around,
you get dust bunnies and what not,
but there are not these giant, violent storms
that can knock over a spaceship.
I really loved the moment when they dug up
the old Mars rover and used it to start
communications back with the planet Earth.
What a great call back to stuff that JPL actually
did in the nineties.
- [Voiceover] 1200 kilometers in diameter
bearing 24.41 degrees.
- It was really nice to see some females in lead
and important roles in this movie.
I think there's a lot of really fantastic
real life female role models in the space program,
and in other places throughout NASA.
We need more, but it's nice to see them
on the big screen.
- [Voiceover] If we mess up the Earth gravity assist,
we die.
- Lots of people think it's time to start trying to
colonize other planets like Mars,
and it may be important to begin to explore
and look to those places,
but you can't forget that we have
to take care of the planet
we already live on.
We're not going to get all 7 billion people off the planet
to Mars, and in the meantime,
ours is kinda getting devastated.
So, pay attention to home,
but look to the stars too.
(dramatic music)