THE MARTIAN | Science vs Cinema

I'm Andy Howell. I'm in astrophysics professor but I'm also a huge film geek. So many of my students get huge misconceptions about science from movies. I want to see a show that celebrates movies that the science right and correct the misconceptions of movies that get the science wrong. Movies you're about to get schooled! This is Science Vs. Cinema. This episode: The Martian it doesn't cooperate astronaut Mark wanna get the SmackDown put on him by giant dust storm on mars its crew thinks he's dead and asked to abandon it is left stranded with no way of communicating with nasa and only enough food for a few months did the movie get the science right we're going to the world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival ask the filmmakers how they approach the sci-fi most his fantasy owners would attract this is the total reality of the situation changes to the screenplay for a little over the bus I talked to no one ok with that to talk to the real experts at nasa to see what they thought he was really working hard to get the science right now not everything is right in the thick a place that is pretty benign to rain but they actually happened choose or anything it's pretty rocky you do get dust storms on mars but nothing quite that dramatic along the way I'll be grading the film on everything except this thing is inflating my pants with see what happens when we introduce the martian wind its ok to cheat a little you need to tell a better story but first let's take a closer look at the film's real villain bars or century study Mars the only planet where life may exist now the screen creates for you the fascinating frightening spectacle of the first flight to Mars we have been expecting a little more than a hundred years ago even top scientists sincerely believe that there were aliens from the planet next door and in movies it was a crazy funky place bombardment of Mars by attacking humanoid to a marsh speak to me right now more than ever before and now we can take that back to the shit out of the martian started as a science fiction book by Andy we're facing the candidates all my life I love the book for its scientific detail but would any of that be preserved in the movie I asked that question to screenwriter Drew Goddard I think the biggest decision we made early was not gonna done this movie down I said that the studio if we don't get down I don't have a movie drew has great intentions but did the movie really get the science right now we're celebrating your mars bar travel is no joke it's so far away it takes radio signals traveling at the speed of light 2004 and point four minutes to get there from here so communication is more like a text message with a busy friend that a phone call incoming class over this but it's a major plot point in the martian are you feeling the third two minute round-trip communications time is one exactly when roundtable of snap you have pretty space travel is much lower the spaceship in the martian the Hermes uses ion engines we've never actually used those in human spaceflight but nasa's unmanned mission dawn use them to visit the asteroid Ceres to really efficient letting you minimize fuel and allow you to constantly accelerate so that's exactly what you need for a mars even still it might take something like five hundred days for a round-trip seriously how do we get there well basically point of bird in that direction you eight hundred and fifty days and 36 million miles later we should be at mars that loan in weightlessness wreaks havoc on your body so you want them to have artificial gravity in the demo space at the University of California Santa Barbara on the way to mars the astronauts live in this giant wheel that's giving them artificial gravity how does that work well we can use this trick that every kid knows the truth water in a bucket if we turn this bucket over it would fall out because the gravity but if you spin it around we can generate acceleration that can counteract gravity see if it works right look at that the acceleration of me swinging it around is actually keeping the water in place counteracting breath by spinning faster I get more gravity longer get more gravity so the martian is realistic to create artificial gravity in a giant wheel did they get it exactly right when anywhere saw the trailer he did some calculations so when the trailer first came out I did a bunch of trees frames federated gets kate mara so that I can calculate the previous I estimate the radius of the wheel is about 8 cake mauro's 442 figured out they would actually have a point 2 G's but it doesn't matter the point is if they have gravity which is the main problem now let's talk about sticking the landing when you want to land on Mars this is the guy this is NASA's guy for getting a spacecraft safely down to the surface to land on mars you have to go through the atmosphere very very quickly because the vehicles flying in from deep space as it comes in it's going very very fast the air is very very thin there's enough pressure and heat from Tennessee didn't have a protective heat shield your space craft wouldn't melt it's coming in so fast that a normal parachute would rip to shreds see you need to design a very special lightweight but very strong parachuting handle these the forces of opening in those high speeds but that isn't enough in fact the Curiosity rover which landed with a parachute and then rockets and then a sky crane and as for the landing site in the martian they actually landed a real place as a dolly open Asia said a good spot we talked to planetary geologist Katie step Morgan to find out you want to pick a place that is pretty benign to rain but they actually happened to choose landing site that's pretty rocky it's got some small mountain like creatures but as a geologist don't you want to go to the cool rock so of course but you know that's always the constant interplay between the scientists who want to go to the often the most dangerous looking places and the engineers who want to make sure that everybody stay safe and to do a really good job of capturing the current state of the art technology and that's what I think I didn't have the same principle be all in all the mission to and from mars in the martian is extraordinarily accurate next topic the dust storm in diameter carrying 24 points 41 degrees that's shocking right towards US based on current escalation as to enforce of 8,600 the movie opens with a violent storm that endangers the whole crew that plausible there are dust storms on mars and sometimes they can engulf almost the whole planet but that's a little bit deceptive the atmosphere of Mars is only about 1% as dense as Earth's atmosphere to simulate that got some court dust this is going to represent a really fine grains and on mars and I've also got some salt that's gonna represent the bigger thicker lamar's ok and we're going to mix up our martian sand here ok we'll see what happens when we introduce the martian wind now are Martian dust into our martian wind the really fine grain dust got along really far assault just fell straight down the thin Martian atmosphere can blow around really find us but it can't really blow around people the only thing that he had to come up with that was a little bit on the edge was this very big wind storm that started the movie I mean if you delivered concessions from the beginning couldn't really happened doesn't have enough it's it's so thin it wouldn't actually damage anything would have to be going ten times faster than Earth's atmosphere to get the same physical force so there is a 50 mile an hour wind would have to be 500 miles an hour on mars it's a man versus nature story I want to be sure to get the first time as a college professor I can't condone cheating unless the answer you come up with is better than the right answer onto the weighty subject of gravity is only 38 percent of Earth's gravity to see what that would look like I got a gravity treadmill alright so this thing is inflating my pants have to lift off the treadmill basically a really jump up in the air with every step basically you can jump higher even look different why didn't they try to show that in the martian I asked Ridley Scott did you talk about trying to portray more mars' gravity i mean as refuses is very heavy so the mathematics roughly it's kind of more or less just under normal movement that's where we made a decision so we're not in a place where we can do i mean we can do weightless walking around without a suit and it still looks like he's on earth so the real answer is it was just too hard to shoot but imagine how much more immersive the film would have been with that little too much space suits are those slim fit suits realistic not really even on mars you need a puppy pressurized suit in a backpack with breathable oxygen in climate control met a man should have been a little lighter on his feet even in a suit the subject of gravity really wish I would've gone that extra mile when you gonna do with the rest of the science of course the different generations of Mars rovers over and we've got the Spirit and Opportunity class rover and then the big one that doesn't even fit in here the curiosity to meet the people exploring Mars rover on the block right now is curiosity the rover has 10 instruments 17 cameras has a laser and has a true it's an amazing robot so these are the tools we use to drive curiosity on the surface of mars we would love to be able to drive the rover like anybody would driver of a controlled car but the time delay between Earth and Mars can be anywhere between a few minutes to 20 minutes we have to do is plan out a whole days worth of activities and we can plant them out singly them here so we can make sure that whatever commands we send the rover safe when the river gets those commands it execute someone drives on the surface of mars for the sake of video game it's it's kinda like a video game to really boring video game until you think about what it is you're actually doing that it's amazing controlling a robot on exactly so yeah we have a pair of stereo cameras on the massive the rover with those stereo images you can actually see mars in 3d so there's some 3d view of mars to be able to evaluate where go with these Rovers we can stick our heads inside and look out the windows ISO the rover we can use the robotic arm as if it was a very own arms that rover are really extension he's one of my favorite parts about this rumors that anybody to seize the right size so the pictures that we take to put on the web as soon as they come back down der so anybody anywhere in the world can be one of the first people to see a new place on Mars Mars for all of us feels like it's not a foreign place it feels like it's reading right next door and when you look at the pictures that come back you look at the bright light of us sunny summer day on mars you really feel like you are there and it's just right over there are a lot of people don't know is that nasa is developing human Rover for markers that looks a lot like to win the martian is a pressurized cabin so astronauts don't need a spacesuit and has six sets of independent wheels these even let it go up forty degree incline on the subject of space cars the martian his inspection how it was great that's one of the reasons I really enjoyed it because it was believable it's something that could actually happen mars egos and cobbles apart pieces of the old rover's we know that those Rovers are really there could maybe do something useful with them so it was so fun to see his ingenuity and what's there branded on mars with no way of communicating with earth and without enough food or water to survive mark what he has to get creative the book is all kinds of cool calculations and chemistry the movie doesn't go into nearly as much detail but it does preserve the end results of what's in the book of the same on anything I doubt I trust that if I love it I'm gonna protect and with this book I loved it so much she was old are predicting the sole look at this movie first 20 minutes as a man by himself farming in his own still cannot believe that they heard that away let's put that up to you grow potatoes in space dirt mars used to be a much warmer and wetter place that had all the ingredients that would have been necessary for discovery was discovering out a habitable environment on the surface of mars sometime in the past we think there might have been awake they're awake with pretty neutral happy chemistry in which life could have existed if life had been there her standing at mars is changing by the day today we're going to announce that under certain circumstances liquid water on Mars even with the recent announcement of flowing water I'm not sure if you could still grow plants and the martian soil but I love the fact that our quad is a botanist if anybody could do it he could do you buy and he was a big part of the greatest body on this planet that was what was really attractive about the character I have to listen to anymore got off he kept his sense of humor in this incredible logical kind of practical solve one problem at a time type of thinking and it's what these guys can actually do it amazing I'm sitting next to mark what he is doing exactly what a good engineer or astronaut we do take the most important problem solved at first then saw each other one in turn on the topic of space MacGyver during the martian doesn't just past the best green since apollo thirteen houston we have a problem now the subject that's the biggest pet peeve of mine in any movie about space alien poking scooby-doo characters and Prometheus oil drillers and I'm again inexperienced and suicidal medical doctor and gravity or even the randomly homicidal Matt Damon himself in interstellar not about my life always tries to inject artificial drama by making their astronauts both crazy and stupid there is a moment they're cool under fire it teamwork psychiatric evaluation and choose teams whose personalities mesh the martian gotta write the crew here works together to joke around and they care for each other and they don't have stupid fights for no reason Ridley Scott that the scoop street from this just called him up and they said everybody takes Ridley's call you have to look at the interactions between headquarters in The Associated senators JPL is running the robotic missions and Johnson in the crew I live that every day all that communication causes conflict because it raises different opinions different approaches and somebody's gotta be in charge and somebody's gotta say we're gonna do it this way and you see that in the movie you are ready I'm the director of nasa what would you do if you were daddy and you had to make the decision between leaving Matt Damon there or sending people back and field everybody sees focused on different priorities hashed out and come to the right decision in the ends I also loved that they didn't portray nasa a stereotypical nerds did you go on a tour GPS I did it found its way it was just that threadbare feeling about life it's not just that it's portrayed in these things we had eighty days before scientists regular people their men and women and they come from all different cultural backgrounds one thing I've seen since starting on mars is that the fraction of women is striking you see a lot of women scientists a lot of women in operations a lot of women in leadership roles and I personally found that very inspiring to see you don't think that's your and this is exceeding achieving the goals you set up your cat scans base write that down ok I wonder if things look a little too hollywood hermes is much bigger and much cooler looking in the film that I imagine it but the rule of us has to be cool the astronauts and NASA employees all look like movie stars and the set all of what they were made by designers instead of Engineers that's a forgivable sin and abandoning the tired old cliches and in taking the effort to portray nasa astronauts correctly it's a small step for this movie but it's a giant leap for mankind all right let's take a look at the final report card the martian bailed on its portrayal of martian gravity cheated on the dust storm but it gets high marks for the betrayal of space travel realistic Rovers have scientifically accurate portrayal of NASA and the afternoon overall is a huge win for science science fiction is extremely important in our culture and some teachers see something he knew that this one this one is pretty good student but actually it was really cool story for and I thought you know I want to do that I want to see that just about every scientist I know got into their career because of science fiction Blade Runner absolutely 2001 a Space Odyssey unbelievable the big daddy of science fiction reduced but I watch 17 2001 it was a threshold of nowhere to a science fiction movie about a new release got a job favorite action movie dr. Strangelove come on that impacted me personally the most would-be space training ground favorite science fiction movie is actually only after Mars rover so he's hard not to love because you look at him and he seems very familiar instruction really projects vision of the future something that we aspire to whatever really enjoyed about the book and the movie is how close to reality it can be its just around the corner for its well it's funny you know i jus got her two adopted the screenplay when i SAT and talked with him it was the first thing he said he said this is why I want this to be a love letter to science that's what this movie is and I think that he's part to that because he has that same so those who love for science I don't think anybody has ever made science and math look sexier and more interesting and more thrilling let someone who really do and we had a long conversation about that and how that's a really wonderful thing to put out into the world right now and I don't have any lofty expectations but I do hope that some kid see it and he got on the signs and enjoy it and maybe it's one thing many other things in their life that might push him in that direction you know I really think that that indeed will happen you know we're talking about the mars generation you know around when we landed on the moon lunar generation that was pretty spectacular but when we landed curiosity on Mars we had the world's attention and that's the mars generation that's the inspiration that will propel our economy forward by bringing them to scientists and engineers and move in the book is a fabulous opportunity for us to celebrate that the first human to set foot on mars might just be a kid in a movie theater today was inspired to study science and become an astronaut all because of the martian

Channel: Science vs Cinema

Views: 1,746,400

Keywords: The Martian, Science (TV Genre), Matt Damon (Celebrity), Ridley Scott (Film Director), Jeff Daniels (Film Actor), NASA (Spacecraft Manufacturer), Mars (Planet), Science Fiction (TV Genre), Ain't It Cool News (Website), Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Spacecraft Manufacturer), Film (Media Genre), University Of California Santa Barbara (College/University), Spacecraft (Industry), Mackenzie Davis, Andy Weir, Andy Howell, Science Vs Cinema

Id: KCxQ3hYHrZk

Length: 23min 59sec (1439 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 10 2015