Running head: THE MARTIAN: BEYOND THE BOOK 1 The Martian: Beyond the Book Trey W. Woolum Treasure Valley Mathematics and Science Center
Running head: THE MARTIAN: BEYOND THE BOOK 2 The Martian: Beyond the Book The Martian, written by Andy Weir(2011), is a thrilling novel that takes place on Mars. The plot of the story is that a man named Mark Watney gets left behind on Mars by his crewmates due to a huge sandstorm that took all of them by surprise. Mark must fight to survive on Mars for what was supposed to be 31 sols (about 32 days here on Earth), but instead is there for 560 days. The Martian has many controversial topics, including surviving off of potatoes for more than a year, travel to and from Mars, and the best way to make water on Mars. In the book, Mark Watney plants his own potato plants made of Earth soil and his excrement. Sparing some details, he ends up making lots of potatoes that he survives off of during the course of the book. So is it actually possible to plant and survive off of only potatoes on Mars? According to Ashish(2016), potatoes are actually very easy to grow, and they can be stored easily as well. Potatoes are also a great source of calories, which are essential for someone who ran out of freeze dried space food weeks ago. Even though they are easy to grow, potatoes don't have any calcium, which could lead to bone fractures. They also lack selenium and vitamin E, eventually leading to a weak heart and nerve damage, according to Ashish(2016). Another thing The Martian talks about is actually flying to and from Mars. Obviously astronauts can not go to Mars yet, but will they ever be able to? According to Tony Phillips(2004), yes. Humans will eventually be able to live on Mars. It's just a matter of how the radiation between Earth and Mars is going to affect the astronauts. NASA already knows how radiation affected the Apollo Missions. But that was only a couple of days to get to the Moon. The trip to Mars would take at least a year. So to prepare for travel to Mars, NASA is coming up
Running head: THE MARTIAN: BEYOND THE BOOK 3 with ideas for different spacecrafts. Plastic and aluminium are both types of materials that can deflect gamma rays and radiation, so scientists are finding ways to implement them into designs. The last thing from the book was that Mark Watney made his own water after he had run out. "His method of making the water was taking hydrazine from the rocket fuel and dissociating it into nitrogen and hydrogen, then burning that hydrogen with oxygen," states Dr. Robert Zubrin(2015). But there are way easier ways of making water on a foreign planet than Mark Watney's. One way is to melt ice from the ice caps. There is a bunch of ice near the ice caps, and it'd be