Libro: The Martian
· One min read
The Martian, by Andy Weir
"I'm pretty much fucked. That is my considered opinion."
I feel like returning to this one book is always a blast.
If you have only seen the movie, you already know the setup where astronaut Mark Watney gets left behind on Mars after a dust storm forces an emergency evacuation.
What the movie trims down, though, is just how much math, engineering, and duct tape goes into surviving on a dead planet. Almost the entire book is made up of Mark's mission logs, detailing how he handles daily crises:
- Fixing sudden oxygen leaks.
- Clearing solar panels covered in fine dust.
- Driving across kilometers of wasteland in a rover that constantly breaks down.
The thing I like about this, is that, Mark does not sit around despairing.
He swears, figures out the physics, and starts working the problem.
And I pretty much relate to that.