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“The Martian” + Starship
- Gravityloss 5y agoI think they should use m/s for wind speed.
- mrlonglong 5y agoBrilliant fan fic!
- thrill 5y agoThis premise would make a delightful text adventure game.
- dhosek 5y agoI saw the title and imagined a scenario where someone combined the idea of "The Martian" with interstellar travel. Basic idea: interstellar colony ship with colonists in cryo-sleep. One of the colonists is inadvertently awakened mid-journey and has to attempt to survive the multi-year journey in solitude without jeopardizing the whole colony's travel. Feel free to write this if you like, any of you. Ideas are cheap and I have more than I'm likely to use in what remains of my life.
- croddin 5y agoThis is actually a similar idea to the latest novel by Andy Weir (Author of "The Martian"), "Project Hail Mary", which is great and I highly recommend if you liked "The Martian".
- BuildTheRobots 5y agoNever realised he had another book out - thank you. After being less interested in the drama presented in Artemis, I'm thrilled he seems to have another problem->fix type book I can read.
- frosted-flakes 5y agoNote that Hail Mary is much closer in plot and style to Artemis than The Martian. I loved The Martian (9.5/10), but only passably liked Artemis (6/10) and Hail Mary (5/10).
- jkubicek 5y agoYMMV: I liked Hail Mary just as much, if not more then, The Martian. It had the same "solo dude using science and cleverness to solve an impossible problem" with a massively more ambitious plot. Also, the plot twists in Hail Mary are very well delivered. The book ends up being completely different then you're expecting when you go into it.
- elihu 5y agoI think the Martian was great the first time through, but re-reading it isn't as much fun when you know what's going to happen. I didn't enjoy Artemis as much the first time, but I think it holds up better at being interesting and entertaining even when you know what's about to happen. Hail Mary I haven't read twice yet, but my take is that it fits somewhere in the middle.
- BuildTheRobots 5y agoInteresting. For context I loved The Martian and quite often use bits of the audio book to fall asleep to. Artemis wasn't bad, but there was a lot of interpersonal and stupid decision making in the lead up to critical events which I found a little annoying and contrived. Hail Mary I started reading last night at my first comment. 7 hours later I'm about 50% of the way through and absolutely loving it. So far we seem to be doing the problem->fix cycle in the small and large scales with an interesting overarching plot. Looking forward to continuing.
- treloon 5y agoTotally disagree. Artemis sucked and wasn't very similar to The Martian, was more of a detective story and the protag was nothing like Mark Watney in any way really. Dude in Hail Mary is basically a slightly wimpier Mark Watney and the plot is the exact same (problem --> science the problem --> repeat) as The Martian. My ratings would go The Martian (8/10), Artemis (45/10) and Hail Mary (9.5/10). I'm a sucker for softer sci-fi elements like aliens.
- dnautics 5y agoPassengers (2016)
- dexwiz 5y agoAlso Pandorum (2009).
- darkerside 5y agoThis movie was way more incredible than it had any right to be
- rtkwe 5y agoThat could have been so much cooler of a movie if they'd shot it from Jennifer Lawrence's POV but they probably didn't want to have Chris Pratt being super creepy (which in the story he's not a good guy).
- pferde 5y agoThe character is super creepy anyway. Passengers is essentially Stockholm Syndrome: The Movie.
- rtkwe 5y agoYeah but it wouldn't have been tempered by growing attached to Pratt's character and we would get to experience the same feeling of confusion as JLaw's character. NerdWriter on youtube has a good video on how the change would look, does a better job of selling it than I ever could: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gksxu-yeWcU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gksxu-yeWcU
- fsn4dN69ey 5y agoFunnily enough, I thought the script was better than the movie itself. I read the script back in 2014 or something and it was way better than how the movie turned out.
- benchaney 5y agoAndy Weir, the author of the Martian, just came out with a new book called Project Hail Marry. It’s premise is similar to what you are describing. If you liked the Martian, I highly recommend it. It’s one of the best books I have ever read.
- Aachen 5y agoSeconded. The Martian is still my favorite, but Hail Mary is #2 now, pushing Daemon from Daniel Suarez to third place.
- AtlasBarfed 5y agoThere was a story I read in the 1970s where a guy woke up in the transit and had a plan to "unfreeze" the females one by one and basically do bad things to each for one year then off them to pass the time. Spoiler... The second woman he unfreezes offs him. It was both representative of the male dominated era of science fiction, and a big progressive.
- janpot 5y agoOxygen (2021)
- andyjohnson0 5y agoThis is part of the plot of Allen Steele's 2002 SF novel Coyote. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coyote_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coyote_(novel)
- aazaa 5y agoHave a look at Passengers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passengers_(2016_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passengers_(2016_film) And here's an alternative take that might work better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gksxu-yeWcU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gksxu-yeWcU
- kzrdude 5y agoWhen passengers ends, if feels like a cheap-o movie. Hollywood but with only two main actors and in total three actors for the whole film. So empty, no ensemble, no people. Only the two actors, production, special effects and the movie making machine.
- peakaboo 5y agoNot to mention both actors look like Ken and Barbie and has extreamly predictable personalities. That movie could have been great if actors would have been like genuine people. Instead it became plastic and meaningless.
- imbnwa 5y agoThat musical vignette...
- joshuahedlund 5y agoThe movie could have been great if it was oriented around the female passenger waking up and not knowing what had already happened before instead of the audience knowing everything linearly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gksxu-yeWcU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gksxu-yeWcU
- psadauskas 5y agoI liked the first 3/4 of that movie, the ending could have been way better. Warning Spoilers: It would have been much better had Pratt died in the fusion exhaust pipe, and the movie ends one year later showing JLaw standing over another cryopod, internally conflicted if she should wake up another passenger, and only then finally forgiving Pratt.
- pcmaffey 5y agoChildren of Time has this vibe. Though it’s not just one person out of cryo working to save what’s left of humanity (or what they think is left…)
- eximius 5y agoDo you mean the sequel? Children of Ruin?
- m4rtink 5y agoOne book of the Revelation Space series has an interesting take on this. Though it's not just a single person, colonists in cryosleep (or more precisely their mass at braking time) are definitely involved. ;-)
- jffry 5y agoIt's only similar to your premise, but I enjoyed Mur Lafferty's "Six Wakes", which is a scifi murder-mystery aboard a colony ship: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Wakes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Wakes
- tectonic 5y agoEverything on Casey's blog is pretty great.
- afgasgbui 5y agoI used to be confused by SpaceX marketing. Why do they talk about 90%+ cost reduction per KG to LEO? Maybe the general public will fall for it, but the general public doesn't often launch satellites. The actual experts will just laugh them out of the room. There's no way their marketing can fool anyone who is in a position to give them money. Apparently I was mistaken. There are people working at the JPL who seriously believe we'll be able to send payloads to the Martian surface using a human-rated vehicle and bring it back to Earth for $1,000/kg. There are people working for NASA who actually believe we will be able to launch to LEO for $55/kg. What the Hell? I guess it's no wonder NASA is doing so badly if these are the sorts of people they're hiring.
- dweekly 5y agoFor those of us not expert in the commercial space industry, it might be more helpful to point out some reasoning outlining the impossibility of these claims or pointing to resources that do instead of simply scoffing at them. An eyeroll is not a very educating comment (especially coming from a relatively new account with low karma and no clear expert credentials on this matter presented, though I am assuming you have them) and this is an area I think many of us on HN would like to learn more about as well as improve our critical thinking on such matters. We'd love to hear more about why you think what you think.
- dtparr 5y agoAgreed, I'm curious if the scoffing was at the claim of 100 metric tons to LEO or the pricing for such a launch ($55/kg would mean a $5.5M/launch cost). I'm assuming the latter since the Saturn V could put 140 metric tons in LEO, but the F9 costs roughly an order of magnitude more.
- afgasgbui 5y agoThe latter, of course. Launch prices have been fairly consistent for about 50 years. Promising a sudden 20x cost reduction over SpaceX's already exaggerated figures without any real innovation is ludicrous.
- rbanffy 5y agoA lot of the story is a consequence of how limited access to Mars is. With Starship on full-scale, a resupply mission can be diverted from a future landing site or assembled from scratch in weeks. Even an already landed Starship could probably still hop enough to take supplies to Watney. Starship, if it pans out as planned, is a huge game changer.
- rbanffy 5y agoWith Starship at full scale, Watney would just dial 911 and get emergency transport to a hospital in the nearest colony.
- cfraenkel 5y agoDid you read the book? The limitation was that it takes 6 months+ to get there. Assemble a mission from scratch in weeks - it'll still take you six months to get there.
- basementcat 5y agoWith a big enough rocket, you're no longer constrained to use a minimum energy trajectory. You can cut down the travel time but you'll need to do additional burns to speed up and slow down (with corresponding additional risks).
- rbanffy 5y agoNot only that - with cheaper launches you could have more frequent launches. At any given time there would be at least one supply ship on its way to Mars that could be diverted to a different landing site. Even if the capability for multiple launches a day never materializes, it'd be safe to assume there could be a vehicle ready to launch in weeks. With a payload capacity of 100 tons, it could do a significantly higher energy trajectory with supplies for a single person. With 5 tons of food and replacement parts per flight, you'd still have 95 fewer tons to push to Mars. Not sure about my math, but it looks like it'd have about 11 km/s of extra delta-v, which seems to be a lot (more than twice what you need for an optimal trip from the Earth to Mars). And that is if the only upper stage developed for Superheavy is the reusable Starship. An expendable upper stage could carry a lot more fuel and cargo. On a mission you don't expect the vehicle to return, it'd be fine to use a lighter one. I'm thinking a truncated Starship with a Red Dragon lander, doing a burn to slow down enough the lander can get safely to the surface with the supplies needed. Finally, with that much launch capacity, I'd be pretty sure there would be more than one crew on Mars at any time. Watney's rescuers could probably just drive to his door with food from over the hills.
- maxdo 5y agoin a real world future chinese nuclear module would save him quite fast :)
- shellerik 5y agoI was hoping this article would be about "The Hail Mary" which is an amazing book by the author of The Martian that involves a starship. I listened to the audio book and basically binged the last quarter of it. It's rare to find something so good I prefer it over streaming TV shows & movies.
- riffraff 5y agoI believe the book may be called "project hail Mary".
- z3t4 5y agoHaving played Kerbal space program... the heavier something is the more difficult it will be to put it in orbit. Also trying to land something very tall will be difficult...