The Martian

The Martian (2015)

18 quotes

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Mark Watney: I don't want to come off as arrogant here, but I'm the best botanist on the planet.

Mark Watney: I admit it's fatally dangerous, but I'd get to fly around like Iron Man.

Mark Watney: I'm gonna have to science the shit out of this.

Mark Watney: If the oxygenator breaks down, I'll suffocate. If the water reclaimer breaks down, I'll die of thirst. If the Hab beaches, I'll just kind of explode. If none of those things happen. I'll eventually run out of food and starve to death. So yeah. I'm fucked.

Mark Watney: They say once you grow crops somewhere, you have officially colonized it. So, technically, I colonized Mars. In your face, Neil Armstrong.

Teddy Sanders: If we are going to have a secret project called "Elrond", then I want my code name to be "Glorfindel."

Mark Watney: Hi, I'm Mark Watney and I'm still alive... Obviously.

Mark Watney: Every human being has a basic instinct: to help each other out. If a hiker gets lost in the mountains, people will coordinate a search. If a train crashes, people will line up to give blood. If an earthquake levels a city, people all over the world will send emergency supplies. This is so fundamentally human that it's found in every culture without exception. Yes, there are assholes who just don't care, but they're massively outnumbered by the people who do.

Mark Watney: Mars will come to fear my botany powers.

Mark Watney: So, yeah, I blew myself up. Best guess, I forgot to account for the excess oxygen that I've been exhaling when I did my calculations because I'm stupid. I'm gonna get back to work here just as soon as my ears stop ringing.

Mark Watney: It's a strange feeling. Everywhere I go, I'm the first. Step outside the rover? First guy ever to be there! Climb a hill? First guy to climb that hill! Kick a rock? That rock hadn't moved in a million years! I'm the first guy to drive long-distance on Mars. The first guy to spend more than thirty-one sols on Mars. The first guy to grow crops on Mars. First, first, first.

Mark Watney: I've got to make a lot more water. The good thing is, I know the recipe: You take hydrogen, you add oxygen, and you burn. Now, I have hundreds of liters of unused hydrazine at the MDV. If I run the hydrazine over an iridium catalyst, it'll separate into N2 and H2. And then if I just direct the hydrogen into a small area and burn it. Luckily, in the history of humanity, nothing bad has ever happened from lighting hydrogen on fire.

Mark Watney: I admit it's fatally dangerous, but I'd get to fly around like Iron Man.

Mark Watney: At some point, everything's gonna go south on you... everything's going to go south and you're going to say, this is it. This is how I end. Now you can either accept that, or you can get to work. That's all it is. You just begin. You do the math. You solve one problem... and you solve the next one... and then the next. And If you solve enough problems, you get to come home. All right, questions?

Mark Watney: I've been thinking about laws on Mars. There's an international treaty saying that no country can lay claim to anything that's not on Earth. By another treaty if you're not in any country's territory, maritime law aplies. So Mars is international waters. Now, NASA is an American non-military organization, it owns the Hab. But the second I walk outside I'm in international waters. So Here's the cool part. I'm about to leave for the Schiaparelli Crater where I'm going to commandeer the Ares IV lander. Nobody explicitly gave me permission to do this, and they can't until I'm on board the Ares IV. So I'm going to be taking a craft over in international waters without permission, which by definition... makes me a pirate. Mark Watney: Space Pirate.

Hermes: Houston, please be advised: Rich Purnell is a steely-eyed missile man.

David George

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Mistakes

Factual error: After Watney patches the blow out of one of the HAB's airlocks with plastic sheeting, tie down straps, and duct tape, he pressurizes the HAB and the plastic sheeting pushes out like an inflated balloon. Assuming the plastic and duct tape would hold this is correct, however the plastic would be much more taut given the pressure difference inside and outside.

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: The plastic would certainly be flexing in and out because of the pressure of the wind gusts during the storm. We saw earlier that the gusts of the storms were strong enough to blow a suited explorer off their feet and push them across the surface. Let's say that the HAB is pressurized as much as it can be without blowing out of the plastic, tape, and bungees sealing the airlock. A storm gust would still be able to push the flexible plastic in momentarily, and it would pop back out after the gust passed.

The movie took liberties with the physics of Mars. The gusts on Mars wouldn't be able to blow over a person or a spaceship, let alone push them across the surface, but they needed it for the plot. But using the same physics they then have wedded themselves to, it could then be strong enough to cause the plastic to flap, even though in real life it wouldn't. This is more of a deliberate mistake than a factual error since the writers certainly knew what they did didn't match reality.

Except they didn't 'wed' themselves to their fictional physics. Towards the end of the film NASA tells Watney that a flimsy plastic covering on his ascent vehicle will not be dislodged on acceleration to Martian escape velocity because the atmosphere is too thin to cause any problems. That's cheating in anyone's books.

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Trivia

Trivia: When discussing "Operation Elrond", the Director says he wants his codename to be "Glorfindel." This shows he has read the book, as Glorfindel was cut out of the movie and replaced with Arwen.

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Questions

Question: Why would NASA decide to send a botanist on a mission to Mars? A planet where no plants can grow.

Answer: Part of his job, aside from also being a mechanical engineer, was to use soil taken from Earth to Mars, mix it with Martian soil then grow seeds in it to see how Martian soil is for growing crops. This would be preparing for a longer term mission where growing full crops to feed the crew would be part of the mission.

Answer: Botanists going to mars can study the ground and the dirt so they could make life on mars. Botanists are also helpful due to oxygen in space, he grows plants on the spacecraft for the oxygen that they give off.

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