![]() ![]() " wasn't for me, it was for people who know much less," he says. Weir wishes the recent follow-up, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, took the same approach. The ponderous and poetic look at outer space made astrophysics digestible without sacrificing any of the nuance. If you want to take your relationship with space to the next level, really lust for space travel, Weir recommends going back to Carl Sagan's 13-part miniseries, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. When we met up with the writer at the Toronto Film Festival, we asked him to recommend a few cultural digestifs based on his own inspiration: The Martian crackles with character and acumen, in large part thanks to Weir's exhaustive research. What most amateur astrophysicists would blast into a forum abyss for like-minded science buffs to feed on, Weir sculpted into a sci-fi phenomenon. It all could have been a message board post. NASA SPENT MONEY ON MATT DAMON MOVIEThe rest of Weir's story is a dream for anyone writing to entertain themselves he published the novel as an e-book, saw it rise to the top of Amazon's sales charts, landed a $100,000 publishing deal from Crown, watched Hollywood scoop up the movie rights for Matt Damon and Alien director Ridley Scott, and walked red carpet after red carpet as the finished film raced to theaters. He eventually extrapolated these concepts into The Martian, a problem-solving thriller with the prose of a Michael Critchton novel and the heart of a Reddit thread. ![]() Around 2009, nights spent reading up on NASA's latest discoveries prompted him to devise a faux-mission to Mars. He grew from a BBS user in the 1980s to a guy who, admittedly, spends too much time scrolling through Imgur threads. ![]() For Weir, the web was an endless source of inspiration. He has the Internet to thank for his success. "The movie and the book is a fabulous opportunity to celebrate that.By day, Andy Weir was a computer programmer. "That's the inspiration that will propel our economy forward by bringing in the scientists and engineers," Green said. Two years ago, landing the Curiosity rover on Mars spawned the Mars generation. ![]() "Ridley and I were around when we landed on the moon. NASA experts have consulted on other movies, but Green saw this go-about as beyond anything he'd seen in three decades on the job. Scott raised more questions than Green could answer, leading to additional calls and tours of NASA facilities. Green blocked off 30 minutes that day to chat with the director. Scott, the director behind films Prometheus and Blade Runner, had his people cold call NASA's Green last year. The geography of Mars also lines up as it should. Scott also followed details Weir had worked out, like the power-efficiency of space vehicles and how far Watney could travel in them without being fried or frozen. With no way to contact NASA or his crew, he makes a GoPro camera his companion. Watney, the self-proclaimed best botanist on Mars, must stretch two months' worth of supplies into enough for four years, when a new crew is due to arrive. The tale follows Mark Watney, whose colleagues abandoned him on Mars, thinking him dead in a storm. In other words, it could be great publicity for hoped-for manned missions to Mars. Even many scientists believe more knowledge about space can be obtained more efficiently with unmanned spacecraft.īut Martian, said Green, could be a launchpad for a generation that develops and benefits from technologies tied to reaching Mars. The movie comes at a time when, amid budget concerns, public enthusiasm for human exploration in outer space has waned. Green, Scott, Damon and others spoke at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory this week, where movie studio 20th Century Fox bused reporters around JPL's Pasadena campus to highlight experiments that show how close setting foot on Mars is. ![]()
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