Ridley Scott's latest film The Martian has been the talk of Hollywood this past week. The movie - which stars Matt Damon as Mark Watney, an astronaut stranded on the planet Mars, has drawn praise for its realistic and grounded depiction of scientific phenomena. It eschews space opera dramatics and sci-fi techno babble and gives us a realistic look at how people might come together to solve such a complex dilemma.
Astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson posted a lengthy series of tweets hailing the film. Degrasse has been a vocal critic of the recent wave of 'realistic' sci-fi films. He previously crticized the science behind Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity. On the flip side, he had kinder words for Christopher Nolan's Interstellar, which coincidentally also starred Damon as a marooned astronaut.
However, like what Tyson says, some creative license was still necessary to ramp up the narrative tension. The Martian's biggest scientific sin is also the very moment that gets the ball rolling. Some spoilers regarding the film's plot follow.
At the start of the movie, a deadly dust cloud is ravaging Mars' surface. Watney and his fellow astronauts are ordered by their superior, Commander Lewis (Jessica Chastain), to quickly evacuate the planet before the strong gusts of wind cause their spacecraft to tip over. It's during this hasty escape that Watney is struck by debris and presumed dead, setting the stage for the rest of the film.
The opening sequence is certainly a good spectacle and creates a believable excuse as to how Watney's crew might be forced to leave without him or his remains, but it's also completely impossible according to scientists.
NASA scientist Jim Bell recently told Forbes that the atmospheric pressure on Mars is about 1% that of Earth's. This means that the dust storm threatening the astronauts' lives would never be able to tip over their spaceship.
"If standing on Mars, a 100 mph wind would feel like someone was throwing a bag of feathers at you." Said Bell.
Andy Weir, the author of the book that the film was based on said he was aware of this, telling Nautilus earlier this year:
That was a deliberate concession I made, because I just thought it was more dramatic to have him get stranded by a weather event. It kind of plays well into the theme of it's him versus Mars, and it starts off with Mars smacking him around. But realistically, that could not possibly happen.