The John Batchelor Show

VIDEO: The Martian

June 18, 2015

Wednesday   17 June  2015  / Hour 1, Block C: Hotel Mars, episode n; Andy Weir, author, The Martians, in re: Martian colonies, constructing habitats. A spectacular novelist. Knowledge of Mars, of NASA's operations, the story of Mr Watney.  (A major motion picture is en route.)  Watney's main problem is that he ended up abandoned on Mars, everybody thinks he's dead, and he needs to survive with what little is available.  Dealing with the surface of Mars, the soil, surface chemistry, how to produce food.  Andy was refused by publishers, so self-published on Kindle, now has been courted by the same publishers. When I wrote the book, people believed that Mars was effectively a desert; since then, we've learned that there's a lot water in soil trapped as ice. Every cubic meter of Martian dirt has 35 liters of water!  NASA astronauts say that Andy's depiction of astronauts is highly accurate. The backstabbing in the bureaucracy is well portrayed. Paleodiet: Nothing tea.  Took me three years to write the book, of which half was research, I had a mailing list of 3m,000 people who read each chapter as it emerged ad very helpfully criticized me.  The December 2014 Orion flight took the book's cover! I've  been invited to speak at NASA and at SpaceX – a real treat. Am surprised at how much NASA liked the book, that they introduced me to the top guys there.