Physics 1040 Class Paper

Joshua Hill

For this paper, I watched “The Martian” and decided to do a Sci-Fi critique on some of

the science that was portrayed in the film. Three parts I’d like to focus on are: the ability to

grow potato plants on the Martian surface, the maneuver to use Earth’s gravity as a means to

gain more speed to get back to Mars faster, and using atmospheric air as a means to slow down

a space craft.

In the movie, astronaut Mark Watney, uses potatoes from his food rations to grow

many potato plants inside the controlled environment of the “HAB” (the name of the structure

on Mars) using soil from the Martian surface. We’ve conducted several soil sample experiments

of Martian soils via multiple rovers we have sent to the surface. These experiments point to the

composition of the soil to be fairly uniform across the planet, at least where we have sent

rovers.

The major component of the soil is disintegrated volcanic minerals composed of many

sulfur and chlorine compounds. There is also a significant amount of iron(III) oxide, Fe2O3, in the

Martian soil. This is what gives the soil its red color. The high levels of chlorine could be hostile

to any organic plant that is planted in this soil, leading to something called chlorine toxicity. An

indicator of a plant with too much chlorine is that the leaves will have a scorched/burnt or may

appear to be bleached, it may also impact the yield of the harvest. Luckily, it is possible to

reduce the amount of chlorine in soil by watering. In the presence of water, many chlorine

molecules will break down into Cl- anions that can wash away from the intended planting area.
 The big issue with attempting to grow potatoes on Mars is the lack of any organic

material in the soil, since there has been no life that we know of on the planet. So, without any

sort of organic fertilizer, it would be nearly impossible to grow. Fortunately for Mark Watney,

there was plenty of human waste to use as his fertilizer.

So, with all of this in mind, I think it may be possible to grow crops in Martian soil,

however, I think the yield of the harvest would most likely be a lot less than it was portrayed in

the film. On Earth, there has been a Martian-like soil created from volcanic material from

Hawaii. With the addition of fertilizers, the soil has had the capability to harbor plant life, but it

is not identical to the soil on Mars.

Hollywood likes to use gravity assists to gain speed in many movies, “The Martian” and

“Armageddon” for example. In this film, it is determined that it would faster for the space craft

returning to Earth from Mars to make an orbit about Earth, gaining speed, to return to Mars to

rescue Mark Watney. This is one piece of science that they do get correct. Many space agencies

have used this type of maneuver with many space crafts to adjust speed and direction of travel

without the expenditure of additional fuel; one of the most well-known projects to use this

method was the Voyager I and II probes that explored the outer planets of the solar system.

The Voyager project was started because all four of the gas giants were going to be

aligned in such a way that our space craft could visit all four on the same trip. However, this

could only be done in a relatively small time frame if the craft could gain speed while going

around the planets, otherwise the mission would have lasted a lot longer. Both Voyagers first
used the maneuver when the approached Jupiter, gaining an additional 10km/s on their

approach to Saturn.

A gravity assist is accomplished when two objects interact along their orbital paths that

they exchange orbital energy, called a gravitational encounter. As one object approaches the

other, it will gain speed until it reaches a point where it will begin to attempt to escape the

gravitational pull of the object, slowing it down again. To keep the slowing to a minimum,

scientists use the motion of planets in their orbit of the Sun. To gain speed, the space craft will

approach the planet in such a way that it will be pushed along with the planet by the Sun’s

gravity and gain additional speed, and vise versa to slow down.

So, this demonstrates that this maneuver plays and active role in the history of space

travel and it doesn’t look like it will be replaced by anything else in the foreseeable future.

Mostly because launching additional fuel with any space craft would require an astronomic

price tag due to rocket modifications and the even more additional fuel to achieve enough

thrust to obtain escape velocity.

Now, using the atmospheric pressure of a space craft to slow down, as done in “The

Martian,” is something that could be practical. This would be an example of Newton’s Third Law

of Motion, which states: Whenever one object exerts a force on a second object, the second

object exerts and equal and opposite force on the first. However, this fact may become a little

confusing in the vacuum of space. But if you observe the system, the air inside the craft and the

craft itself, it is easily demonstrated.

 In the movie, the astronauts make a bomb to blow a hole in the hull of their space craft,

the Hermes. Which is an idiotic idea in the first place because it would be extremely hard to

control the blast of the bomb and not blow up the entire ship. But the hole they blow open

allows all the breathable air in the ship to be sucked into the vacuum of space. As the air is

escaping, the ship will begin to slow because the force of the air escaping from the front of the

ship is essentially acting as a reverse thrust engine. Since the air in the ship is finite, it could not

be determined how much the craft would slow, but it so happened to slow the craft just

enough in the movie (of course).

Hollywood has been known to stretch the laws of physics in Sci-Fi films, but I think that

they stayed true to the science while filming “The Martian,” or maybe they were trying to stick

to the plot of the novel by Andy Weir (which I haven’t read yet) that I hear has a lot of accurate

science in it.

Bibliography:
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/news/msl20121203.html
https://extension.umd.edu/hgic/chlorine-toxicity-trees-and-shrubs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_of_Mars#Dust_and_soils
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/2013/20130926-gravity-assist.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_assist
https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/
“The Essential Cosmic Perspective 8th Edition” (2018) Bennett, Donahue, Schneider, Voit: Pg. 97
“Conceptual Physics 12th Edition” (2015) Paul G. Hewitt: Pg. 76-78