8.4 KiB
The Martian by Andy Weir [HSF]
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Author: u/None *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2p9ejr/the_martian_by_andy_weir_hsf/
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Score: 23
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Created: 2014-12-14T14:13:39
Post:
This is a new hard sci-fi novel that I think you might enjoy. A plot is fairly simple. The story takes place in the not-very-distant future. An astronaut gets accidentally left behind on Mars and has to survive on minimal resources for a really long time until help arrives. Every now and then something goes disastrously wrong and the hero has to get really, really creative in order to not die. Meanwhile on Earth, people of NASA have to get really, really creative in order to figure out how to save him.
A book like that could easily become pretty gloomy, but the tone is actually lighthearted/humorous despite lots of tense moments. There's a strong competence porn feeling to the story that I think MoR readers might like. The author went to insane lengths to make sure that all the technology and science is as accurate as it can be. All in all, it reads like an Arthur Clarke novel written in modern colloquial language with some geeky references thrown in.
Comments:
u/eaglejarl [+12] (an hour later)
Cannot recommend this enough. I got it about a year ago and said to myself "I'll read a few pages while I'm having lunch." Next thing I know I've finished the book and am having to figure out how I lost an entire workday! (Fortunately I worked from home so it wasn't immediately obvious and I could make it up.)
u/eaglejarl [+6] (an hour later)
A film version directed by Ridley Scott and starring Matt Damon is scheduled for release in November 2015.
Squeeeee!!
u/notentirelyrandom [+2] (an hour later)
Wait, what, seriously? That's awesome! It's a joke, right?
u/None [+3] (an hour later)
No, it's true. There's going to be a big-budget movie. It may get stuck in development hell but at least it is planned.
u/eaglejarl [+3] (3 hours later)
Planned for less than a year from now, so it's pretty late to kill it. Hopefully that's good.
Also, before Andy Weir was an author he was a webcomic artist, creator of Casey and Andy and totally not Home on the Strange the way I originally wrote, although that is a very good strip.
Damnit.
u/notentirelyrandom [+1] (4 hours later)
Never read that, but he's also the creator of Casey and Andy, which people should read. (He's the Andy.)
u/krakonfour [+1] (9 hours later)
Maaaaattt Damooooon!
I guess he was brushing up on his astronaut skills in that other movie in preparation for this one ;)
u/robot_mower_guy [+5] (an hour later)
Great book. The only thing I was able to find wrong with it was a part where he had to drop some voltage using resistors. While this works well for low wattage applications, he was trying to drop the voltage on something running multiple amps. That would have blown all but mulch-hundred watt resistors.
Other than that one goof that only an EE would notice, the book seemed to be very accurate to reality. Would highly recommend.
u/coriolinus [+1] (5 hours later)
How do you properly reduce voltage in high-current situations?
u/symmetry81 [+3] (5 hours later)
Using non-lossy circuit elements, inductor and capacitors. For AC it's suer easy, you just wrap a piece of metal in loops of your input wire and your output wire. The ratio of the number of wraps is going to be the ratio of the voltages. For DC you use a buck converter or something like it.
NOTE: I've never worked with high voltage situations so I might be missing stuff.
u/autowikibot [+1] (5 hours later)
#####
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#### Buck converter:
A buck converter is a voltage step down and current step up converter.
The simplest way to reduce the voltage of a DC supply is to use a linear regulator (such as a 7805), but linear regulators waste energy as they operate by dissipating excess power as heat. Buck converters, on the other hand, can be remarkably efficient (95% or higher for integrated circuits), making them useful for tasks such as converting the main voltage in a computer (12 V in a desktop, 12-24 V in a laptop) down to the 0.8-1.8 volts needed by the processor.
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^Interesting: ^Buck–boost ^converter ^| ^Split-pi ^topology ^| ^Voltage ^regulator ^module ^| ^Boost ^converter
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u/traverseda [+1] With dread but cautious optimism (7 hours later)
Was that near the beginning? When he was trying to get one of the probes fixed?
He changed that to voltage regulators in the copy I've got.
EDIT: ah, yeah. The drill modification. Fair enough.
u/robot_mower_guy [+2] (11 hours later)
Ya. I don't remember the numbers used, but if you take the difference in voltage and multiply that by the amps drawn then you get the wattage that the resistor is dropping.
So if you start with 35 volts, drop it to 31 volts, and you are drawing 8 amps then you are having to drop 32 watts. You are dealing with specialized resistors at that point. Not the kind of thing that would be kept in a spare parts kit.
u/rtkwe [+1] (3 days later)
IIRC he used multiple resistors so the whole array is dissipating the waste wattage. Also 32 watt resistors, which is the max because again it was probably an array anyways so the required dissipation per resistor will fall quickly, aren't that specialized. They're unusual to see because there's better ways of doing things in most situations but this is NASA so remember everything is usually derated to give larger safety margins and a spares kit would have some pretty unusual equipment.
u/Calsem [+3] (8 hours later)
I recommend reading his other stories (on his site for free) as well
u/Bowbreaker [+2] Solitary Locust (a day later)
A link for evil people
And this is what we mean when we say that the dark side has cookies.
u/Cruithne [+2] Light Sith epistemologist (2 days later)
Oh man, I remember reading this back when it was free on the web. I really enjoyed it, though the ending was a bit weak in my opinion. I was a bit dubious when my friends told me that there was pretty much only one character, but his personality more than makes up for that.
u/HandsofManos [+1] (7 hours later)
I highly recommend checking out the audio book narrated by R.C. Bray. Its fantastic. R.C. nails the humor and tone of Watney perfectly.
u/krakonfour [+1] (9 hours later)
I loaded it on a tiny old phone that displayed maybe 5, 10 lines a page.
Scrolled through it in 5 days.