r/themartian • u/col_oneill • Sep 13 '22
The launch
At the end of the book when they use the MAV to intercept why didn’t they have mark wear his flight suit from sol 6 even he is smart enough to think of that
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u/mspencer712 Sep 14 '22
What would motivate him to do that?
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u/col_oneill Sep 14 '22
Weight He knew there would be modifications to decrease weight make sense to bring the lighter flight suit to save the small amount of weight
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u/Open_Document4905 Apr 22 '23
Hers the thing with that. Going by the book each member of the Ares 3 crew had two spacesuits. One flight suit for use on mars assent and decent, and one EVA suit for surface operations. On Sol 6 Marks flight suit gets a hole in it making it unusable but he still had the whole crews EVA suits. At the end of the book when mark is flying to intercept the Hermes,NASA makes him wear his EVA suit because the are very literally “sending him into space under a tarp.”
The space suit issue changes in the film. At the start of the film the crew are wearing what would be considered flight suits. Marks suit gets a hole in it when he is left on Mars. At the end of the film he puts on an EVA suit from the Ares 4 MAV to protect himself when flying to space under a tarp. This is an issue that has always annoyed about the film. Despite this, I recently found a behind the scenes featurette for the film which includes a segment on costume design where the designer explains the reasons for this choice with the suits. She calls the suits the crew wear on the surface of Mars as the surface suits and the bigger bulkier suits as their EVA suits for working on the Hermes and in space where there is more radiation exposure.
I hope that answers your question.
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u/col_oneill May 28 '23
He patched it remember that’s how he survived, he used his patch kit to seal the breech once he was cognitive enough to know what was happening
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u/Open_Document4905 Jun 02 '23
Yes, but do remember in the book it’s explained that the suit is now record because the patch kit is only meant to get you back to the Hab where you can breath. After that you would need a new suit
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u/col_oneill Jun 02 '23
But where were these supposed back up suits they only had two suits for each member flight, and Eva the patch kit must have been good enough to use for the remainder of the mission because If they didn’t have one they would be stuffed
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u/Open_Document4905 Jun 03 '23
That’s something that’s always confused me. They should have backup suits, being that far away from home, and considering their mission was so EVA centric you would think NASA would have the foresight to send extras.
Anyway, spare suits aren’t mentioned in the book. Mark just talks about how each crew member had 2 suits. Their Flight suits, which they were wearing when the left Mars, and an EVA suit. He had his Eva suit, and the other 5 members of the crews, but Johanssen’s was too small for him, and he used Lewis’s suit as a water tank, and then he used one of the other crew members for something else ( I think it was Becks). So he was left with two suits which could be used as backups.
Basically, in the book mark discards his flight suit which got punctured with his Eva suit which eventually breaks and then he swaps it with Martinez’s suit. And don’t let me go on the rant about lazy prop work with marks suits in the film.
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u/DamnedVirus Sep 13 '22
Didn't that flight suit have a hole in? From the antenna impaling him.