MovieChat Forums > Race to Mars (2007) Discussion > Science and plot issues

Science and plot issues

posted 17 years ago by marsgal42
11 replies | jump to latest

A couple of things:

(*** possible spoilers ***)

There were some glaring scientific inaccuracies. The biggie for me was things (and people) floating around when the ship's engines were firing. And why, with such a fancy propulsion system, did the trip from Earth to Mars take pretty well the same time it takes now with our primitive Titan IVs?

There were some jumps in the plot that I suspect were cuts to make room for more commercials. Just before the commercial break they're all sick as dogs. After the commercial break they all have oxygen masks on and note that it was carbon monoxide, after all. Did I miss something?

It could have been brilliant. It wasn't. With all the technical and plot issues I can't rate it "nice try", either. Sorry.

[–] lmzf 17 years ago

also why would they have those 4 huge fuel tanks if the ship was nuclear powered?

and if the tanks are dropped along the way how would they maintain their centre of gravity and keep the artificial gravity stable?

[–] marsgal42 17 years ago

They needed reaction mass, despite their power source.

But they appeared to use it all (and jettisoned the tanks) leaving Earth. What were they going to use at Mars? What were they going to use to get home?

[–] lmzf 17 years ago

they still had 1 left when they got back to the terra nova

[–] NebLWeffah 17 years ago

Overall, I liked this movie, but I'm one of those that likes a bit of science in my science fiction so I have a couple of comments too... (caution, here be spoilers!!)

1. the Carbon Monoxide problem - not much of a doctor if she couldn't detect carbon monoxide poisoning through routine bloodwork. She would have had to have done blood tests on the crew so it would have been detected that way.

2. I too did not like the crew floating around when engines or thrusters were firing. This would not have happened, they would all be moved to the nearest bulkhead or object 180 degrees opposite to the direction to which the spacecraft was moving.

3. Walking around on Mars - there's about 1/3 of the gravity on Mars than on Earth, so there would have been some modified 'kangaroo hopping' going on. It would't have been as pronounced as in the 1/6th lunar gravity field of Apollo, but the astronauts on Mars would have some kind of modified gait, plus eveything will weigh 2/3 less.

4. The artificial gravity solution - by spinning the spacecraft, you would indeed have some gravity-like effects, but it would change throughout the length of the spacecraft. Closer to the 'hub' of the spin, the gravity effect would be almost nil, but at the outer edge of the spin, the effect would be greater...even to the extent of having a different sense of gravity in each compartment of the spacecraft as you move from the outer edge to the center of spin. In a compartment 50 - 100 feet long, the difference at either end could be very noticable.

5. Again with spinning the spacecraft to produce artificial gravity - everything not nailed down or velcroed down will find itself slowly sliding or drifting to the outer edge of the spin until it got closer to the edge and the it would be pasted to the outer bulkheads. This would include coffee cups, pens clipboards, flashlights, ballcaps, sheets of paper, puddles of water and dust.

Those are my rants for now.....

Bob

[–] elinda 16 years ago

Let's not forget possible motion sickness from the spinning. Still, if you allow a little forgiveness, it was still a good movie, No "monsters" or anything really sci-fi ...
Did you all like the portrayal of the "first step" on Mars ?

[–] raf-33 11 years ago

5. Again with spinning the spacecraft to produce artificial gravity - everything not nailed down or velcroed down will find itself slowly sliding or drifting to the outer edge of the spin until it got closer to the edge and the it would be pasted to the outer bulkheads. This would include coffee cups, pens clipboards, flashlights, ballcaps, sheets of paper, puddles of water and dust.

Yeah, we call that gravity. It's the entire reason that they do the spinning so that you slowly slide or drift down on to the bulkhead instead of floating around.

Opinions are just onions with pi in them.

[–] mdrejhon 17 years ago

The tanks are used for liquid to be converted to gas (steam) by nuclear _THERMAL_ propulsion. It's not nuclear fission propulsion (no detonation) -- just hot nuclear objects to superheat liquid that comes out as gas (steam) out of a rocket nozzle.

There are many ways to use nuclear to propel...

Nuclear thermal propulsion -- heat engine, uses tanks of liquids going through hot nuclear chamber to superheat it, turn it into gas that's expelled in the rocket nozzle. Various kinds of liquid can be used (even water, if it can be kept from freezing solid while stored in a tank in the cold of outerspace), no burning necessary - just plain old steam powered propulsion. Simplest technology.

Nuclear electric propulsion -- ion engine, generate electricity to propel icons. Xenon is often used for this, as in current solar electric propulsion. While ion propulsion is very efficient, it's hampered by the large mass that nuclear electric would require, and would take more than 6 months to get to mars. You may have read articles about the weakness (but persistentness) of ion thrust, check 'ion engine' on Wikipedia.

Nuclear fission propulsion -- propulsion by explosiveness/detonation of nuclear pellets, like tiny bombs going off, pushing the spaceship forward.

etc.
If you understand Physics 101, there ARE many ways to propel a spaceship, in theory, under nuclear power.

The television show SIMPLY chose the most realistic technology with a manageable timeline. If you watched last weekend's "Mars Rising", it explained a lot about nuclear _thermal_ propulsion in detail -- and it was already well-researched in the 1960's. And due to the amount of mass (large size of ship), 6 months is a realistic timeline for the first manned mission. It could go faster, but realistically, it'll be 6 months for the first mission, just due to plain economics of pulling off such a mission.

[–] teal123 10 years ago

Thanks for clearing up the issues!

Really enjoyed the movie (watched on youtube.) Better than any hollywood Mars
movie I've seen, sadly. The Last Days On Mars had so much potential but then they made it into a darn zombie flick with idiot scientists who seem to know nothing about the scientific method. Let's hope the eventual adaptation of Andy Weir's "The Martian" is made more like this. Quiet, cool, deliberate. No zombies! Great book, btw.

[–] mdrejhon 17 years ago

>>"There were some jumps in the plot that I suspect were cuts to make room for more commercials. Just before the commercial break they're all sick as dogs. After the commercial break they all have oxygen masks on and note that it was carbon monoxide, after all. Did I miss something?:

It was a malfunctioning computer system that did not originally detect carbon monoxide. A spaceship software patch was 'beamed' and used to upgrade the ship's software, to make it able to detect the carbon monoxide successfully.

Remember the downloading progress meter on one of the computer screens? That's the spacecraft software upgrade being transmitted to fix the bug preventing the system from being able to detect carbon monoxide.

It was a very realistic scenario, simply because spacecraft software upgrades are pretty common. They are beamed to space probes routinely today. The mars rovers, got several upgrades. And spacecraft such as SOHO (failed for a few months due to bugs that pointed solar panels away from sun) and Galileo (failure of high gain antenna) were recovered, thanks to software upgrades beamed to them to workaround problems or fix bugs. Did you know that some bugs on the mars rovers (Spirit and Opportunity) went undetected for over 2 years -- they just beamed a fix earlier this year for those! Hard to believe, but true. It's very routine (but, understandably, you probably didn't know that, though.)

True there's a potential plot hole/inaccuracy, simply in they might have just never thought to try the oxygen masks, but when someone has carbon monoxide poisioning, it takes quite a while to clear up anyway and oxygen is a valuable commodity that needed to be preserved... And yes, the show did not properly explain spacecraft upgrades. That part of the show as very poorly done, in that it did not educate the uneducated about this.

If you recorded this show, rewind it to the point just when they begin wearing oxygen masks. Look at the computer screen carefully - it's downloading a spaceship software upgrade/workaround that also fixes the carbon monoxide detection.

But once you understand this, it was well done realism considering what has been happening to NASA probes and bugs not being discovered till years after they have been launched - this is reality - so very realistic.

[–] dragosRO 16 years ago

Hello.. OK, so maybe not al of us are quick to see the more, let's say subtle, blupers, but one thing really bothers me: if anyone has read anything about Mars, he would know that storms roam the surface sometimes with 200 miles/h winds; in fact we've seen one in the movie; how on Earth could the stupid wings still be there, 60 years later? Not to mention the helmet, and that caravan looking thing. OK, so this one was too heavy, maybe quite resistant, but the helmet and the wings?!.. it's just like you said, it could have been brilliant. Nevertheless, I'll always love this kind of movie.

[–] Moonlord 14 years ago

Takes 90 minutes to space walk length of ship and open one panel? Heh :)