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Originally Posted by WT Sharpe
If I over-thought it too much I would be concerned that more wasn't made of the danger from gamma radiation overdose from all those EVAs he made on the Martian surface protected by only his spacesuit. But hey, it's a story!
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Originally Posted by Stitchawl
I guess you've never been in the Peace Corps or lived the expat life in a Third World country. While our 'fixes' don't usually repair life-or-death problems, we're constantly working out ingenious solutions to every-day problem situations that would never arise were we still living back in the First World. Little things like figuring out how to make Italian sausages (because we couldn't buy them where we were living,) or filtering water and mud out of a bottle of gasoline bought in a jungle 'general store' because we're too far from a real gas station. A few days ago we helped a friend build a portable 'air conditioner' for his van, so that he could travel south with his dogs without too much heat build up when stopping. A Styrofoam cooler chest, two 3" PVC elbows leading out and a 12v-powered fan blowing in did the trick. A chestload of ice lasted almost 8 hours of constant cold air blowing out into the back of the van! He could leave the dogs in the van when he and the family got out for sight seeing or meals without worry that they'd be too hot! Yesterday another friend wanted help building a still to make distilled water for a hydrogen generator he's working on. It's hard to find a place that sells it here. Easy enough to rig up... Any moonshiner can tell ya how! Such is the life in Third World Countries... or Mars. 
Stitchawl |
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Originally Posted by BelleZora
My reaction was similar to Stitchawl's. After numerous backpacking trips and 4-wheel-drive backcountry adventures, I know that you either find a solution to problems (and there are always problems) or die feeling stupid. The problems require less ingenuity, perhaps, than survival on Mars - such as how to remove a fish hook from a shoulder without causing more damage or how to get the truck out of the sand or the ever-popular power and cooling problems, but they seem critical at the time. Need is the greatest catalyst for ingenuity.
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Originally Posted by orlok
I'm with both Stitchawl and BelleZora. These are astronauts, after all, and they have to be pretty damned near the top of the tree to get that job.
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Fair comments one and all. I was merely giving my honest opinion of the book alongside everybody else's.
Don't get me wrong though, I did enjoy the book; it reads well and cracks along at a fair pace. I suppose that he had to find a solution to every problem because if he didn't, that's it, game (and book) over.