88 Fun Facts About The Martian

About to take the next mission's rocket without permission, Watney gleefully gives himself which title?

A space pirate: Watney argues that Mars, owned by no nation, falls under the law of the sea, so taking the next mission's rocket without permission makes him one. Lawyers who checked say his logic is shaky.

How did the author of The Martian first publish the novel?

As a serial on his blog: after literary agents had turned down his earlier work, he posted it free, a chapter at a time, from 2009, and readers' feedback helped him fix the science.

For how much did Weir first sell the Kindle edition of The Martian at fans' request?

99 cents was the lowest price Amazon allowed; within months more people had bought that edition than had ever downloaded the free one, and it topped Amazon's science-fiction chart.

What is Mark Watney's scientific speciality?

Watney's speciality is botany, which is how he knows to farm Martian soil fertilised with the crew's waste; in the novel he doubles as the mission's mechanical engineer.

What is the name of the Mars mission Mark Watney is on when he is stranded in The Martian?

Ares III was planned as a month on the plain of Acidalia Planitia; the next mission's ascent rocket had already been landed elsewhere on Mars, which gives Watney somewhere to aim for.

What is the name of the ship that carries the crew between Earth and Mars?

Hermes is the ion-drive ship that ferries Ares crews between Earth and Mars; the crew vote unanimously to turn it around and go back for Watney.

What forces the crew to abandon Watney, believing him dead?

A dust storm's flying debris strikes Watney during the evacuation; NASA scientists later noted a real Martian storm would have almost no force in the thin air.

In the novel The Martian, what impales Watney during the evacuation?

An antenna torn loose by the wind impales Watney and smashes his suit's bio-monitor, so the crew see him flatline and leave him for dead.

In The Martian, the storm that strands Watney threatens to topple what?

Their rocket, the Mars Ascent Vehicle, was close to tipping over in the wind, so the crew had to launch at once; the novel sets the storm six days in and the film moves it to day 18.

What crop does Watney farm inside the Hab?

Potatoes make Watney, by his own reckoning, the first colonist of Mars: once you grow crops somewhere, he says, you have officially colonised it.

Watney makes water for his crops from what?

He uses leftover rocket fuel: passing the hydrazine over an iridium catalyst frees hydrogen, which he burns with oxygen to make water, a method chemists say would really work.

Which old NASA probe does Watney dig up to restore contact with Earth?

Pathfinder had been silent since 1997, so NASA works out how to talk through it on a replica kept at JPL, and Watney then wires it to his rover so the two sides can exchange text.

Which NASA satellite planner is the first to notice Watney is alive?

Mindy Park spots it in satellite photos of the abandoned base, where things have plainly been moved since the crew left; Weir said he pictured her as Korean, though the book never says so.

Which NASA official decides to keep Watney's survival secret from his crewmates?

Teddy Sanders, NASA's administrator, tells the public but keeps the news from the crew so that they stay focused on the long flight home, overruling their flight director.

What destroys the crop Watney is growing inside the Hab?

An airlock explosion: the airlock's canvas tore after Watney had used the same one over and over, far more than it was built for, and the sudden loss of air killed every plant.

Which space agency provides the booster that makes the rescue possible?

China's space agency offers the booster it had built for its own Taiyang Shen solar probe, giving up a science mission of its own so that supplies can still be launched in time.

Which NASA astrodynamicist devises the slingshot plan that sends the crew's ship back to Mars?

Rich Purnell works out that the ship can skip its stop at Earth, swing round the planet for a gravity assist and head straight back to Mars, at the price of a much longer mission for the crew.

How do Watney's crewmates learn of the rescue plan that NASA's administrator has rejected?

Henderson secretly sends it to them by email; once the crew commit, NASA's chief backs them in public but demands Henderson's resignation afterwards.

In the film The Martian, how does Watney cross the final gap to Lewis?

By piercing his suit to vent air, Watney jets toward Lewis in the film; in the novel it is Beck who goes out on a tether to grab him.

At the end of the film The Martian, what job has Watney taken back on Earth?

Astronaut survival instructor is the film's own ending: the novel stops moments after the rescue, while the film jumps ahead to show Watney teaching new astronaut candidates.

Who plays Mark Watney?

Matt Damon had played a marooned astronaut only a year earlier, Dr Mann in Interstellar, but Mann turns on his rescuers while Watney is the hero everyone wants back.

Who directed The Martian?

Ridley Scott came aboard only after the film's screenwriter, who had planned to direct it himself, left to make a comic-book film that was later cancelled.

Which screenwriter adapted The Martian for the screen and later also adapted Project Hail Mary?

Drew Goddard wrote the script expecting to direct it too; after leaving for another project he said the man who replaced him had made a much better film than he could have.

Jessica Chastain plays which member of Watney's crew?

The mission commander, Melissa Lewis, is modelled on a real astronaut: Chastain met Tracy Caldwell Dyson in Houston and borrowed her matter-of-fact manner.

Which Community star plays the JPL astrodynamicist behind the slingshot rescue plan in The Martian?

Donald Glover's character works out that the ship can skip its stop at Earth and swing straight back to Mars, an idea his bosses at first turn down as too risky.

Which actor plays the NASA administrator who keeps Watney's survival from his crewmates?

Jeff Daniels had met a Martian before, in the 1999 comedy My Favorite Martian. Here his NASA chief vetoes a bold rescue rather than risk five more lives to save one.

Chiwetel Ejiofor's NASA director is Vincent Kapoor in the film The Martian, but what is his first name in the novel?

Venkat Kapoor, a Hindu in the novel, became Vincent on screen, with a Hindu father and a Baptist mother; an Asian-American media group objected, and Weir replied that an American Venkat could be Black.

The interior sets for The Martian were built at Korda Studios, just outside which city?

Budapest, Hungary is a short drive east of the studios in the village of Etyek; the interiors were shot there from November 2014, months before the crew moved on to a real desert.

Which desert stood in for the surface of Mars in The Martian?

Wadi Rum, Jordan's Valley of the Moon, hosted only eight days of filming in March 2015; the rest of the film's Mars had been built indoors on sound stages months earlier.

What did the makers of The Martian give the country that hosted their desert shoot?

The Mars rover model built for the shoot was presented to Jordan in thanks for its hospitality, and it went on show at the Royal Automobile Museum in Amman.

Which documentary about survival against the odds did the star and director of The Martian cite as a model?

Touching the Void, about a climber left for dead in the Andes, showed them how to put dread and loneliness on screen; the hard part, the film's star said, was keeping the book's jokes as well.

Which music genre, loved by Watney's mission boss and loathed by him, is a running gag in The Martian?

Lewis's disco collection is the only music Watney has, so the soundtrack runs from Donna Summer's 'Hot Stuff' to ABBA's 'Waterloo'.

Which David Bowie song plays in The Martian?

Starman is one of eight 1970s hits on the soundtrack album, most of them picked with a wink at the plot: here, a song about a visitor from space for a man stuck on another planet.

Roughly how much did The Martian gross worldwide?

The Martian grossed about $630 million worldwide on a $108 million budget, helped by opening days after NASA announced evidence of liquid water flowing on Mars.

Which film denied The Martian three Oscars?

Mad Max: Fury Road took production design, sound editing and sound mixing on its way to six Oscars, the most of the night, and The Martian's seven nominations all came to nothing.

The Martian, a survival story full of its hero's wisecracks, won two Golden Globes in 2016 in which category?

Musical or Comedy: the film took best picture and best actor there, so it never had to face The Revenant, which won both of the matching drama awards that night.

Where was The Martian given a special screening on 19 September 2015?

The International Space Station crew saw it about two weeks before cinemas did; NASA had turned down the same request for Interstellar a year earlier.

At the 2016 Hugo Awards ceremony, the author of The Martian won which prize?

Best New Writer, then named after John W. Campbell, is handed out with the Hugos but is not one itself; the film of his book won a true Hugo, for dramatic presentation, the same night.

The author of The Martian was once a programmer at which video-game company?

Blizzard had him coding Warcraft II in the 1990s; a paid programmer since a job at Sandia Labs at 15, he was still working full time in software when his novel became a bestseller.

Which Australian bush tomato species was named in honour of The Martian?

Solanum watneyi honours Mark Watney partly because the plant grows in reddish soil that reminded the scientists who named it of Mars; the author of The Martian gave the name his blessing.

What happens to the supply probe that NASA rushes off to Watney without its safety checks?

It breaks up soon after launch: the inspections that might have caught the fault were cancelled to save time, a gamble that NASA's chief ordered himself.

Which crater must Watney drive thousands of kilometres to reach, where the next mission's ascent vehicle waits?

Schiaparelli crater is an uneventful drive in the film, but in the novel Watney has to steer round a dust storm on the way and then rolls his rover on the slope down into it.

In the novel The Martian, how does Watney keep sending one-way messages after shorting out his link to Earth?

Spelling Morse code with rocks lets satellites photograph his messages, but NASA cannot answer, so it has no way to warn him when it sees a dust storm moving into his path.

Who composed the score for The Martian, his fourth collaboration with its director?

Harry Gregson-Williams first worked for the same director on Kingdom of Heaven, a job he took over from Hans Zimmer; The Martian was their fourth film together.

Which 1970s hit plays over the closing credits of The Martian, a wry comment on Watney's ordeal?

I Will Survive rolls over the credits as a last joke at Watney's expense, drawn like the film's other songs from the 1970s collection his commander left behind.

At which festival did The Martian have its premiere in September 2015?

Toronto hosted the premiere on 11 September 2015; the studio had first set the release for late November, then swapped dates with Victor Frankenstein to open three weeks after the festival.

Which Bridesmaids star plays Annie Montrose, NASA's director of media relations, in The Martian?

Kristen Wiig's NASA spokeswoman made the cut; Naomi Scott was also cast, as a JPL team member named Ryoko, but her scenes were dropped from the final film.

Which Game of Thrones actor plays flight director Mitch Henderson in The Martian?

Sean Bean's character is the first to get the joke when a secret NASA meeting is codenamed Project Elrond; Bean himself sat at Tolkien's Council of Elrond as Boromir in The Lord of the Rings.

Which US president named The Martian among the best science fiction films he had ever seen?

Barack Obama made the pick in 2016, during his final full year in the White House, when the film was about a year old.

In which earlier space epic had The Martian's star already played a NASA astronaut sent to an icy planet?

Interstellar cast him as the explorer Mann, waiting on a frozen world, just one year before he was marooned on Mars.

Which actor beat The Martian's leading man to the Best Actor Oscar at the 88th Academy Awards?

Leonardo DiCaprio won for The Revenant, another tale of endurance, in which he plays the fur trapper Hugh Glass.

What does Mark Watney mix with Martian soil to fertilise the crops he grows in The Martian?

Human waste from the crew feeds his garden on screen, though real Martian soil is laced with toxic perchlorate salts.

Neil deGrasse Tyson hosted a mock episode of which science series to promote The Martian?

StarTalk lent its name to a studio-made viral video in which Tyson talked through the hazards of the story's fictional Mars mission.

Which literary castaway did The Martian's director first expect to model Mark Watney's isolation on?

Robinson Crusoe was the plan until the director realised Watney, watched by mission cameras, would always be monitoring his own behaviour.

Which ABBA hit plays in The Martian as Watney readies his launch vehicle for a last-chance escape?

Waterloo, the song that won ABBA the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest, comes from a crewmate's 1970s collection, the only music left on Mars.

Days before The Martian opened in US cinemas, NASA scientists announced signs of what on Mars?

Liquid water was reported from orbiter photographs on 28 September 2015, timing The New York Times read as canny cross-promotion.

Which future star of Disney's live-action Aladdin filmed scenes for The Martian that were cut from the film?

Naomi Scott played Ryoko, a member of the JPL team, but every scene in which she speaks was removed, leaving her in effect an extra.

Which earlier film did The Martian overtake to become its director's highest-grossing release in US cinemas?

Gladiator had held the mark for 15 years with $187.7 million at the domestic box office before the Mars castaway story passed it.

Which film beat The Martian to Best Picture at the 88th Academy Awards?

Spotlight, about Boston Globe reporters, took the top prize with only one other win, the first Best Picture to do so in over 60 years.

Which late-night talk show host answered The Martian's first trailer with a spoof re-edit of his own?

Jimmy Kimmel cut the parody from the studio's own footage, in keeping with his years-long mock feud with the film's leading man.

Which Star Trek: The Next Generation actor narrated a new audiobook of The Martian released in 2020?

Wil Wheaton, once the boy genius Wesley Crusher, read the 2020 Audible edition, which added several short tie-in stories by the author.

Which Marvel star plays the crew's flight surgeon in The Martian?

Sebastian Stan took the part between Captain America films, having first played Bucky Barnes in 2011.

Alex Vogel, the crew's chemist and navigator in The Martian, is a national of which country?

Germany supplies the crew's chemist, though Aksel Hennie, the actor who plays him, is Norwegian.

Which space thriller's record for the biggest October opening weekend did The Martian narrowly miss?

Gravity kept its record by less than $2 million, a shortfall some put down to Hurricane Joaquin and a crowded sports weekend.

Which Hollywood studio optioned The Martian in March 2013 and went on to distribute the film?

20th Century Fox struck its deal in the same month the print rights were sold, almost a year before the book reached shops.

In The Martian, how do Watney's crewmates decide to turn their ship around against NASA's wishes?

A unanimous vote commits all five to a far longer mission, and in the novel they disable NASA's remote overrides so nobody can stop them.

What does the Classroom Edition of The Martian, published for schools in 2016, remove from the novel?

The profanity was cut for the school edition, which also added teaching materials and corrected more of the science.

Which House of Cards actress plays Beth Johanssen, the crew's systems operator, in The Martian?

Kate Mara, the reporter Zoe Barnes in the political drama, reached Mars the same year she played the Invisible Woman in Fantastic Four.

Which Doctor Strange actor plays the director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in The Martian?

Benedict Wong had already flown for the same director as the ship's pilot in Prometheus, and joined Marvel as the sorcerer Wong a year later.

Which family film ended The Martian's first two-week run at the top of the US box office?

Goosebumps won a close weekend, $23.6 million to $21.3 million, but the Mars film climbed back to number one a week later.

Which Donna Summer hit plays in The Martian as Watney drives his rover across Mars?

Hot Stuff is the joke: a radioisotope generator is keeping him warm, and a crewmate's 1970s playlist is the only music he has.

Which 2017 novel by the author of The Martian is set in the first and only city on the Moon?

Artemis swaps a lone castaway for Jazz, a porter and smuggler caught up in a conspiracy for control of the lunar city.

What kept the author of The Martian from ever visiting the set while the film was being shot?

A fear of flying kept him in California, though later in 2015 therapy and medication got him onto planes, including one to Comic-Con.

Which number system lets NASA spell out replies to Watney by turning a camera toward signs in The Martian?

Hexadecimal needs only 16 signs around the lander, so each pair of camera turns picks out one ASCII character.

In the novel The Martian, which kitchen staple does the crew mix with liquid oxygen to build a bomb?

Sugar powers an improvised bomb that blasts a hole in the ship, and the escaping air acts as a brake for the rendezvous.

In the novel The Martian, which crew member flies out on a tether to bring Watney aboard?

Chris Beck makes the catch in the book, but the film hands the rescue to the crew's leader.

Which Ted Lasso actor appears in The Martian as Tim Grimes, a JPL engineer working on the recovered probe?

Nick Mohammed took the small role five years before the football series, in which he plays Nate Shelley, began.

In The Martian, which shortcut ordered by NASA's chief dooms the first resupply rocket soon after launch?

Skipped inspections speed up the launch, but the unchecked ship breaks apart after lift-off and NASA must look abroad for a second rocket.

In the novel The Martian, which kind of written record does Mark Watney keep of his fight to stay alive?

Log entries tell his side of the book from the first day alone to the rescue, and the film turns them into a video diary.

In the novel The Martian, which damaged spacesuit system leaves the crew convinced that Watney has died?

The life-signs monitor is knocked out along with his radio, so his crewmates get no reading and cannot hear him call.

Under which one-word title was The Martian released in Japanese cinemas in February 2016?

Odyssey opened at number one in Japan and stayed top of the box office there for four straight weekends.

Which Spider-Man villain film did The Martian's screenwriter pursue instead of directing the Mars story himself?

Sinister Six was shelved, while the job he gave up went to a veteran director and the script still earned him an Oscar nomination.

Which X-Men producer began developing The Martian for the screen after the novel was optioned in 2013?

Simon Kinberg took the book to its eventual director once the first choice had left, and shared the film's Best Picture nomination.

Which British scientist and broadcaster called The Martian the best advert for an engineering career he had seen?

Brian Cox was not alone in his praise: a NASA planetary science chief who advised the production called the film reasonably realistic.

Which bestseller kept The Martian off the top of the New York Times paperback list for nine weeks in 2015?

Grey, E. L. James's retelling of Fifty Shades from Christian's side, held number one until the Mars castaway story reclaimed it that September.

The author of The Martian grew up as the son of an electrical engineer and which kind of scientist?

A particle physicist father worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the future novelist grew up nearby reading Clarke and Asimov.

At age 15, the author of The Martian was hired as a programmer by which US national laboratory?

Sandia hired him while he was still at high school in Livermore, California, years before he studied computer science in San Diego.

Which rapper built a 2017 album around The Egg, a short story by the author of The Martian?

Logic took the concept of his album Everybody from the 2009 story, in which a man who dies learns that every person who ever lived is the same soul.