ABSTRACT
The films clearly display the other difficulties of reaching Mars and surviving on it. A manned mission there would be much harder to carry out than our furthest manned space venture to date, which put people on the Moon in 1969. The film’s accuracy also suffers because the Mars that Kit Draper encounters doesn’t much resemble the Mars the peoples now know. The methods Draper uses to deal with low temperatures and a diminishing oxygen supply are simply unrealistic. Both films combine an imagined manned trip to Mars with the best available science to give a meaningful image of the planet. But our knowledge of Mars is growing so fast that even The Martian is already dated. One astronaut runs out of oxygen and dies as they climb to the bottom, but the others find water vapor and an artificial structure containing air and mummified aliens.
