'The Martian' author Andy Weir is less optimistic about getting to Mars than NASA

"The Martian" was reviewed on this blog.

"During a manned mission to Mars, Astronaut Mark Watney is presumed dead after a fierce storm and left behind by his crew. But Watney has survived and finds himself stranded and alone on the hostile planet. With only meager supplies, he must draw upon his ingenuity, wit and spirit to subsist and find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive." - IMDA

Director:Ridley Scott

Writers: Drew Goddard (screenplay), Andy Weir (book)

The book is soon to be a movie starring Matt Damon, but the book's author Andy Weir is surprisingly less optimistic than NASA about the likelihood of humans making it to Mars, "My stock answer is probably around 2050," Weir told the audience assembled at this week's Humans to Mars conference at The George Washington University.

"I know that sounds further away than most people would like to hear, but the technology necessary to get there and the costs of getting there are just very high and it's a big challenge."  This was not the timeline that NASA announced at the same conference:  NASA space agency's head, Charles Bolden, opened the conference by announcing a timeline that puts USA astronauts on Mars in the 2030s, a goal that Bolden insisted NASA is on track to meet. In response to a question, Weir told the audience that his own 2050 estimate for getting humans to Mars "might be optimistic," going on to recall that during the Apollo missions, many thought we'd be on Mars by the 1980s.

Weir supports creating a colony on Mars so that humanity can become less dependent on Earth. "I would like to have a self-sufficient colony of humans and other species somewhere other than Earth," he said. "I'm a 25-year-veteran software engineer and I think it's important to back things up."

"The Martian" by Andy Weir... "For the record, I didn't die on Sol-6... I might be the first human being to die on Mars...."

He got the idea for "The Martian" in 2009, and spent three years working out the details of the story. He drew on a real NASA proposal for a Mars mission called Mars Direct, which involves sending supplies in unmanned ships to Mars ahead of the crew, then sending astronauts in a lighter, faster ship. He'd been rebuffed by literary agents in the past, so he decided to put the novel on his website free of charge rather than to try to get it published. A few fans asked him to sell the story on Amazon so that they could download it to e-readers. Mr. Weir had been giving his work away, but he began charging a modest amount because Amazon set the minimum price at 99 cents. He published the novel as a serial on the site in September 2012. It rose to the top of Amazon's list of best-selling science-fiction titles. He sold 35,000 copies in three months. Agents and publishers and movie studios started circling. Mr. Weir signed with literary agent David Fugate, who sent 'The Martian' to Julian Pavia at Crown, pitching it as "Apollo 13" meets "Castaway" and Crown bought it last March for six figures. The same week Crown pounced, Twentieth Century Fox optioned film rights, beating out several other studios and producers. Fox hired screenwriter Drew Goddard, who wrote the sci-fi film "Cloverfield," to adapt and direct "The Martian."

READ MORE ABOUT "The Martian"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/andy-weir-delivers-with-the-martian/2014/02/11/e648d37c-934e-11e3-b3f7-f5107432ca45_story.html

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304558804579375161461671196?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304558804579375161461671196.html

http://www.avclub.com/review/the-martian-makes-the-tale-of-an-engineer-stranded-201074

UPDATE: I am now 60% through "The Martian" by Andy Weir... a $9 Kindle version which tells me percentages and not pages read. When I first started teaching decades ago, I imagined a semester long book project for my IPC students about a trip to Mars and with it all the Physics, Chemistry, (and yes Biology) that would involve. Like most being science teachers, I was fresh, new, and naive. Now retired. That project was never accomplished. Lots of trials and research, but nothing truly engaging or inspiring. Andy Weir's first novel, "The Martian", deserves your attention as a common reading book project for a second semester, rite of Spring, wake'em up project. I have tried Heinlein and Bova and Robinson in the past but Weir is a fresh, well written, and very thought provoking read. The hard science topics are both obvious and well presented to the reader... any science teacher will be excited by potential of classroom and lab activities it invokes. Live or Die on Mars, Martin Watney's tale is compelling... only 40% more to go til I find out how it all comes out. You can read the first chapter and the author presentation at Space.com here: http://www.space.com/24721-chapter-one-of-the-martian.html