A couple of questions

You, sir, are a steely eyed, missile man :)

There is no way a huge heavy space ship could be landed vertically. It could have come down at a tangent and landed as per Space Shuttle. Gravity on Mars is only 1/3rd of that on Earth so the engines would effectively have 3 times the power.

Did they say the rover was 2000 pounds over weight? That would be 10 persons on Earth or 30 persons on Mars. They were not carrying much so where did this overweight figure come from?

The rover also had its own air supply which the ships air could be added to along with the suits tanks so there would be more than enough air especially if the rover had scrubbers to reuse the air as would be the case with the ship.

The science was only partly correct, but its drama!

Some interesting questions, thomas.






Schrodinger's cat walks into a bar and doesn't.

I didn't really think or feel concerned about 2 - maybe they'll "flashback" to that at some point. But 1 and 3, absolutely!

1) Why put everything into landing a giant craft with your most valuable resource - the crew - in an overly risky all-or-nothing vertical landing? Establish an orbit. Get things in a controlled setting. Send down your people, maybe not even all at once, in a smaller lander, like they do today. Then, if you need a vertical takeoff craft to leave the surface, land it separately. If it fails, you haven't killed everyone and you can try again. And... lots more. This just feels not well considered - and while I'm no genius, it kinda makes me worried about the future of the effort if they aren't thinking more strategically. <shrug>

3) Thank you! I kept thinking as they're pondering the limits of the rover: Have none of you heard the riddle of the farmer, the fox, the grain and the chicken??? Split your consumers between your two sources of life support, and stretch it as long as possible. Might not be an easy calculation but with all the brain-power of - whatever the space agency is called - and the crew, and MIA... there had to be an optimal distribution of sending some members on and leaving 2 or 3 on the Daidalos which would now support them at least twice as long.

And, to add to that: Why would the injured commander but his crew and the mission at stake by not 1) admitting he was severely injured, and 2) demanding to be left behind, whether alone or with one or two people to take care of him, unless or until the mission could be established by getting a significant portion of the crew to safety. To me, that was reckless and selfish. Having to go slow for him, then carry him, aside from poetic license, would have potentially killed the entire crew. Very poor leadership.

Ugh. lol. Went in expecting to enjoy this, but... just not well thought out, IMO.

Well, as to your no. 1, my theory is that it's because the mission to Mars in this show is set in the near future, the mission year being 2033, and constructing a Mars delivery vehicle in space (like the one envisioned in the movie The Martian and without any consideration of overall cost), that's capable of housing a much smaller vertical descent/ascent module, would take mankind decades beyond the show's time frame ... just look at how long it's taken our species to construct the ISS in Earth's near orbit.

3) When they land they say they have only 3 days supply of oxygen left on the ship for 6 people. The rover comes within a day leaving 2 days air. With my lousy math I figure that if 4 left on the rover that would leave a total 4 days supply of air on the ship for the remaining two. This would make it a safer trip for the 4 because the rover would not be over weight. Of the 4 days air left on the ship. you have 1 day for the 4 on the rover to make it to the base, 1 day to recharge the rover. 1 day to remote pilot the rover back to the ship where the 2 would then board the rover with one day of air to spare. The rover would bring the second group back to the base. My plan would have the crew make 2 safer trips instead of 1 very dangerous trip.

My BS meter is keeping me from fully enjoying this.

1. A critical system wouldn't have a single point of failure.

2. There would be contingency plans for the problems they've encountered.

3. They should have had more fuel left.

4. They should have had more expendables (air, water, power, food) left.

5. There's no way the rover would be "2,000 kilos over maximum payload". That's 333 kilos (@733 lbs) per person. And that's just the overload. Ridiculous.

The writer is a scientific ignoramus and has no business being anywhere near SF.

To answer your No. 1: because that is what Elon Musk wants. Doesn't matter if it would work or not. That is what he is basing his whole concept of space travel to Mars on. Why? I don't know. I don't know why you would not use what has been shown to work and instead push for a new, untested, and risky concept. I guess that is what you do if you are Elon Musk and smarter than everyone else.