The Martian by Weir, Andy;

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Chapter 1

LOG ENTRY: SOL 6

I m pretty much fucked.

That s my considered opinion.

Fucked.

Six days into what should be the greatest two months of my life, and it s turned into a nightmare.

I don t even know who ll read this. I guess someone will find it eventually. Maybe a hundred years from now.

For the record . . . I didn t die on Sol 6. Certainly the rest of the crew thought I did, and I can t blame them. Maybe there ll be a day of national mourning for me, and my Wikipedia page will say, Mark Watney is the only human being to have died on Mars.

And it ll be right, probably. Cause I ll surely die here. Just not on Sol 6 when everyone thinks I did.

Let s see . . . where do I begin?

The Ares Program. Mankind reaching out to Mars to send people to another planet for the very first time and expand the horizons of humanity blah, blah, blah. The Ares 1 crew did their thing and came back heroes. They got the parades and fame and love of the world.

Ares 2 did the same thing, in a different location on Mars. They got a firm handshake and a hot cup of coffee when they got home.

Ares 3. Well, that was my mission. Okay, not mine per se. Commander Lewis was in charge. I was just one of her crew. Actually, I was the very lowest ranked member of the crew. I would only be in command of the mission if I were the only remaining person.

What do you know? I m in command.

I wonder if this log will be recovered before the rest of the crew die of old age. I presume they got back to Earth all right. Guys, if you re reading this: It wasn t your fault. You did what you had to do. In your position I would have done the same thing. I don t blame you, and I m glad you survived.



I guess I should explain how Mars missions work, for any layman who may be reading this. We got to Earth orbit the normal way, through an ordinary ship to Hermes. All the Ares missions use Hermes to get to and from Mars. It s really big and cost a lot so NASA built only one.

Once we got to Hermes, four additional unmanned missions brought us fuel and supplies while we prepared for our trip. Once everything was a go, we set out for Mars. But not very fast. Gone are the days of heavy chemical fuel burns and trans-Mars injection orbits.

Hermes is powered by ion engines. They throw argon out the back of the ship really fast to get a tiny amount of acceleration. The thing is, it doesn t take much reactant mass, so a little argon (and a nuclear reactor to power things) let us accelerate constantly the whole way there. You d be amazed at how fast you can get going with a tiny acceleration over a long time.

I could regale you with tales of how we had great fun on the trip, but I won t. I don t feel like reliving it right now. Suffice it to say we got to Mars 124 days later without strangling each other.

From there, we took the MDV (Mars descent vehicle) to the surface. The MDV is basically a big can with some light thrusters and parachutes attached. Its sole purpose is to get six humans from Mars orbit to the surface without killing any of them.

And now we come to the real trick of Mars exploration: having all of our shit there in advance.

A total of fourteen unmanned missions deposited everything we would need for surface operations. They tried their best to land all the supply vessels in the same general area, and did a reasonably good job. Supplies aren t nearly so fragile as humans and can hit the ground really hard. But they tend to bounce around a lot.

Naturally, they didn t send us to Mars until they d confirmed that all the supplies had made it to the surface and their containers weren t breached. Start to finish, i

Brilliant a celebration of human ingenuity [and] the purest example of real-science sci-fi for many years Utterly compelling. --Wall Street Journal

Terrific stuff, a crackling good read that devotees of space travel will devour like candy succeeds on several levels and for a variety of reasons, not least of which is its surprising plausibility. USA Today  

An impressively geeky debut the technical details keep the story relentlessly precise and the suspense ramped up. And really, how can anyone not root for a regular dude to prove the U-S-A still has the Right Stuff? --Entertainment Weekly

Gripping [features] a hero who can solve almost every problem while still being hilarious. It s hard not to be swept up in [Weir s] vision and root for every one of these characters. Grade: A. AVClub.com 

Andy Weir delivers with The Martian...a story for readers who enjoy thrillers, science fiction, non-fiction, or flat-out adventure [and] an authentic portrayal of the future of space travel. --Associated Press

"A gripping tale of survival in space [that] harkens back to the early days of science fiction by masters such as Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke."--San Jose Mercury News

One of the best thrillers I ve read in a long time. It feels so real it could almost be nonfiction, and yet it has the narrative drive and power of a rocket launch. This is Apollo 13 times ten.
--Douglas Preston,