![]() ![]() The last time that the space agency received a dramatic peak in funding was during the 1960s, when America was caught up in a fever pitch of competition with Soviet Russia. Its funding comes from the United States government, and only the President and Congress can decide how much money NASA has to spend on Mars exploration. The space agency is not a private company, wherein good publicity would lead to more sales and more profit. There lies the real barrier to The Martian having an effect on NASA's budget. It's a powerful collaboration and a great PR stunt, but what - if anything - could it mean for NASA's Mars Exploration Program? NASA also sent the production team " hundreds of files of real images of Mars and images of control centers, down to what the computer screens look like." When the film was completed, it was screened on board the International Space Station before it made it into Earth theaters. Jim Green, the director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, told THR that he had hours-long phone calls with Scott, answered " hundreds of questions," and arranged for production designer Arthur Max to take an eight-hour tour of the Johnson Space Center, during which he took thousands of pictures. NASA has provided consultation for sci-fi movies before, Men in Black III being just one recent example, but the level of involvement that the agency had with The Martian was unusual. ![]() When you ask people that work at NASA - be it an astronaut, a scientist, an engineer or whatever - often you hear them say that the reason they pursued the careers that they are in now was because of, you know, a Star Trek episode or 2001: A Space Odyssey or Star Wars." "I think there's a real interest to really take advantage of this wonderful opportunity that this movie's out there, to really tell people what Mars exploration is all about in reality at NASA. Moreover, he believes that Hollywood science fiction movies can help inspire the next generation of NASA employees. Speaking in an interview with The Takeaway, NASA's multimedia liaison Bert Ulrich explained that part of the space agency's mandate is to ensure that the knowledge gathered through its exploration and study of space reaches as many people as possible, and offering consultation on movies like The Martian is part of that. And like a cool high school science teacher, Mark lays out all of his survival methods first in technical terms, and then in layman's terms, so that the audience is simultaneously educated and entertained. Does Mark give up and die? No, in the words of Commander Lewis (Jessica Chastain) he works the problem. Whereas many sci-fi movies eschew realism in favor of plot convenience - whether it's loud, fiery explosions in the vacuum of space or aliens using Windows-compatible operating systems in their spaceships - The Martian takes gleeful pleasure in the business of scientific problem-solving. Mars is brimming with environmental factors that could easily kill poor Mark Watney: lack of food, lack of water, lack of oxygen, lack of atmospheric pressure, extreme temperatures and potentially lethal levels of radiation, to name just a few. The Martian is also a near-faultless example of pro-science messaging. Indeed, between the number of times that the NASA logo appears and the portrayal of the space agency as flawed but ultimately compassionate and heroic, The Martian makes for profoundly effective pro-NASA publicity. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is left with nothing but her own will to survive and the help of George Clooney, The Martian's Mark Watney (Matt Damon) has NASA spending millions of dollars and throwing every ounce of brain power that they have into bringing him home alive.
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