Why does Veeky Forums hate this book again? I think that it is a good portrayal of yankee ingenuity

Why does Veeky Forums hate this book again? I think that it is a good portrayal of yankee ingenuity.

Other urls found in this thread:

mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/royal-navy-sailor-felt-violated-7159264
nytimes.com/1991/04/30/us/36-women-pregnant-aboard-a-navy-ship-that-served-in-gulf.html
dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2713936/Port-storm-Sex-scandal-ship-HMS-Portland-docks-UK-without-commander-alleged-affair-crew-member-sends-shockwaves-Royal-Navy.html
articles.latimes.com/2003/apr/05/news/war-nofrat5
washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1995/03/19/navy-punishes-two-for-sex-aboard-ship/1b4c27fd-6238-4a3b-b754-1e2d7ddb1bb9/
nation.time.com/2010/12/14/navy-fires-top-two-officers-for-being-unduly-familiar-while-commanding-warship/
telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/11017046/Affairs-in-the-military-a-matter-of-life-and-death.html
goodreads.com/work/quotes/21825181-the-martian
youtube.com/watch?v=7GpT6ycHoMA
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

Don't post again or else.

Lit is high est and wanted more angst and crying

OK

New to lit. Liked this book. Am I too far gone?

Awful prose, no editing, pacing is shot to shit, fairly predictable plot, cringey dialogue and one dimensional characters.

It's an easy read and will only take up a day/day and a half at most to read, and to be fair to it there's something about it that keeps you reading, but everything I said above is true of it; by all accounts is a bad book, just one that hooks you. Think how pop songs can be shit but the chorus can get stuck in your head.

Fan of hard sci-fi, hater of pretentious drivel. I wanted to like The Martian, but it makes two cardinal errors; one in the science/logistics and another in the style.

For the science/logistics part: I don't mean the dust storm at the beginning. That's an initial contrivance which I can accept (OK, dust velocity on Mars is never that high to ensure such a case as in the beginning, but Weir is asking the reader to imagine a scenario where our geophysical models of Mars are shown to be an error and such a thing does happen; it's not a stupid idea.)

The problem is mainly the Ares mission profile; it's fucktardedly dumb. They seem to have taken a horrible aborted perversion of Robert Zubrin's Mars Semi-Direct programme but incorporated everything Zubrin warned against in a Mars programme. The Hermes interplanetary craft is basically a monstrous ISS-sized craft with centrifuges and a hugely overexpensive delta-V budget to make the reverse slingshot manoeuvre to Earth. Something that elaborate (not to mention the additional 'hab' and Mars Escape Vehicle on the surface for the mission) means more than the two launches which Zubrin proposed in his argument, but dozens to assemble that massive Hermes ship and to send the payload to the surface of Mars. The equipment and launch costs for such a programme are fucking prohibitive, and completely unnecessary to the exploration of Mars. That makes going to Mars a multi-decade slog to develop such intricate space infrastructure. This is the sort of thinking about space exploration (take everything and the kitchen sink, rather than provide the lowest possible infrastructure for the astronauts from which they may survive) which allows contractors to gouge billions from the government to create this fucking useless shit which does nothing but assuage politician's egos and make sure that they can continue pork barrelling and sucking off their lobbyists.

So it encourages the current fuckupery that is NASA procurement and mission profile policy (build the equipment contractors want and tailor missions around that, rather than define a mission and ride contractors like the kike parasites they are for the equipment you need). Then it also encourages a fucked up mission profile in a mixed crew for the mission. Take either males or females (tho preferably the former, since periods, lower muscular and skeletal strength, and menstrual-suppresive drugs make chicks shittier objectively for space travel), but don't mix crews. I don't care how trained they are, if you want to send crew on a multi-year mission, you do not risk the possibility of pregnancy. If something goes wrong and one of them girls got pregnant that would have ruined the mission. That's fucking stupid and extremely dangerous.

The second problem is that the humour is shit. Like reddit-tier unfunny. I never laughed once nor found myself interested in the book's anecdotes or substories. It was just shit.

Trips to autism
>pregnancy
Really now? if you trust these people enough to handle the fucking journey to Mars, you can trust them to use double condoms and pills...

So you need to add to your mass budget with medical supplies that would not be otherwise needed if you took just one sex. And then you risk the side effects of pills (which can and do manifest in many females) and the possibility of a condom tearing.

Along with pregnancy, there's a reason why orgs like the Navy (all the armed services do, but Navy is most apt) prevent fraternisation, and until recently (much to the actual submariner's chagrin), nuclear subs which kept completely away from civilisation for months at a time as part of Continuous At-Sea Deterrent policies prohibited women aboard. Discipline and cooperation.

Relationships can induce breakdown in close-knit groups like that. If there's a crisis sexual and emotional attraction may induce bad decision-making. Disputes between crew members or favouritism may influence the mission. That AND pregnancy? bad idea.

I warned you bitch, just fucking wait.

>Along with pregnancy, there's a reason why orgs like the Navy (all the armed services do, but Navy is most apt) prevent fraternisation, and until recently (much to the actual submariner's chagrin), nuclear subs which kept completely away from civilisation for months at a time as part of Continuous At-Sea Deterrent policies prohibited women aboard. Discipline and cooperation.
So are you saying they used to do it and had problems or that the nuclear subs have gones rogue now the sailors get laid or what?

Militaries do a bunch of stupid shit for all sorts of reasons, mostly because the information is low, the demands and costs are high, and that breeds superstition and fear of change.

Politically motivated decision for muh equality is what led to women recently getting let on board. Many are highly vetted, but if what we know about surface ships to be the case, expect in the next few years the same problems to arrive. Fraternising on surface ships between men and women has become an endemic problem and led to many possible breaches of ship security.

I don't know if you've ever been in the military, but the idea against mixed crews is not born of 'superstition and fear of change', but a real knowledge of the dynamics of personnel aboard a ship. Don't be sarcastic and joke about the problem; it's not about ships 'going rogue', but discipline aboard ships being harder to enforce and the possibility of mistakes or preferential treatment being handed out. In a military or stellar mission scenario, you need to mitigate that.

>but a real knowledge of the dynamics of personnel aboard a ship
The point is it isn't. There is no past experience of it within your military really, certainly not in the situations you're talking about, and things have only just changed. Harder to enforce discipline is fucking nebulous too, might as well stary using "bad teamplayer" or some shit if you want to talk like that.

So you deny that favouritism, allegations and spats over sexual abuse/assault, disruptions to the chain of command, and venereal disease (not so pertinent to space, but it is to your argument) are born from allowing mixed-sex warships? You're talking out your ass. All of these problems have been borne from mixed-sex warships:

mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/royal-navy-sailor-felt-violated-7159264
nytimes.com/1991/04/30/us/36-women-pregnant-aboard-a-navy-ship-that-served-in-gulf.html
dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2713936/Port-storm-Sex-scandal-ship-HMS-Portland-docks-UK-without-commander-alleged-affair-crew-member-sends-shockwaves-Royal-Navy.html
articles.latimes.com/2003/apr/05/news/war-nofrat5
washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1995/03/19/navy-punishes-two-for-sex-aboard-ship/1b4c27fd-6238-4a3b-b754-1e2d7ddb1bb9/
nation.time.com/2010/12/14/navy-fires-top-two-officers-for-being-unduly-familiar-while-commanding-warship/
telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/11017046/Affairs-in-the-military-a-matter-of-life-and-death.html

>dailymail
>telegraph
>mirror
Into the trash you go bro.

To give you something to clunk around your noggin anyway, all that shit and more was levelled against co ed schools way back. Now nobody cares really because it's normal and the sky didn't fall on our heads etc etc. The same will eventually happen with the military. Your line of argument even makes out that the ability of the military to discipline is of considerably lower quality to that of schools.

I don't doubt I'll get a spergy reaponse to this but I'll tell you know this is my final response to yourself.

Not the guy you were replying to, but god dam stay mad lol, you are stupid

This will be my last words on the topic

Little bias in those articles. Just reports of events. I could fish the same news articles from the Guardian or wherever.

Just because the same arguments were levelled at co-educationals and they were invalid in that context does not mean that they are invalid in this one.

The military is significantly different from education. Worst that could happen at a co-ed is that a girl gets pregnant. Worst that can happen in a unit is that clouded judgement emerges and leads to decision making that gets people killed. You're making a false analogy, contexts are extremely different.

Not who you were talking to, but here are MY last words.

I like you. Let's be friends.

>I don't like The Martian because it wasn't redpilled.

You were making amazing points before this.

Then you went all.

>Womenz are crazy as fuck and they'll mess up as soon as they start bleeding lol.

The idea of keeping crews gender aligned is fine, but then you go and determine that women don't have any clue how to deal with a period and it will just be a colossal problem for a high trained astronaut to have one.

As if she's going to go from Buzz Aldrin to Kim Kardashian in a werewolf transformation just because she's female.

Women are just as capable of a mission as men are, I'm not saying it for cuck bucks or equality points either you stupid fuck.

We need every single person who can qualify for the position of astronaut around, we can't discount half of the worlds potential because we are scared of a period. It makes about as much sense as a highly trained astronaut man "snapping" because of his toxic testosterone, and killing the rest of the crew.

I didn't intend on giving off a red-pill vibe or whatever. I think women are generally sane and rational beings, at least as much so as men. But the possibility of sex aboard a spacecraft, the hygienic and medical problems raised by menstruation (it's a physiological fact that if they take drugs there is the possibility of negative side-effects, or if they bleed then there's a significant sanitary risk which emerges in a close-quarters spacecraft where everyone recycles resources and shares the atmosphere).

I believe women are capable. Hell, I don't oppose women in spacecraft. I just prefer men over women if you want to up the probability of mission success; I don't know where you got the idea that I don't believe in women in space, I just said that a male crew will - all things being equal - will be preferable to a female crew.

Nevertheless I think the risk induced by a female crew is acceptable. So I would advocate all-female missions after the first few missions to Mars, since those are the ones which will establish procedure for mission parameters so minimising risk on those makes sense.

I still think your argument is ridiculous.

It's just as likely that a man get angry or become emotional as a female, studies suggest that PMS is a mythical cultural device in which women use PMS to get away with more because it's painful and they can make the excuse for it. PMS doesn't happen in the east, and it probably won't happen as it does in movies and culture, to highly trained and reasonable astronauts.

Bleeding is easily made just as sanitary as shitting or sweating. Just because blood is red doesn't make it somehow more dangerous than the rest of the bodily fluids. At the same token of argument, women take up less space, smaller bodies eat less and produce less waste, and tax the recycling system less. A woman would probably have an easier time navigating zero gravity, due to being slimmer and smaller.

So I think the whole of your point is just some ridiculous attempt to say that men are objectively more reasonable and capable than women.

In reality there's advantages to both genders, and most likely men will be the first crew because there are fewer females in the field. That's fine, you don't send people into space for muh equality, but you shouldn't have a problem with it if the first Martians happened to be women. Unless it was done for MUH feminism.

The presence of feminism probably means that the crew will be coed, and I agree, this could be a problem, but not nearly as huge a one as you believe.

Maybe the military needs to keep its boys from its girls (plenty examples for and against this) but Astronauts conduct themselves better than soldiers because soldiers train at a fort and go to the middle East, and Astronauts train at a labt, go to a college and learn complex skills, and then they go to space.

Gender has nothing to do with it.

Sorry, can't help myself--but as a forewarning to everybody, NEVER double up on condoms--it actually increases the likelihood that both will break.

>Why does Veeky Forums hate this book again?

goodreads.com/work/quotes/21825181-the-martian

Bro can you recommend some good Hard Sci-fi books? My brother has been looking for some but I don't read hard sci-fi so I have no idea

this the one with matt damon in it?

It has good Matt Damon in it. Evil Matt Damon was in Interstellar.

I like to think that interstellar was like a sequel.

>So I think the whole of your point is just some ridiculous attempt to say that men are objectively more reasonable and capable than women.

It would if my entire argument had not been focused on the physiological aspects separating men and women, then this could have been potentially valid. But you're just casting insinuations at the argument where nothing was insinuated. PMS as a full-blown condition is generally bullshit.

>Bleeding is easily made just as sanitary as shitting or sweating. Just because blood is red doesn't make it somehow more dangerous than the rest of the bodily fluids.

Yet it is more waste. Compare an all male to an all female crew, and you'll find that menstruation (if not stopped) will mean the latter produces as a net more waste than the former. There is hence more of a risk contaminated bacteria-incubating biowaste will escape disposal and thus serve as a source of infection. That's a risk.

>At the same token of argument, women take up less space, smaller bodies eat less and produce less waste, and tax the recycling system less. A woman would probably have an easier time navigating zero gravity, due to being slimmer and smaller.

All real benefits but generally ones that only infinitesimally decrease risk. But in a crisis scenario, an individual with greater upper body strength and bone integrity (especially considering the erosive effect that micro or zero gravity has on them) would be far more likely to mitigate disaster, and also will serve many more roles in maintaining equipment and controlling bodily functions.

>Astronauts conduct themselves better than soldiers because soldiers... Astronauts train at a labt, go to a college and learn complex skills, and then they go to space.

There's an assumption that someone who is intelligent and well-trained is totally immune from bad decisions. Even learned and smart people end up succumbing to passions and desires. Imagine being deprived of all sexual stimuli for over a year (apart from masturbation, but maybe mission control tries to stop you doing that). Temptation to act on desire is very, very strong. If you put men and women in an enclosed space for years at a time, you can bet that emotions, relations, and sexual bonds will at least have the potential to develop.

What if an astronaut has to choose between saving his beloved or his two other colleagues? In this mission you have to make utilitarian decisions, not ones that could be in any way influenced by emotional bonds.

Yeah, male astronauts could get gay. But that's far less of a likelihood as relationships on a mixed-gender craft.

youtube.com/watch?v=7GpT6ycHoMA

>What if an astronaut has to choose between saving his beloved or his two other colleagues? In this mission you have to make utilitarian decisions, not ones that could be in any way influenced by emotional bonds.
Are you aware of the basic plot of The Martian?

STEM user, what would you consider a good Hard Sci-Fi book? (at least terms of accuracy and well thought out use of science).

You can stall menstruation

They also had to lower the standards to even get women in since literally none were able to pass the tests.

It's a difficult genre to pin down. I don't expect total technical accuracy throughout, there can easily be a few contrivances which allow the premise of the book to work; but one should at least have the author rigorously enforce physical and natural law on these contrivances and the events of a book to ensure that it proceeds well. And you have to remember that you're reading a story, so you want it to have an emotional core.

Bad hard sci-fi is a story which fails at either of these, although failing at the former just makes it soft sci-fi (which I define as a sort of intermediary between fantasy fiction and hard sci-fi which merely postulates the fantastical in our universe) while failing at the latter just turns it into a technical manual.

Anyway, here are some of my all time favourites:

>tomorrow and tomorrow by charles sheffield
A dude's wife has a terminal brain tumour. He has her cryogenically frozen and then proceeds to spend a decade becoming a millionaire and kills himself and is frozen in turn. He is unfrozen, but finds that his wife still cannot be saved. So he embarks on a voyage which ultimately takes him to the final moments of the universe to try and bring her back to life.

Charles Sheffield was an Oxford physicist whose wife died in the late seventies which prompted him to become an author. Tomorrow and Tomorrow is a full-length novel adaptation of the first short story he wrote after her death, and it's completely laced with the fresh grief and tragic poignancy he must have felt then. It's like a Wagnerian Opera that spans the entirety of the future; the protag is frozen and unfrozen, uploaded beyond the confines of his physical form, ultimately becomes a composite of duplicates like himself, all in the hope of persevering to the end of the universe so he may finally reunite with his beloved. Literally endures billions of years and watches humanity transcend into something completely different, but isolates himself entirely out of obsession for his beloved.

Physics are all sound, but they do make a couple of contrivances. Firstly Sheffield is working under a big-crunch model of the universe which was popular when he was a physicist; not that big a problem, and we can imagine a scenario where that happens. Secondly the uploading of consciousness stuff which happens in the book is mostly postulation, rather than in the domain of solid computer science. Thirdly postulations of the paths future man (mostly that of the stage before they transcend corporeal forms completely but after they master artificial intelligence) might take seem prima facie a bit too fantastical, but Sheffield goes to pains as to try and make it seem that it's all scientifically sound.

First part/act of Tomorrow and Tomorrow is for me one of the greatest pieces of science fiction ever written. Tragic (you really do feel the obsessive grief felt by the protag), scientifically solid, and thought provoking. Ends with a piece which had me weeping like a baby. Second part is retarded, there is a completely contrived tonal shift and plot where the protag is forced as the only human who can fight an alien invader; some interesting-ish scenarios come with it, but it’s clearly dumb as fuck. I just know that the publisher went over Sheffield’s shoulder and made him add a stupid action-ish subplot which involved fighting off an extragalactic invader. Third part/act is an odyssey wherein a copy of the protag must travel through the universe for billions of years to get home: poignant and ambitious, but not as successful first act. Ending is ambiguous and a bit of a letdown to.

Still, that first part makes it one of my favourite novels of all time. Read that shit man.

(more to come)

>rendezvous with rama by arthur c clarke
Ye, every man and his dog has read and recommended this one probably. But Rama still remains a technologically accurate book with a perfectly good vision of first contact (sorta) between man and alien which is filled with good science. On my calculus, Clarke fails to convey good characters and thus an engaging story, but for me this was more than made up for with the great worldbuilding and the mysteries of the aliens.

Story is about a massive alien cylinder which passes through the solar system. A team is sent to investigate it before it leaves forever, and it quickly turns into a massive exploration of the empty remains of an alien civilisation inside the cylinder.

>the Andromeda strain by michael crichton
The film adaptation of this fell on its face, but don’t let that fool you. This book contrives a bit when it comes to how alien the alien organism which poses an existential threat to man is, but it goes clear from there and presents a pretty thrilling but satisfyingly accurate description of what an emergency taskforce designed to stop a dangerous alien microbe would be if they were assembled and put together in the 60s/70s, and a lot of what they do still holds up today. Tense and with solid understanding of medical science, it still holds up a solid hard story about a medical crisis.

>the boat of a million years by poul Anderson
OK, this is actually on the softer end of hard science-fiction, but I think it holds up. It’s about a group of people who find they cannot age beyond their mid-twenties/thirties, and about their attempts to live with their condition, find others who share it, and survive in a civilisation which is not quite their own. Each immortal has their own life and inevitably tragic set of circumstances. The first half of the book is amazing, chronicling the immortals from around 500bc up until the end of our Middle Ages; I think this works best because the isolation of each immortal is compounded by difficulty in finding their own. There’s a couple of great chapters which really bring on the bittersweet melancholia.

Book never gets bad, but the second half chronicles them from the renaissance onwards and then to the modern era, where they through political battles are discovered by mankind and selected to be the first space colonists. All works well, but the latter part isn’t nearly as powerful or interesting. Although the mechanism for immortality isn’t explained (it’s kept a fun mystery, although it is almost certainly rooted in some fact of biology), everything else either works historically or in the space stage is scientifically accurate.