the-martian

How did I end up in this situation? I'm the district sales manager of a napkin factor. Why is my daughter in space?

One thing I have in abundance here are bags. They're not much different than kitchen trash bags, though I'm sure they cost $50,000 because of NASA.

Mars is not Earth. It doesn't have a thick atmosphere to bend light and carry particles that reflect light around corners. It's damn near a vacuum here. Once the sun isn't visible, I'm in the dark. Phobos gives me some moonlight, but not enough to work with. Deimos is a little piece of crap that's no good to anyone.

Hey,_ Watney said over the radio, __'ve got an idea.___f course you do,_ Lewis said. __hat do you got?___ could find something sharp in here and poke a hole in the glove of my EVA suit. I could use the escaping air as a thruster and fly my way to you. The source of thrust would be on my arm, so I'd be able to direct it pretty easily.___ow does he come up with this shit?_ Martinez interjected.__mm,_ Lewis said. __ould you get 42 meters per second that way?___o idea,_ Watney said.__ can't see you having any control if you did that,_ Lewis said. __ou'd be eyeballing the intercept and using a thrust vector you can barely control.___ admit it's fatally dangerous,_ Watney said. __ut consider this: I'd get to fly around like Iron Man.___e'll keep working on ideas,_ Lewis said.__ron Man, Commander. Iron Man.

It is of course dangerous to set off an explosive device on a spacecraft.

I'm so close to Schiaparelli I can taste it. I guess it would taste like sand, mostly, but that's not the point.