Blog #3: Book 1 Project: The Martian Theme Park

Here is a great opportunity for anyone who loves the space exploration and wants to recollect all the dangerous adventures that occurred in the book The Martian. From inverted roller coasters to puzzles, this Martian theme park includes board games, crazy rides to pull serous G, a zero atmosphere space room, and many more. All these systems are to help you re-live the Mark Watney on Mars dilemma.

In The Martian, Mark Watney is an astronaut with degrees in both botany and mechanical engineer sent to Mars with five other astronauts like him with degrees in different fields. In their first week on Mars, the crew get hit with a huge sandstorm and abort mission to come back to Earth, however, while trying to get to their escape pod, Watney gets impaled with a radio antenna. Checking the computer signals from Watney’s space suit, the crew think that Watney died due to exposure to the Mars’ atmosphere. The crew finally depart, leaving Watney’s body on Mars since they couldn’t find it. Having luck on his side Watney’s blood seals the suit and he ends up surviving the big storm. With communications down and everyone on Earth believing he had died, Watney uses his problem solving skills as an engineer to fix many of problems he will face being the only person on Mars. “Actually, I was the very lowest ranked member of the crew. I would only be “in command” if I were the only remaining person.” What do you know? I’m in command”. He uses leadership skill, clever techniques, his ability to think on his feet, and applies his education in botany to grow potatoes on Mars to increase his food supply until the next Mars mission, which is in about 3 to 4 years. Being the only person on Mars, Watney faces challenges almost every day, some of which include: carbon dioxide filters not working, food supply diminishing, breaches in the dome structure he lives in which has one atmospheric pressure to keep him alive. “Yes, of course duct tape works in a near-vacuum. Duct tape works anywhere. Duct tape is magic and should be worshiped.” Yes, in the theme park there will be duct tape and a near vacuum space room and people will be able to explore the difficulties to move with a spacesuit on. Watney uses a lot of mental math and physics to calculate his survival with the supplies on hand; there will be math and physics problems in the board games at the theme park for people to enjoy the thinking part of the story. There will be lots of trial and error but as Watney says “I guess you could call it a "failure", but I prefer the term "learning experience".”

As the audience knows, reading The Martian kept them at the edge of their seat the entire time. Creating a theme park where they can experience the space age technology with similar tasks as Watney will help them relate to Watney’s struggle on Mars. Almost everyone loves technology and this is the best way to give them the experience of a lifetime. This theme park is not only for adults, but kids from school can come also. They can learn about the latest technology used in NASA, solve math and physics problems, and impress their teachers with their knowledge of rocket science. As technology is ever changing, the audience of this book can stay connected and involved with the author by having different experiences every time they visit and getting updates on the author’s progress on his new books. In the theme park however, the main attraction will be the 0G, 0atm. space room. 

POST#2

To me a book is an item used to store data. There are textbook and story books, but they are only important because of the content that is in them. I believe that books are like computers, they are only as useful as the software that is in them not the outside layer. When Nancy Jo Sales says that there is something special about books and their physicality I think she is the type of person that would judge a book by its cover since she is only interested on what is the layer of the book rather than the information in it. When I read a book on my e-reader vs a book, I can’t tell the difference. The only variation the e-reader has that a book doesn’t is that I can carry thousands of book everywhere I go. For a book though, it can get lost, stolen, and destroyed due to overuse unlike the e-reader which will have the books backed up into the computer even if it does get misplaced.

When Tom Piazza asks himself the question “Why is it important whether you get your information from a computer of some sort or from a physical book?” the bias is very clear. I would first start off saying that an e-reader is not a computer, and that it is rather a device used to carry information. When he talks about keeping tradition by reading physical books it doesn’t make sense. Just like how  e-readers are replacing books to make it easier for someone to read, people invented paper creating books that replaced stone tablet writing 1000 years ago because they wanted to make it easier for the reader, and since they got tired of etching words on walls. So, keeping tradition? You don’t see us writing everything on stone tablets, so we should accept technology as it changes.