The Martian: Classroom Edition: A Novel by Andy Weir (English) Paperback Book

Description: The Martian: Classroom Edition by Andy Weir In the Classroom Edition of The Martian: Classroom-appropriate languageDiscussion questions and activitiesQ&A with Andy WeirSix days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, hes sure hell be the first person to die there.After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that hes alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. Chances are, though, he wont have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old "human error" are much more likely to kill him first. But Mark isnt ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills—and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit—he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him? FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Author Biography Andy Weir built a career as a software engineer until the success of his first published novel, The Martian, allowed him to live out his dream of writing fulltime. He is a lifelong space nerd and a devoted hobbyist of subjects such as relativistic physics, orbital mechanics, and the history of manned spaceflight. He also mixes a mean cocktail. He lives in California. Review "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. Its hard not to be swept up in [Weirs] 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 Ive 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, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Impact and Blasphemy "A book I just couldnt put down! It has the very rare combination of a good, original story, interestingly real characters and fascinating technical accuracy…reads like "MacGyver" meets "Mysterious Island."--Astronaut Chris Hadfield, Commander of the International Space Station and author of An Astronauts Guide to Life on Earth "The best book Ive read in ages. Clear your schedule before you crack the seal. This story will take your breath away faster than a hull breech. Smart, funny, and white-knuckle intense, The Martian is everything you want from a novel."--Hugh Howey, New York Times bestselling author of Wool "The Martian kicked my ass! Weir has crafted a relentlessly entertaining and inventive survival thriller, a MacGyver-trapped-on-Mars tale that feels just as real and harrowing as the true story of Apollo 13."—Ernest Cline, New York Times bestselling author of Ready Player One "Gripping…shapes up like Defoes Robinson Crusoe as written by someone brighter."--Larry Niven, multiple Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of the Ringworld series and Lucifers Hammer"Humankind is only as strong as the challenges it faces, and The Martian pits human ingenuity (laced with more humor than youd expect) against the greatest endeavor of our time — survival on Mars. A great read with an inspiring attention to technical detail and surprising emotional depth. Loved it!"--Daniel H. Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of Robopocalypse"The tension simply never lets up, from the first page to the last, and at no point does the believability falter for even a second. You cant shake the feeling that this could all really happen."—Patrick Lee, New York Times bestselling author of The Breach and Ghost Country "Strong, resilent, and gutsy. Its Robinson Crusoe on Mars, 21st century style. Set aside a chunk of free time when you start this one. Youre going to need it because you wont want to put it down."—Steve Berry, New York Times bestselling author of The Kings Deception and The Columbus Affair "An excellent first novel…Weir laces the technical details with enough keen wit to satisfy hard science fiction fan and general reader alike [and] keeps the story escalating to a riveting conclusion."—Publishers Weekly (starred)"Riveting...a tightly constructed and completely believable story of a mans ingenuity and strength in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds."--Booklist"Sharp, funny and thrilling, with just the right amount of geekery…Weir displays a virtuosic ability to write about highly technical situations without leaving readers far behind. The result is a story that is as plausible as it is compelling."—Kirkus "Weir combines the heart-stopping with the humorous in this brilliant debut novel...by placing a nail-biting life-and-death situation on Mars and adding a snarky and wise-cracking nerdy hero, Weir has created the perfect mix of action and space adventure."--Library Journal (starred) "A perfect novel in almost every way, The Martian may already have my vote for best book of 2014."—Crimespree Magazine "A page-turning thriller…this survival tale with a high-tech twist will pull you right in."—Suspense Magazine Review Quote " 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 Excerpt from Book CHAPTER 1 LOG ENTRY: SOL 6 Im pretty much screwed. Thats my considered opinion. Screwed. Six days into what should be the greatest month of my life, and its turned into a nightmare. I dont even know wholl read this. I guess someone will find it eventually. Maybe a hundred years from now. For the record . . . I didnt die on Sol 6. Certainly the rest of the crew thought I did, and I cant blame them. Maybe therell 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 itll be right, probably. Cause Ill surely die here. Just not on Sol 6 when everyone thinks I did. Lets 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? Im 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 youre reading this: It wasnt your fault. You did what you had to do. In your position I would have done the same thing. I dont blame you, and Im 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. Its 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 doesnt take much reactant mass, so a little argon (and a nuclear reactor to power things) let us accelerate constantly the whole way there. Youd 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 wont. I dont 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 thrustersand parachutes attached. Its sole purpose is to get six humans fromMars orbit to the surface without killing any of them. And now we come to the real trick of Mars exploration: having all of our crap 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 arent nearly so fragile as humans and can hit the ground really hard. But they tend to bounce around a lot. Naturally, they didnt send us to Mars until theyd confirmed that all the supplies had made it to the surface and their containers werent breached. Start to finish, including supply missions, a Mars mission takes about three years. In fact, there were Ares 3 supplies en route to Mars while the Ares 2 crew were on their way home. The most important piece of the advance supplies, of course, was the MAV. The Mars ascent vehicle. That was how we would get back to Hermes after surface operations were complete. The MAV was soft- landed (as opposed to the balloon bounce- fest the other supplies had). Of course, it was in constant communication with Houston, and if there had been any problems with it, we would have passed by Mars and gone home without ever landing. The MAV is pretty cool. Turns out, through a neat set of chemical reactions with the Martian atmosphere, for every kilogram of hydrogen you bring to Mars, you can make thirteen kilograms of fuel. Its a slow process, though. It takes twenty- four months to fill the tank. Thats why they sent it long before we got here. You can imagine how disappointed I was when I discovered the MAV was gone. It was a ridiculous sequence of events that led to me almost dying, and an even more ridiculous sequence that led to me surviving. The mission is designed to handle sandstorm gusts up to 150 kph. So Houston got understandably nervous when we got whacked with 175 kph winds. We all got in our flight space suits and huddled in the middle of the Hab, just in case it lost pressure. But the Hab wasnt the problem. The MAV is a spaceship. It has a lot of delicate parts. It can put up with storms to a certain extent, but it cant just get sandblasted forever. After an hour and a half of sustained wind, NASA gave the order to abort. Nobody wanted to stop a month long mission after only six days, but if the MAV took any more punishment, wed all have gotten stranded down there. We had to go out in the storm to get from the Hab to the MAV. That was going to be risky, but what choice did we have? Everyone made it but me. Our main communications dish, which relayed signals from the Hab to Hermes, acted like a parachute, getting torn from its foundation and carried with the torrent. Along the way, it crashed through the reception antenna array. Then one of those long thin antennae slammed into me end- first. It tore through my suit like a bullet through butter, and I felt the worst pain of my life as it ripped open my side. I vaguely remember having the wind knocked out of me (pulled out of me, really) and my ears popping painfully as the pressure of my suit escaped. The last thing I remember was seeing Johanssen hopelessly reaching out toward me. I awoke to the oxygen alarm in my suit. A steady, obnoxious beeping that eventually roused me from a deep and profound desire to just die. The storm had abated; I was facedown, almost totally buried in sand. As I groggily came to, I wondered why I wasnt more dead. The antenna had enough force to punch through the suit and my side, but it had been stopped by my pelvis. So there was only one hole in the suit (and a hole in me, of course). I had been knocked back quite a ways and rolled down a steep hill. Somehow I landed facedown, which forced the antenna to a strongly oblique angle that put a lot of torque on the hole in the suit. It made a weak seal. Then, the copious blood from my wound trickled down toward the hole. As the blood reached the site of the breach, the water in it quickly evaporated from the airflow and low pressure, leaving a gunky residue behind. More blood came in behind it and was also reduced to gunk. Eventually, it sealed the gaps around the hole and reduced the leak to something the suit could counteract. The suit did its job admirably. Sensing the drop in pressure, it constantly flooded itself with air from my nitrogen tank to equalize. Once the leak became manageable, it only had to trickle new air in slowly to relieve the air lost. After a while, the CO2 (carbon dioxide) absorbers in the suit were expended. Thats really the limiting factor to life support. Not the amount of oxygen you bring with you, but the amount of CO2 you can remove. In the Hab, I have the oxygenator, a large piece of equipment that breaks apart CO2 to give the oxygen back. But the space suits have to be portable, so they use a simple chemical absorption process with expendable filters. Id been asleep long enough that my filters were useless. The suit saw this problem and moved into an emergency mode the engineers call "bloodletting." Having no way to separate out the CO2, the suit deliberately vented air to the Martian atmosphere, then backfilled with nitrogen. Between the breach and the bloodletting, it quickly ran out of nitrogen. All it had left was my oxygen tank. So it did the only thing it could to keep me alive. It started backfilling with pure oxygen. I now risked dying from oxygen toxicity, as the excessively high amount of oxygen threatened to burn up my nervous system, lungs, and eyes. An ironic death for someone witha leaky space suit: too much oxygen. Every step of the way would have had beeping alarms, alerts, and warnings. But it was the high- oxygen warning that woke me. The sheer volume of training for a space mission is astounding. Id spent a week back on Earth practicing emergency space suit drills. I knew what to do. Carefully reaching to the side of my helmet, I got the breach kit. Its nothing more than a funnel with a valve at the small end and an unbelievably sticky resin on the wide end. The idea is you have the valve open and stick the wide end over a hole. The air can escape through the valve, so it doesnt interfere with the resin making a good seal. Then you close the valve, and youve sealed the breach. The tricky part was getting the antenna out of the way. I pulled it out as fast as I could, wincing as the sudden pressure drop dizzied me and made the wound in my side scream in agony. I got the breach kit over the hole and sealed it. It held. The suitbackfilled the missing air with yet more oxygen. Checking my arm readouts, I saw the suit was now at 85 percent oxygen. For ref Details ISBN0804189358 Author Andy Weir Pages 400 Language English ISBN-10 0804189358 ISBN-13 9780804189354 Media Book Format Paperback Short Title MARTIAN CLASSROOM/E Edition Description Classroom DEWEY FIC Year 2016 Publication Date 2016-05-03 Subtitle A Novel Audience Age 10 Country of Publication United States AU Release Date 2016-05-03 NZ Release Date 2016-05-03 US Release Date 2016-05-03 UK Release Date 2016-05-03 Place of Publication New York Publisher Random House USA Inc Imprint Ballantine Books Inc. Audience Teenage / Young adult We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:97849131;

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