Talk:Mission to Mars

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Contents 1 Technical error 2 Worst film in Cannes that year 3 Trivia Section 4 Fair use rationale for Image:Mission to Mars.jpg

[edit] Technical error

• Spoiler alert!

In the scene where the signal from the 'dome' (actually the 'face' on Mars after millenia of dust is removed) is discovered to represent DNA, they conclude that the key is to come up with the last two chromosomes, which would have a huge number of possibilities.

What's shown is they need to figure out the final two BASE PAIRS in the sequence of DNA. There are only two possible pairs of molecules and two orientations for each base pair, plus four possible orders of the two pair combinations. Adenine only pairs with Thymine, Guanine only pairs with Cytosine.

The complexity of the task is drastically less than the dialog says, but the absurdity of the situation is still nearly infinite.

There are many other techincal problems in the film, but this one should stand out quite badly to anyone who has had the most basic instruction in molecular biology.

What brian de palma saw in the script to mission to mars is beyond me. This is basically a rescue mission and in the last ten minutes we get an embarassingly simplistic answer to how life originated on earth from mars. Once again de palma makes an elegantly beautiful movie with no substantial story behind it's empty narrative. I've always wanted de palma to do a sci-fi movie. This wasn't it. It took steven spielberg to make the sci-fi movie that de palma never made in minority report. A film like mission to mars belongs to a sci-fi audience of a bygone era, namely the 50's. Todays sophisticated audience crave for mindbending and mind altering sci-fi that takes them to a new level of experience. If brian de palma is going to tackle sci-fi again I just hope it will be based on the novel "the demolished man". The sci-fi movie he was expected to direct straight after "the fury". That definitly would be a movie event to watch out for! HARRY GEORGATOS.

Additionally, the disaster which kills the first crew in this movie is patently ridiculous. As anyone who has studied mars (or even played Doom 3) can tell you, the martian atmosphere is very thin: atmospheric pressure is about 0.0056 atm, or 0.5% that of Earth. Now I'm no scientist, but with air that thin, does it seem likely that the sandstorm which killed 3 people would even have been able to toss rocks around, much less tear some poor guy into a jumbo order of Astronaut McNuggets? PAUL JENNINGS

I'd have to agree with you there. This is a horrible movie, the WORST one I have ever seen. Science takes a beating in this moive. Also why does the guy's head turn to stone when he (stupidely) takes his helmet off? That makes no sense. Yet another thing this movie "got wrong", and I am not even going to get into the "ending" - Prede (talk) 06:10, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Would it be useful to include a short section on technical errors? There are many examples of 'bad science' in the film. One that I personally was annoyed about was that during Mars Orbit Insertion, when the spacecraft malfunctions, the crew enter orbit by simply grabbing hold of another spacecraft that is passing. If this were ever attempted, the crew and the orbiting spacecraft would be travelling at a relative velocity of at least 1000m/s! 81.153.151.114 (talk) 12:56, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Worst film in Cannes that year

True that, back then Mission to Mars had as much success in Cannes as The DaVinci Code this year.

And I just wanted to point out that although arguably bad, this movie is still vastly superior to Red Planet. Mainly because it has Tim Robbins and Gary Sinise instead of Val Kilmer. Anyway, sorry to use up this space with useless comments, but it doesn't seem to be that important ;)71.61.64.113 18:45, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Trivia Section

Interesting bit of trivia - Real life astronaut Story Musgrave not only was a technical consultant for the movie, but also had a small cameo in the scene where they celebrated the Gary Sinese character's birthday. Would that be appropriate for an encyclopedia article? JimZDP 17:42, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

yeah that would be perfect! wow, u left this two days ago, what're the odds i'd stumble upon it 24.69.67.173 07:49, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:Mission to Mars.jpg

Image:Mission to Mars.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 19:33, 2 January 2008 (UTC)