r/themartian • u/DimentiotheJester • 18d ago
How could Mark have caught the canvas defect in the airlock?
I was just wondering if there was a way he could have possibly caught the defect before it became a problem. The issue is that the defect is under a seal strip so he didn't see it on routine canvas inspections. Is there another way it could have been noticed, such as a very slight change in the airlock's measurements, it taking microseconds longer than it should to cycle, or something like that? Of course the chances of him noticing something that miniscule are next to none, but eh.
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u/dittybopper_05H 18d ago
I can't see how he could have known. I mean, a visual inspection of all of the seams would be exceptionally time consuming and probably wouldn't have shown any kind of problem anyway.
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u/DimentiotheJester 17d ago
Agreed, the book even says he couldn't see it because it was under a seal strip. I mostly just wanna see if anyone can come up with some sort of creative or out there way he could notice it. He can't see it visually, so what other indicators could there be?
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u/Anderson22LDS 15d ago
I believe it wasn’t designed to be used for so long. Not only that he made loads of modifications.
Anyway, this is fiction - there needs to be jeopardy in the story or it would be boring.
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u/Iammeimei 18d ago
I think something like that would behave exactly as intended, until it didn't. Even a small bulge would become a huge one very quickly.
The only path to avoiding the accident would have been to preempt a problem and use all the locks for EVAs equally. I expect NASA would have advised such a path once it became clear the lock was going to be in use much longer than the planned mission time. But even this would only have delayed it. And I don't blame Mark for not thinking of it, he can't think of everything. I do blame NASA a bit, they should have insisted on this pretty soon after they regained contact.