Author Any Weir visits Google's Los Angeles office to discuss his book The Martian. This even took place on August 17, 2015 as a part of the Authors@Google series.
The past few weeks I've felt like mark watney . Thank you Andy weir and thank you google you've made my day! Could we have a google day that celebrates the Martian and MacGyver ingenuity ? I'd like to help out anyway I could.
From what I remember, the instructions Mark received were just simple file navigating and text editing. We don't really know the purpose or contents of the file Mark was editing, and we don't know the actual data Mark edited in beyond what the NASA engineers explained in the book (that much was left out). In simple terms, all Mark was doing was the equivalent of clicking through folders to find a text file and then copy/pasting a text block into it. Of course, the rover's file systems could only be navigated and edited via command line.. and the text couldn't be copied so easily lol So.. it is a real set of instructions, but only partly. The file he edited is probably fictitious, and the rest of the instructions (the actual, important bulk of the stuff) were left out of the book.
Yes, I understood the procedure. I'm a programmer myself and I hacked lots of games in the 90s, mainly to play them for free. So, the question should be divided in two: 1) Was the directory and file to hack real? 2) The bytes replaced were really real? From what I understood, he linked Pathfinder to the rover. Since Pathfinder was launched in 1997, and the USB standard was introduced in 1995ish, then lets assume the hack was to allow the Pathfinder to recognize the rover's terminal.
I have a feeling that the guy only asked the question about NASA politics in order to brag with the fact that he's worked there in the past bUT I REALLY CAN'T BLAME HIM THOUGH
I think these guys at Google make the Worst Audience for a Speaker. Jokes are not hitting home, they dont seem to be listening.. plain cold ! The same talk Andy gave to Lab had very good responses, and that of course uplifts the speech and the speaker.
+GuntPulp Unfortunately, that announcement kind of _sabotaged_ the story of The Martian, since the story was written _before_ all that big news, and works off the assumptions of a very dry Mars that everyone had before these revelations.
