Sumit asked Andy Weir:

Hi Andy The Martian is such a great book. What I was particularly impressed with was the nature (i.e. attitude and where the characters were coming from) and the mood of all the characters - which seemed very reasonable and plausible. How did you get to picking and setting that up? How much was it from experience with particular people and how much your own invention?

Andy Weir I had no contacts in aerospace before the book came out. So it was mostly guesswork. I have worked for large, government organizations before so I had a feel for the general culture, but I had no idea if NASA or JPL were like I depicted.

Also, as a space dork, I've watched a lot of documentaries on the topic. So I gleaned info from them, too.

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