Jon asked Andy Weir:

Which real life technology requires the most research and engineering to meet the level of functionality to make your model of a manned mars mission possible? What technology did you discover was surprisingly already at the level of functionality required?

Andy Weir The biggest remaining problem is how to deal with radiation for long-term space travel without adding an unreasonable amount of mass to the transfer ship. Also, whatever accommodations they have on Mars would have to be heavily shielded.

Also, in the book they have extremely powerful ion engines. It'll take a lot of research to get ion engines from where they are in reality to where they are in the book.

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