Communication and Time in The Martian

Time, in the conventional sense, is independent of all else.  As far as people know, nothing humanity can do has the ability to change time's progression. However, that does not stop the obsession with it.  Constantly, people measure time and base valuations on time, whether that be time duration or two events conflicting at a time.  For the purposes of this paper, the ways in which communication is valued based on time will be discussed.

It is obvious that for Mark Watney, faster communications systems are worth more time to acquire than slower ones. In fact, this can be expressed as a simple mathematical relationship: TC = K, where T is the amount of time spent to acquire a given communication system, C is the amount of time needed to operate the communication system, and K is some constant number. In order to discuss the qualitative relationship between communication and time in the novel, this quantitative model will be used.

The simplest example of this relationship is when Mark decides to establish a connection with NASA. When lowering communication time from infinity to an hour per statement, Mark dedicates an entire month to the sole purpose of establishing communication (Weir 65,118), and a day later, Dr. Kapoor admits "[Nasa]'s been watching [Mark] since Sol 49" (129), which is a duration of almost 50 sols.  Throughout this month, NASA also absolutely did not obey the standard workweek, since the reader already knows that Kapoor had "never pulled so many stunts in his life" (87) regarding overtime scheduling of employees.  This simple example shows the straightforward trade-off between better communication and time.

Another way to examine the communication-time relationship is to assess the limits of the equation, namely when the time dedicated to communication is zero and when the communication itself has zero delay. The first situation is trivial, since that is exactly what happens after Pathfinder breaks. Without the expectation that NASA will respond, Mark spends virtually zero time attempting to communicate.  In fact after Mark's message to NASA that Pathfinder broke, the reader does not get told that he ever responds to NASA more than once in half a year (229, 237, 257).  The other limit is when instant communication is possible, meaning that Mark is on Earth.  This is not necessarily a fair comparison, since Mark would also be completely saved from Mars, but still, the limit applies.  In this limit, the entire human population spends essentially an infinite amount of time in order to save Mark. This spans international borders with Bruce announcing "our friends in China have given us one more chance" (197) to save Watney. The China booster alone was years of work and dedication, included with "another 513 days in space" (249) for the crew.

In conclusion, while most of this is Mark and NASA following some logic and time management, it is interesting to imagine this mathematically for two reasons. First, the limits of the equation describe situations that happened in the novel, so given this relationship, one could begin to predict decisions made by the characters and organizations before the characters themselves know.  Second, this equation spans beyond The Martian, and can be used as a tool to examine other novels' timelines.