Is ‘The Martian’ the Most Important Space Movie Ever Made?

We’ve had a week to ruminate on The Martian, the Ridley Scott-directed sci fi opus. The film may have been an inevitable hit, but it also feels important in a way that, say, Interstellar probably wasn’t.

NASA has talked a lot about trying to put humans on Mars, but we’ve seen very little about what it would actually look like. The Martian does that. Radio Motherboard imagines how Washington would really react if NASA left an astronaut on Mars and discusses how important it is for the public to see realistic visions of space travel.

There was also a good deal of talk this week about Motherboard’s decision to end comments, so, for the first 15 minutes or so, we discussed the move with our editor in chief, Derek Mead before getting into The Martian stuff.

Radio Motherboard is also available on iTunes.