There’s hard sci-fi and then there’s Andy Weir. For those who read The Martian and Project Hail Mary and went “ew, if I wanted to read about math I’d go to school”, stop reading now — you’re not going to appreciate what we have in store for you.
But if you — like us here at the Dojo — went into cataclysmic stupor for every meticulous scientific detail that Andy uses to masterfully twist into a compelling thriller, keep reading: we have some tasty treats for you.
Project Hail Mary
The book, and the movie that came out earlier this year, takes us on a wild space journey. It’s not some humbalajig galaxy with made-up planets and stars — every single of those is real, the distances are real, the formulas are real, eschewed into a plot that’s equal parts compelling and realistic.
And just because we can, we went ahead and mapped out the whole trip in an interactive demo.
Ryland Grace’s little voyage
Here’s the trip mapped out, animated, and fully interactive, with all 104 real stars within 20 light-years:
It also has a 3D schema how The Hail Mary (Ryland’s space ship) works: the centrifuge splitting and spinning up, then turning at 3.45 rpm to simulate 1g:
And yes, there’s a game based on the fishing scene tasking you to capture the live particles from the Adrian’s atmosphere while fighting the overheating from the IR blowback:
The Martian
The book that put Andy Weir on the map and, dare we say, inaugurated a genre of ultra-realistic Sci-Fi.
Remember Mark Watney’s epic joyride across the Martian surface? We mapped it in a fully interactive demo:
And before you ask, yes, there’s a game too where you can make the same trip, competing against actual book’s timeline:
Under the hood
The cool thing about those demos are that they’re made on a standard, out-of-the-box amCharts 5 library.
The MapChart component allows the mapping of any kind of surface or spacial information, including realistic Martian landscape (with bundled NASA imagery) and orbital trajectories.
Care to know more?
» Check the map demos, there’s some really cool stuff there
» Visit Maps docs if you’d like to dive right in
» Or, task your AI agent to do wild things with amCharts
Bonus: Lunar Strike Game
While we’re on the subject of space, here’s another game Dojo theme has cooked up:
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