Joy's Library

SPOILERS FOR THE MARTIAN BOOK AND MOVIE: After NASA figures out that Mark Watney is alive and are creating a plan to save him, they first need to get supplies to him so he can even survive long enough to be saved.

Due to the compressed timetable, the Director of NASA (Teddy Sanders, played by Jeff Daniels in the movie) approves skipping days/weeks worth of safety checks on the rocket meant to send rations to Mars. This goes catastrophically, as the rocket explodes before leaving atmosphere, taking all the rations with it. Thus, Watney is certainly doomed to starve to death.

Then, out of the blue, the Chinese NASA (CNSA) reach out and offer to give NASA their Taiyang Shen booster rocket, giving up their own resources to get China into space, all to save one American. And its very explicit in the book: if they just said nothing, no one would have even known they could have saved Watney, as the Taiyang Shen's readiness was not public knowledge. There was no guarantee they'd get recompense for the offer (though in the book and movie, this is action sets up CNSA-NASA cooperation on a future mission).

So Andy Weir's The Martian believes that China, one of America's greatest rivals on the world stage, is capable of phenomenal selflessness and its people value human life enough to give up decades of scientific work in a purely altruistic act. And American should use this to find common ground and strengthen diplomatic relations.

"Democracy requires the ability of a population to pay attention long enough to identify real problems, distinguish them from fantasies, come up with solutions, and hold their leaders accountable if they fail to deliver them. If we lose that, we lose our ability to have a fully functioning society."

Stolen Focus, Johann Hari.

Some people don't read because their attention spans have been decimated by (among other things, of course - see also: capitalism and the death of 'rest') the algorithm-driven time-sucks that are social media sites/apps today.