Hey,” Watney said over the radio, “I've got an idea.”“Of course you do,” Lewis said. “What do you got?”“I could find something sharp in here and poke a hole in the glove of my EVA suit. I could use the escaping air as a thruster and fly my way to you. The source of thrust would be on my arm, so I'd be able to direct it pretty easily.”“How does he come up with this shit?” Martinez interjected.“Hmm,” Lewis said. “Could you get 42 meters per second that way?”“No idea,” Watney said.“I can't see you having any control if you did that,” Lewis said. “You'd be eyeballing the intercept and using a thrust vector you can barely control.”“I admit it's fatally dangerous,” Watney said. “But consider this: I'd get to fly around like Iron Man.”“We'll keep working on ideas,” Lewis said.“Iron Man, Commander. Iron Man.
Mars is not Earth. It doesn't have a thick atmosphere to bend light and carry particles that reflect light around corners. It's damn near a vacuum here. Once the sun isn't visible, I'm in the dark. Phobos gives me some moonlight, but not enough to work with. Deimos is a little piece of crap that's no good to anyone.