About the resupply missions in "The Martian"

[RobertGC]

Two instances were discussed in the film where unmanned cargo ships were
mentioned to send up supplies to extend the time Whatney or the crew of the
Hermes could survive.

This brought back painful memories while watching the movie. It's such an
obvious answer. In the space shuttle Columbia disaster NASA rejected a
possible rescue because Atlantis could not be readied in time within the 16
days the Columbia's supplies would run out.

So since "nothing could be done anyway" there was no need to do accurate
imaging to even find out if the wing damage was survivable.

Note in the movie they had to use China to do the resupply mission to the
Hermes. If NASA had ordered the Columbia imaging, finding the damage
unsurvivable, all the space-faring nations in the world, which are at least
five, would have been working hard to send up a cargo mission to meet up
with Columbia within the 16 day time frame.

But they never were even given a chance to try.

BTW, since this is in regards to "The Martian", for you chemistry heads out
there, are there some foods, liquids, or common materials that might be on
the shuttles that could have filtered out the CO2 in air other than the
lithium canisters? For instance perhaps the solubility of CO2 in water is
different than in O2 and there could have been a way to separate out the CO2
from the air that way. Bob Clark

 

[Borg]

In the space shuttle Columbia disaster NASA rejected a possible rescue because Atlantis could not be readied in time within the 16 days the Columbia's supplies would run out.

Actually, they had enough supplies to last until Atlantis could be readied.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaster#Possible_emergency_procedures

Normally, a rescue mission is not possible, due to the time required to prepare a shuttle for launch, and the limited consumables (power, water, air) of an orbiting shuttle. However, Atlantis was well along in processing for a planned March 1 launch on STS-114, and Columbia carried an unusually large quantity of consumables due to an Extended Duration Orbiter package. The CAIB determined that this would have allowed Columbia to stay in orbit until flight day 30 (February 15). NASA investigators determined that Atlantis processing could have been expedited with no skipped safety checks for a February 10 launch. Hence, if nothing went wrong, there was a five-day overlap for a possible rescue.