importantce of communication

Throughout the novel, too, the idea of communication between individuals and bureaucracies runs like a thread. Watney likes to do things his own way, and it is partially this initiative that makes him a good astronaut: he's not afraid to take risks, he's creative, and he thinks for himself. But NASA is also a giant bureaucratic structure with more than one constituency. Namely, NASA also faces "outward," toward non-astronaut citizens of the US and the world, who might wonder why NASA does what it does—and these worries cut across the explorer's instincts many astronauts have. This is dramatized most clearly in the novel in the section on the Purnell Maneuver, when Henderson and the crew wish to carry out a decision that Sanders, looking to protect the organization, frets over.