WARNING: BEYOND THIS POINT THERE BE SPOILERS
Just a couple of nitpicks and questions
1. the obvious one was the storm that injured Watney at the beginning. As has been stated, it could not have caused the damage it did due to the low pressure of Mars' atmosphere.
Right. He might have picked some other plot device that required the crew to make a fast getaway and leave Watney behind for dead. Maybe an unstoppable leak in the fuel system that forced them to launch immediately or be stranded.
2. When the HAB airlock malfunctioned and blew off, Watney's helment visor was punctured, and he lost pressure, it seemed to take about 30 secoinds to get down to 5% pressure, but once he taped over the cracks and the small hole, it was almost instantly restored to nominal. Really? That quickly, and what anout the bends?
That wasn't too unrealistic. A PLSS automatically adds O
2 through a pressure regulator to replace metabolic consumption, and it will also keep a suit pressurized against leaks if the max regulator flow rate is high enough -- until your high pressure oxygen supply runs out. It might well maintain survival pressure against the leaks depicted for some time, especially if the PLSS was augmented with an Apollo-style OPS. (The flow of a pressurized gas through a small hole is generally Mach 1.) But I don't remember if the warning was for low suit pressure or a low oxygen supply. The former would cause him to pass out quickly; the latter would require him to get to shelter quickly before he exhausted what was left of his oxygen supply.
3. Would taping some plastic sheeting over the gapiing hole left by the malfuntion of the HAB airlock have been enough to keep the HAB pressurised?
Absolutely not, as others have already shown. It sure looked like HDPE to me, nothing magical. And the Martian wind even depresses it inward at one point. No way.
4. Could they really have accurately calculated the deceleration effect of blowing the front airlock off the Hermes
Maybe. The whole bit with blowing off the airlock door was over the top. The reason for doing it, as I recall, was that an interlock prevented both doors from being opened at the same time. It would have been far more realistic (if not as dramatic) for one of the crew to just hotwire the damn thing. But the story has you on the edge of your seat by that point so you can sort of excuse it.
5. Would puncturing his glove really have worked the way it was depicted? How was he able to stop it leaking, once Lewis caught him, long enough to get him into Hermes?
Seems unlikely. He does kinda forget about the leak later, doesn't he?
I noticed another "physics failure" in that sequence (one of several). At one point Lewis and Watney are wrapping themselves in Lewis's tether, which draws them toward the airlock and each other. That should have had them spinning like a neutron star due to angular momentum conservation. Maybe Lewis' maneuvering unit was better than I thought.