“Let’s make this fast,” Annie Montrose growled as she stepped into Teddy Sanders’ office. “I’ve got five cable news networks demanding hourly updates, never mind all the print and web outlets. And in case you haven’t noticed, we are getting totally fucked out there.”
Teddy tugged a corner of his desk blotter, trying to remove a slight crease from it. “That’s out of our control,” he said. “All we can do is deal with the situation as it is.”
Dr. Venkat Kapoor, leaning against the wall in one corner of the room, ignored Annie’s usual profane complaints about the difficulty of her job. His focus was on Mindy Park, who sat in one of the plush guest chairs and tried to fold herself into nonexistence.
Mindy had been the first one in satellite control to spot the UFO in one frame of satellite coverage of Mars during the abort. Rather than go through normal channels, which could have taken days or even weeks, she’d jumped six levels of management and contacted him directly, just in time to stop Hermes from breaking orbit. And that had led to the new, and even more exciting, images…
That kind of initiative in a young employee, Venkat thought, deserved reward. And the proper reward for a job well done in a government bureaucracy was… well, an even tougher job, and one you almost certainly didn’t want.
Welcome to the big leagues, Ms. Park. Let’s see how you do.
“How is our message performing with the public right now?” Teddy asked Annie.
“How the fuck do you think?” Annie retorted. “We’re a fucking laughingstock. Even the most shit-for-brains gomer from East Armpit, Wyoming knows there’s not the slightest possibility that Russia or China got a ship to Mars without anybody knowing! Right now we’re the only people in the world who don’t think it’s aliens! Even the conspiracy nutjobs think the aliens have been there all along and we've been keeping them secret until now!” She ran her hands through her hair from frustration. “Christ, I miss the good old days when we could wave a wand and say those magic fucking words, ‘national security,’ and hush up anything we fucking well wanted to!”
“That was then and this is now,” Teddy replied. “What about Watney? We still don’t know for certain that’s him down there. An alien might be using his suit as a spare. And Hermes only caught him outside the Hab or rover once. The satellites can’t see him as anything more than a dot.”
“You have to admit, Annie,” Venkat added, “we’re on a lot firmer ground when we say ‘wait and see’ about Watney.”
“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Annie said dismissively. “And I can point that out until I fucking well turn blue, and it’s all pissing in the wind. And you wanna know why? Because those people out there want to believe, Venkat. They want to believe Watney is alive even more than they want to believe in aliens!”
“Okay,” Teddy shrugged, “so we need a new message. What should it be?”
“Not my job,” Annie said firmly. “My job is to be the pretty blonde still-vaguely-fuckable public face of NASA who puts as much ketchup as possible on the shitburger before it goes out. You’re the one who decides what goes in the shitburger.”
“Annie,” Venkat asked, “how did you get to become director of media relations anyway?”
“Simple,” Annie replied. “I worked like hell, and any time some asshole got in my way, I kicked him in the balls. Eventually I ran out of balls to kick, and then I was here.”
“I can see that,” Venkat admitted, “but why go to all that trouble to get the job?”
“Fuck if I know.”
“If we can get back on topic,” Teddy said, unruffled by the byplay, “let’s assume that we have Watney and an unknown number of aliens stranded on Mars. Can we talk to them? Venkat, what did your boys say?”
“Not a chance,” Venkat said. “Without the dish the Hab hasn’t got the broadcast strength to reach the satellites, let alone Earth. And without either the dish or the array, he can’t hear anything we send him unless we’re right on top of him.”
“Aren’t there backup systems?” Teddy asked. “Please tell me this isn’t another thing like the surface EVA suits.”
“Not like that,” Venkat said, shaking his head. “This wasn’t a contractor issue. This was a design lapse on our part. All the backup systems were in the MAV, on the assumption that anything that took out the main communications system would constitute grounds for abort. As one of my tech supervisors put it, nobody ever thought someone would be on Mars without a MAV.”
“So there’s nothing?” Teddy asked.
“There’s one thing, but it’s a longshot,” Venkat said. “The rover antennas are mounted outside the pressure vessel but under body trim, for protection against sand and rocks. They were designed to communicate with the Hab from as far as forty kilometers away… assuming an intact comm array. It’s still not strong enough to reach Earth or the satellites, or vice versa… but it might just be enough for brief communications windows with Hermes.”
“Explain,” Teddy said.
“Normally Hermes wouldn’t have the broadcast power to reach a rover on the surface or vice versa,” Venkat said. “But right now Hermes still has the MAV attached for deployment as a communications relay. The crew could network the two communications systems and double both broadcast strength and reception capacity.”
“Okay, I can see that,” Teddy said. “But there’s a reason you didn’t lead with that plan.”
Venkat nodded. “Given the limitations of the rover, Hermes would have to be within about a hundred and fifty kilometers for a clear signal. That’s just too low. Atmospheric drag would be enough that Hermes would have to fire its main engines almost constantly to prevent orbital decay. It would also damage the ship’s radiator vanes, reducing the safe power output of the ship’s reactor. And, of course, it would mean putting Hermes even deeper into a gravity well we want to get out of as soon as possible.”
“How long could we sustain it,” Teddy asked, “if we did it?”
“Based on the testing we did for the missed orbit abort scenario?” Venkat asked. “Three, maybe four passes, maximum, with at best three minutes of transmission time. After that damage to the ship becomes too severe to risk, leaving aside the waste of fuel. And it would only work if Watney was in the rover, with the radio turned on, during those three minutes. Otherwise it’d be a total waste.”
“And that’s too much risk for too little reward,” Teddy nodded. “Yes, I understand now. Keep your guys working the problem. We still have a couple days before we need to order Hermes home, and maybe we can think of something clever to boost that signal.”
“We’ll try,” Venkat said.
Teddy turned his attention to Mindy. “Miss Park, it’s good to meet you,” he said. “Dr. Kapoor speaks very highly of your initiative and observational skills.”
“Sir,” Mindy peeped.
“We need positive proof that the unknown people at the Ares III landing site are Mark Watney and aliens,” Teddy said. “We already look foolish for not knowing, but if we say definitely that it is Watney and aliens and not, say, some insane billionaire civilians from Earth, then we’ll look doubly foolish down the line.”
“That’s no lie,” Annie grumbled.
“So,” Teddy continued, “what can you do to get us proof that we’re not already doing?”
“Er,” Mindy said, and then, “Well, Dr. Gaither is already giving top priority to Ares III and second priority to Site Epsilon. We’re adjusting orbits to maximize satellite coverage. But it’s very difficult to determine anything from overhead views. Even the Hermes photos and video are all from directly overhead, and they suffer from the relative speed of the ship compared to the Martian surface.”
The more Mindy talked, the more comfortable she became. Venkat nodded to himself. All of this was common sense to him, and probably to Teddy, who had held two lower administrative positions within NASA before becoming chief administrator. Annie tended to forget these details, with her relentless focus on the next day’s message. But by reviewing the obvious Mindy was calming herself down and buying time to think. Venkat approved… provided it didn’t turn into outright stalling.
“Most of our survey satellites have a very limited amount of propellant for orbital adjustment,” Mindy continued. “I’ll have to check the stats for each satellite, but I’m pretty sure that if we bring a satellite low enough that a view of the horizon can be magnified enough to show the alien’s shapes from any angle other than overhead, we’ll lose the satellite. It won’t have the thrust to return to its former station, and it might not even be able to maintain the lower orbit against atmospheric drag. Um.”
For a moment it looked like Mindy was done, but before Teddy could dismiss her, she took a breath and pressed on, rushing and stumbling over her own words. “But it’s much easier to prove that it’s Watney and not someone else wearing that suit. Satellite resolution is just barely enough to tell the difference between Watney’s helmet and the aliens from overhead. Yesterday and day before yesterday he was the only person in the rover for EVAs. He’s the only one who cleans the solar panels. When we first spotted him three days ago, he was the last one out of the Hab so he could operate the controls. He was the last one into the rover and the first one out- which makes him the driver. There are probably other tests we could think of, but the pattern strongly suggests that he’s the only one familiar with our equipment, which makes it almost certain that it’s Watney.”
Teddy’s eyebrows had gone down during Mindy’s explanation of why the satellites couldn’t see the aliens from the side, but by the end of her frantic confirmation of Watney’s identity they were up near his neatly brushed hair. “That’s impressive,” he said once he was certain Mindy was done. “Very well reasoned.”
“Thank you, sir,” Mindy muttered.
“Annie, can we use that for the press?”
“Oh, fuck yes we can use it.” The perpetually angry Annie looked like she’d been thrown a life preserver, even if she didn’t particularly care for the person throwing it. (That was nothing against Mindy: Venkat had yet to meet a human being Annie sincerely liked.) “We can use every bit of it. Miss Park, if you can go over all that again for me after we’re done here, I’d really appreciate it.”
“’Kay.”
“Venk, I want Miss Park in charge of monitoring Watney and his guests,” Teddy added.
“Already done,” Venkat said.
“I also want the gaps in our satellite coverage cut down to the absolute minimum,” Teddy continued. “Miss Park, you have total authority to make that happen. Will the Ares III MAV help with that problem?”
“Um, no sir,” Mindy said. “The MAV’s only remaining external camera is the docking camera. No magnification. It’s only useful as a relay satellite.”
“I understand,” Teddy said. “And I think this is all leading up to an emergency resupply mission for Watney. His food won’t last until Ares IV unless those aliens have a supply they can share with him.”
“We have to assume they don’t,” Venkat said. “The odds against our body chemistries being compatible are astronomical. And given the size of their ship, there can’t be a great amount of food on board.”
Teddy nodded. “And if they could contact us or rescue him themselves, I’d have to think they’d have done it already.” He shook his head and tried to straighten his desk blotter again, hands fidgeting. “I had intended to embargo all photos of the Ares III site for a year to prevent the media using pictures of Watney’s corpse. That might have killed the Ares program entirely. Now that he’s apparently alive and well, I’m glad it didn’t turn out that way. We can begin work on designing a resupply probe and have it ready for launch by the first feasible launch window.”
“Why not send it now?” Annie asked.
“Besides the fact we don’t have the probe yet?” Venkat asked. “And we weren’t even going to tool up for Ares IV presupply for over a year yet? Right now Earth and Mars are in almost perfect position to launch something from Mars to Earth. That makes it the worst possible time to launch something from Earth to Mars.”
Teddy nodded. “I already spoke with Bruce Ng at JPL. According to him, the heaviest lift booster we have available is the one scheduled for the Eagle Eye Three Saturn probe, which is due to go to the launchpad in about four months. He says it has about enough power to get to Mars right now, if all we send is a grapefruit. Everyone else's heavy lifters are all accounted for.”
“Well, shit,” Annie said. “Okay, so I bullshit the press about our rescue plans for now. I give them Park’s logic about Watney. What do I say about the aliens?”
“Tell them that, until we get more data, aliens are as valid an explanation as anything else for who’s on Mars with Watney,” Venkat said.
“But don’t confirm that it’s aliens,” Teddy warned. “Just let people know we’re open to the possibility.”
“Fuck. Thanks for the impossible mission.” Annie pulled out a notepad and scribbled something down. “I’ll have a statement prepped in an hour, once I’m done with Miss Park.”
“Good.” Teddy stood up. “I think we need to bring in Bruce and Mitch Henderson for the next meeting. We need to get to work planning both a resupply mission and a rescue mission.”
“Why not both at once?” Annie asked.
“If Watney rations his food, he can make it stretch maybe four hundred days,” Venkat said. “That’s not long enough, but maybe he can figure out some way to extend it even more. We have no idea what the food situation is like for the aliens, but it’s probably not good. That means all possible weight on the resupply mission has to go towards food, and lots of it, but we can do that quickly. But a ship that can land, pick Watney up, and return to Earth is just too heavy- out of the question except during a Hohmann transfer window. The next one of those doesn’t open up for twenty-one months. And we know for a fact Watney can’t wait that long without a resupply.”
“Shit,” Annie gasped. “How badly fucked is he?”
“Pretty badly,” Venkat admitted. “But we’ll think of something.”
LOG ENTRY – SOL 11
So, remember how I said I could cut my rations if I restricted my activity to only the stuff I needed to do to keep from dying?
Yeah, so of course I spent the day out at the alien spaceship, loading all their food packs into the rover (and there were a lot of them- barely room for me and Puff, or Fireball, or whatever) and bringing them back to the Hab.
It sounds stupid- why not let the ponies do it? It’s their food.
Well, it began with this morning’s psychic conversation with Magica, or Starlight- not Starwhite- which went like this.
STARLIGHT: Trying thing new. Your being name?
WATNEY: Mark Watney.
STARLIGHT: Mean anything your name?
WATNEY: (heroically suppressing a Yoda joke) No, it doesn’t mean anything.
STARLIGHT: Our names all meaning have. I Starlight Faint-Flickering-Light, our commander Cherry Berry. Him Fireball. Her Dragonflying. Her Spits Flame.
WATNEY: Oooooooh. Starlight Something, Cherry Berry, Fireball, Dragonfly… Spitfire?
STARLIGHT (surprised and happy): Yes! Yes, that’s it! Much is better!
SPITFIRE: (not affected by spell, says something warning to Mirage/Starlight, sounds like someone on BBC clearing her sinuses)
STARLIGHT: Not much time. Must ask. Why potty box?
(Note: I’m pretty sure, in their place, I would have asked, “Why the hell do you want me to shit in this box?” a lot sooner, language barrier or not.)
WATNEY: Compost. Need soil. I’m a botanist. I’m going to grow food. Have you got any seeds?
STARLIGHT: (pokes Spitfire) Show your breakfast him.
(light show ends, Starlight gasps for breath and trembles but doesn’t fall over; Spitfire brings one of their cereal food packs and opens it)
WATNEY: Wait a minute… is this alfalfa seed?
(aliens look blank, then Starlight takes a deep breath, and the twinkly lights come back)
WATNEY (points at planting box, then at food pack) Alfalfa? Same thing?
STARLIGHT: Yes. Same thing.
WATNEY: God, yes. Anything you have with fresh seeds in it, I need.
(Starlight falls over at this point, and the translation ends, which is good because I’m sure I don’t want to know what Spitfire was saying to me as she carried her patient back to bed)
So yeah, it turns out that Spitfire eats nothing for breakfast but a cereal that is about two-thirds or more alfalfa seeds. Not surprising- alfalfa seeds are mildly toxic for humans, but they’re a popular animal food supplement. And the other ponies have a couple of snacks and things that also use them. So we went back to the ship, this time taking one of the Hab’s O2 tanks- heavy as hell, but it only takes a little bit to fill the parts of the ship that still hold air. And if I need more oxygen, I can always use the fuel plant from the MAV landing stage to bottle up Martian air, release it into the Hab a little at a time, and let the atmospheric regulator work its magic on it.
I could have gone through the food packs on the ship, but it’s still cold as hell in there- too cold to take off the suit for more than a couple seconds. And since the food had to come to the Hab eventually, we just decided to take it all. It took several trips back and forth through the airlock, which was a chore, but at least we didn’t need to wait on that manual pump that only puts maybe half the air back into the tank.
But about midway through that chore I began thinking about something else: salvage.
I was the mission engineer for Ares III. I know the basics of all the mission equipment, and I know how to look up anything I don’t remember immediately. It was my job to repair anything that broke- under constant NASA supervision, of course, but I had to be ready in case there was a communications breakdown. And right now, with my life on the line (to say nothing of my guests) I’m seeing everything in terms of survival resources.
I don’t know the systems in this ship, but some of them have got to be useful. The problem is, it’s ten kilometers each way. That’s inconvenient and slightly dangerous if the rover breaks down. The aliens have no problem covering that distance- they can gallop or run across the Martian terrain a lot better than I can manage with my bunny-hops. For me it’s a long distance hike (hop?) with a lot of things that can go wrong.
And the rovers, although they have a short travel range, produce one hell of a lot of torque… and they’re already rigged for towing.
I just have to figure out a way to get the thing out of its hole and onto wheels. I need to think about that part.
I wasn’t the only one thinking about salvage. Fireball brought back two objects from the control cabin. One looks pretty beat up, but the other looks almost new. Starlight was thrilled to see them when we got back, and she kept poking and prodding at them while the rest of us sorted through several hundred food packs. Well, when I say us, I mean them, because I can’t read the labels. The letters look so close to Roman letters, but the words are nonsense. So I just contributed the one thing I could- thumbs- and opened the ones they handed to me.
Good news: there were a fuckton of alfalfa seeds. Score!
Bad news: by the time we were done, we’d pretty much destroyed about fifty to sixty of their food packs. That’s a huge dent in the alien food supplies. And I don’t know where we’re going to replace them from yet.
Worse news: nothing else in the salads is viable. The seeds in the tomatoes and cucumbers in the garden salads are immature. Not that either is among my top candidates for saving our lives, as water and nutrient hungry as both crops are. Everything else was cut, peeled, shredded, etc. into uselessness.
Tonight I’m going to begin inventorying my own food supplies for anything that might be viable. The grasses and ferns NASA sent for my experiments are inedible to me and not much good even for ruminants, so those are non-options. I do have one very good candidate for a crop, but I don’t have much of it, so I want to examine all my options.
Starlight really is very happy about those box-things we brought back from her ship. I tried to ask her about them, but she shakes her head. She’s not going to tell me until our morning mind-meld, I guess.
I broke my rationing and had a full meal pack for dinner. I’ve done a lot of work today, and it’s still not over.
Oh, speaking of rationing, that brings up another problem that I have: CO2 filters.
The oxygenator in the Hab breaks down CO2 into carbon and oxygen using flash-heating and electrolysis. There are similar, smaller systems available for spacesuits, but we didn’t get those. The first contractor NASA hired to make the new suits went bankrupt without producing a single suit, never mind the sixty suits required for all five Ares missions. So, with mere months to go before launch, NASA handed it off to the same company who built the rovers.
And since the rovers (for even more stupid reasons) use disposable CO2 filters, they decided the suits should use filters too- because that way they could use the same filters.
Nobody at NASA thought much about this minor issue. They were a lot more upset about the major fuckup in the suits- the stupid, idiotic safety-glass visors. Because, apparently, the manufacturer thought they were cheaper than impact-resistant clear plastic and anti-radiation overlay, as used by, well, practically every other space suit EVER. But the suits were delivered too late to replace them without missing Ares I’s launch window, and budgets and politics prevented replacing them afterwards.
And compared to the visor issue, having CO2 filters instead of a self-contained oxygenator system was beneath NASA’s notice, because the filters are small and lightweight and they could afford to send a lot more than we’d need for a grand total of ninety hours of EVA per person.
So, instead of a rover and suit that can scrub CO2 indefinitely- and we’ve had the technology to do that for a while- I have one with a very limited number of EVA hours.
Specifically, about fifteen hundred hours to last me four years.
Hooray, Not Invented Here! You just screwed me over royally.
I wonder how the aliens do it? I’ve never seen them recharge their suits yet, and they’re not tapping my water supplies for their EVAs.
Another thing to ask during mind-meld time, somewhere in between “how do you wipe your ass with hooves?” and “So, is that thing on your head a pickle or are you just glad to see me?”
Yeah, that one was bad even by my low standards. I’m gonna get back to work.
LOG ENTRY – SOL 11 (2)
I dug out Johannsen’s media storage drive. We all were allowed to bring digital media of whatever entertainment we wanted on the trip. I left mine on Hermes because, stupid me, I thought I’d be too busy and excited to bother with it. I didn’t find Martinez’s or Beck’s, but the other three left theirs behind. Vogel’s is all in German, so it’s not much good to me.
Johannsen turns out to be a major Beatles fan- all their music, plus a lot of Lennon and McCartney’s solo work apparently. Also a ton of Agatha Christie novels in text and some prehistoric computer games. But Beatles is okay for now- I just want some noise besides alien-Welsh and the Hab machines humming.
I mention all this because the aliens are starting to sing along. They can’t understand the words, but they’re pretty good at mimicking, and all of them can sing. Even the dragon has a better singing voice than I do.
So I’m working on food inventory to a chorus of “With a Little Help From My Friends.”
It’s beautiful and spooky at the same time. And it makes me really, really homesick for some reason. Which is bizarre, because when I was growing up my parents were Nirvana fans.
Not the biggest Beatles fan (though they're definitely preferable to the Disco soundtrack in the movie), but this image is simply adorable
And the NASA operations scene was hilarious, great job!
It amazes me how much less likable Annie is in the book than the movie. Which, of course, makes her one of my favorite characters.
So, provided they get the farm up and running, the only one they need to worry about is Fireball, I think. Not sure where they're going to find a kilo or so of gemstone.
Looking at the nutrition values of alfalfa and potatoes (from Wikipedia) side by side, I can see why Mark'd be so interested in growing it.
8653095 I like to think of it in two parts: (1) Government in general and NASA particularly is, today, very much a man's world, and that would definitely affect the attitude of a woman just starting out in it, so twenty years later Annie's attitude is understandable; and (2) Annie uses up all her people skills with her public face and recharges off-camera by being the foul-mouthed take-no-prisoners total beyotch.
I like Annie.
Of course! Muesli! I feel downright foolish for not making that connection.
Part of me hopes the ponies are trying to record Mark's speech during his morning consultations with Starlight and compare them with the rough translations, but there are probably better ways to learn the respective languages, and they have bigger concerns besides.
As for NASA, this does address some of the hemming and hawing, but orbits neither wait nor hasten for anyone. Still, hopefully they'll have time to test the resupply rocket first.
In the meantime, the unwilling colonists may need a lot more than love, but at least the Fab Four will help keep their spirits up. And it's certainly better than disco.
I keep picturing Matt Damon.
Matt Damon!
I'm so sorry. I really, really am.
I can't help but think that with all the materials available on the Hermes, and all the big brains at NASA working together, they should be able to figure out SOME way to drop SOMETHING useful to Whatney (and friends) now that they haven't immediately left Mars orbit like in the book.
I do recall that later on they discuss the possibility of doing a hard drop of food to Whatney, to simplify the probe they're sending. Surely they can figure out SOME way to drop some supplies, or a replacement communications system, down to him. The MAV has no fuel left, but perhaps they could put it on a reentry vector, then jettison some lightweight, highly packaged materials from it after it had entered the atmosphere? Even if they can't send a proper radio, maybe they could drop a chunk of their food supplies... I'm sure foodstuffs could take quite a rough landing...
8651759
Eeyup.
General Winter takes no prisoners.
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Minard.png
Hard to fight an enemy that destroys everything you need to stay alive and knows the terrain intimately.
Hitler tried to avoid the same problems by sending his troops in Spring, but didn't support them later on as it got colder. In the end most froze do to poor clothing (Summer clothes don't cut it in Winter; especially in Moscow!).
8653127
Annie's good pony--I think Miss Harshwhinny would be her counter part.
8653153 Disco is coming... oh, yes indeed...
8653159 The crashlander was a desperation ploy. NASA isn't that desperate yet. Even so, the crashlander would have had some system to absorb the landing shock. The Ares III MAV is all out of everything except a little fuel in the maneuvering thrusters. It'd go smash a lot more spectacularly than Beagle 2... and odds are Mark & Co. wouldn't even notice unless it literally came down right on top of them.
Whats always suprised me over the years is when it comes to CO2 extraction, that complex chemical absorption needing the chemical supply, and plasma arc ect seperation require large amounts of resources, and here I thought Mark noticing the uninsulated and unheated room was so cold that at night the CO2 condenses on the walls wouldve been one method, and CO2 fireextinguishers use presurisation to liquify CO2 at room temperature. And given you fun to play with cold thrust rocket motors as well.
So, in one you pump the air into a spare room and leave overnight, the other you pump into a small space till it liquifies, if it can handle the pressure.. maybe space nitrogen, heluim tanks that have emptied? There was something about the wheat tests on the ISS where it sucked too much CO2 out for growth, or was extra effiicnt at generating oxygen, leading to problems with local atmosphere mixture?
Nice catch with the Hermes Rover combo, hope Musk is taking notes of just how easily things can go wrong. Such as if that car wasnt packaged right, its battery could overheat or freeze at any point on its journey, leading to A Very Bad Day for the vehicle.
If Magic is a function of amount of living matter, would growing the crops, as they imcrease in size, increase local magical field, and so give positive feedback with Cherry for Earth Pony plant growth? Being expoonential it wont be noticable at all, within experimental error and Earth variability at first, but past a certain point, such as potatoes, it will maybe even reach one room tipping point?
How much of a dragons hyper toughness is due to the magical field suffusing them, and how much due to evolving in such a magical field, such as their scales being zirconium graphene oxide? All natural materials, with dissolution temepratures approaching that of the surface of the sun, with massive shock energy absorption and dissipation abilities, and electrical conductivity for Faraday cage, with the right evolution of layering for not just thermal insulation but active thermal rejection, pumping? Even before magic takes it into EE Doc Smith wall shield territory? Call it a variation on the woodpeckers skull metamaterial layering, but due to pseudocrystaline gems, penrose tiling, which seem to be equivalent to a 4 dimentional rotation, Its why dragons are particularly magic resistant, magical? they are a full body magical transducer?
Be silly if the dragon could survive healthily long enough without a helmet that he could eat and melt a chunk of aluminium then spray it out to glass surface, boil ice etc if theres enough atmosphere for it to burn in. They need to build a bigger Hab for room, if they dont have enough Rover torque between them to drag sled the Ponys ship over. But do they have enough illumination sources for underground farm?
Oh, forgot. My cheap cell phone has an 8 gig microSD card in it, because thats all I could afford 7 years ago. I notice these days you can purchase 256 Gig microSD over the counter.
How much personal stuff can you put on in 256 gig, given Ive used half of that in two years on my main PC.
You know the great thing about CO2 filters? You can get the CO2 back *out* if you heat it back up to
212F(edit, much hotter), and you've got a CO2 filter again, plus the released plant food.Taters and Sprouts, precious. It’s what’s for dinner, morning, noon, and night.
8653256 I don't think Weir knew that when he wrote the book. I'm not sure about it myself. Either way, the filters will be treated as one-and-done in the story.
Does SpaceX exist in this AU because they have somewhere around 20ish recovered falcon 9 boasters in storage and could in theory wipe up something like a falcon heavy with them to get a resupply to mars.
8653256
Yeah, as long as you have power and sufficient heat, you're looking at a manual but viable way to cycle those filters.
8653337 When Weir wrote the book they were barely a thing. In the movie they were at least 50% of the construction crew for Hermes. I'm still debating how to handle that, but for now (Jedi handwave) all the heavy boosters are spoken for.
8653353
Is the Hermes nuclear powered and does it have a nuclear engine?
Calcium carbonate ( one possible end result of CO2 scrubbers) will indeed regenerate if heated, but it needs more like 850C/1500F than 212F.
At much lower temperature than this, the absorbed water will boil off.
8653364 The book doesn't really specify, but almost certainly yes. A reactor room is mentioned on the ship several times in the book, and solar arrays never, movie notwithstanding.
8653402
Then the travel time should be less than 6th months. The 6-month number is based on an optimal chemical rocket launch window. A nuclear rocket can maintain a constant burn and at midpoint flip, over a reverse burn, a trip should not take more than 3 months. The NERVA program the finished an unused nuclear rocket program NASA did in the 70s has a flight time of 3-4 months. With a modern version, it would be much less.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA (travel time is at the bottom)
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/N/NERVA.html
8653227
IIRC, Twilight had a transmutation spell capable of transforming frogs into oranges. It would be interesting if the ambient magical.fields they generate with their little farm supplied enough grunt to let Starlight run it, assuming she knows it. It could become a way to supplement their food, or generate other raw materials they might need, couldn't it?
8653423 Hermes doesn't use direct nuclear thrust. The reactor provides electricity that runs a VASIMR ion engine array, providing two millimeters per second per second of acceleration. The outbound trip from Earth to Mars is about three months using this near-constant acceleration or deceleration, but the return trip is twice as long due to planetary motion and Oberth effects leaving Mars orbit.
All of which is moot because humanity has precisely one Hermes in existence, it's the most expensive thing ever put into space, and they can't just throw another one together and come to the rescue.
And more to the point, the ponies don't even know Hermes exists yet. They haven't developed nuclear power or ion propulsion, because with magic they've never needed to, so they can't imagine it. So Hermes doesn't yet fit into their plans.
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It's dirt simple, and GlimGlam should be able to hit it in a second. Lithium Hydroxide plus CO2 gives Lithium Carbonate plus water 2LiOH(s)+CO2(2)-->Li2CO3(s)+H2O(l) As Eggy said, reversing the reaction merely requires water and a lot of heat (and a certain disregard for the 'Single Use Only' tags on the widgets)
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On this point, I'll just say that it's one thing to put a reactor on a spacecraft, and another to put a nuclear engine on a spacecraft.
You may recall that a lot of F-1 engines were built for Saturn V first stages, but they've been out of production for a good while. One of the big reasons we aren't building them again is because, 40 years on, we can't figure out exactly how we got them to work.
The NERVA program ended at around the same time Rocketdyne stopped production of F-1s, and was way more niche than chemical propulsion. It could just be that the reason why Hermes does not nuclear engines is because of either the cost of development being too high for the American people to stomach for the program, or simply that they couldn't figure out how to make it work in time for the mission deadline, so they went with what they knew would work and could get very easily.
8653458 After a bit of quick reading, I think the main problem is that heating the filter up hot enough to reverse the CO2 absorption process would also destroy the non-filter parts of the filter (plastic molding, paper, or whatever), and at the same time wouldn't produce the same uniform structure of the original filter.
And since the ponies never had to worry about CO2 scrubbing, I don't think Starlight is familiar with the properties of lithium hydroxide. She's not the polymath Twilight Sparkle is; she's a magic specialist, though she is learning as fast as she can.
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Ty for the clarification
I always find joy in my sci-fi relying on the sci bit.
Upvoted, and adored
The author notes are the best part of each chapter! SO EDUCATIONAL!!!!
Hah!
Haaaahahaha. Oh gods
Probably just to spite all those assholes along the way
Ah yes, all the broadcast systems of the MAV are on the Hermes now.
Heh. Heheheh. Eheh.
Actually... in the book it said NASA's photo release policy was set so any images they make have to be released at most 24 hours after they receive them:
“Mmm,” Annie said, typing, “We can hold the pics for 24 hours before we’re required to make them public."
They solved this in the book by simply not letting satellites pass the area, which is actually a significant plot point in the story since it was why it took a while before they found out that he was alive.
Hmm... but with them knowing that pretty much right away, the resupply mission will be less rushed, and might actually succeed.
Yeah, that would only complicate translation
Two guesses what that is, ladies and gentlemen
Augh. Inevitably limited then.
This story needs more Disco. Check the rover; it's in there somewhere
Remarks and corrections:
> Venkat said.“The odds
Missing space between sentences
> duck tape
That's "duct tape", actually. Multiple occurrences of this one :P
That is the most appropriate Beatles song.
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Don't be, you've done god's work.
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Oh Jesus yes. Now I can't get the image of three ponies, a dragon and a changeling linked arm--err, foreleg to foreleg and serenading Mark together with Beatles songs. Dragonfly will slip into a food coma from Mark's sheer level of D'AWWW overload.
Here's my vote for the perfect Beatles song:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NWP_lqd_8M0
Does the MAV have parachutes on it? I know it used thrusters on descent but does it have parachutes as a backup for slowing descent? Because if it does maybe they could drop it down with Mark's share of the return rations. It probably wouldn't be in very good shape afterward without landing struts but he might even be able to use its radios provided the parachutes kept it from being utterly obliterated. Then there would be more food plus possibly a radio. Again this depends on whether these parachutes actually exist or not but hey it's fun to theorize.
8653716 (1) It's virtually impossible to prevent a satellite from coming within sight of any point on Mars, especially if it's a survey satellite designed to see as much of the surface of the planet as possible. However, Teddy could and did direct -staff time- for the satellites to other priorities to prevent any pictures being taken of Ares III. I always thought the book made it crystal clear that Teddy, in his first example in the book of his risk-averse nature, was deliberately preventing any photos being taken, and by the end of his conversation on the subject with Venkat he said as much openly.
(2) I'll go back and change it to whatever Watney uses in the book. The substance was originally called "duck tape" because of its water-resistant properties, and the trademarked brand name came later. "Duct tape" is a product of word-of-mouth.
(3) Something is eating my spaces between words when I C&P From Word 2003 to FimFiction. I had to manually put spaces back into every single "Miss Parks", for example. It's imaginable I'd miss one, but not EVERY ONE.
8653839 The exact nature of the MAV's descent stage equipment is never specified. All that's said is that each Ares mission remote-pilots the next mission's MAV down to the surface. (Which raises questions about the first Ares mission, and also about what Ares IV will do now that they're minus one MAV.) The ship might or might not have drogue chutes on the way down. However, once the MAV has returned the crew to Hermes its normal mission is expected to be at an end. The comm satellite thing is a backup protocol NASA created so that, should an Ares crew have to abort descent and not land on Mars at all, the hardware wouldn't be completely wasted. It's a secondary function at best.
I just can't see NASA putting parachutes on the MAV for a second re-entry. Parachutes on the final stage are an unnecessary weight that serve no primary or secondary mission plan items, so they're not happening. (Weight on a Mars lander/escape ship is critical. There are reasons that the MAV mods for Watney's escape are so extensive and horrify Venkat so thoroughly; the MAV starts with what NASA already considers the bare minimum tolerable systems to get six astronauts off of Mars, and the mods go beyond that into "if anything whatever fails, Bad Day".)
I'm just wondering how long do you predict this story to be? And are the ESA/CSP's perspective going to be shown? Very enjoyable read so far!
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The MAV was described as having 4 redundant radios to talk to earth wasn't it? And I meant backup chutes meaning potentially unused and they would still be on the ship right? Seeing as the need to be on the top end and the bottom end is the part that is gone. Seeing as it's your story (and I can already tell I'm going to love the whole thing regardless) that means the ambiguous means of descent mean it's up to you if there are parachutes or not. If there were than it doesn't seem overly unlikely that NASA wouldn't put a backup seeing as it is a billion dollar spaceship and they really hate when those things get destroyed. I guess the Hermes crew might want to hold onto the rations so they can orbit mars a bit longer too so there's that.
"I miss the gold old days when"
"I miss the good old days when"?
"nobody ever through someone would"
"nobody ever thought someone would"?
"not affected by spell"
Kind of surprised he jumped to calling it a spell there.
8653931 I won't make it strictly one chapter per day on Mars. My ideal goal is one chapter per day for all of 2018, but we'll have to see if my free time and energy hold out. As for CSP/ESA, I'm very reluctant to show them until and unless CSP-the-story gets finished. (And the mission I've set up for the next chapter is a DOOZY...)
8653939 To be specific, the MAV has three redundant communications systems if the main Hab system breaks. Although the logic is never explicitly stated this way, the thinking behind it is that communications backups allow NASA to evaluate the situation and decide if an abort is warranted. Getting the crew home safely is a primary mission task, and thus the redundant comms systems are justified. Getting the crew back to Hermes and then sending them back down, without any means of getting up a second time, is emphatically not a mission task, and so NASA almost certainly would not provide contingencies for that- or parachutes.
Or, come to think of it, heat shields, which are a lot heavier than parachutes, and which a re-entering MAV would need even in Mars's thin atmosphere.
If there were any logical reason to assume the MAV would survive an uncontrolled reentry, Hermes has plenty of food to send Watney, beginning with over 240 sols of food he won't be eating on the trip home, plus whatever margin for error NASA has packed along. But without parachutes, rockets, or a balloon tumbler system, there's no reason to expect a MAV full of food would be anything other than a debris field after it landed.
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You seem smarter than me where this stuff is concerned so ok guess the MAV supply drop won't work. Loving both Changling Space Program and this. One of those things that makes me really wish I had money to donate.
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No, I was treating it as the Biome, rather then the general usage of the word. Not all river's edges (scientifically speaking) are Riparian land. Its a specific Biome that refers to when the environment of the River's edge is noticeably different to the environment around it. (See the Nile River, vs the Amazon River. One turns a desert into a fertile basin, the other flows through a rainforest) Its like the halfway step between Wetlands and rivers that don't effect the Biome at all.
A combination of google and some thought reminded me words have meaning outside the scientific context, and that any land at a rivers edge is Riparian when you are talking in a normal context.
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Hmm well it all depends on packaging and structure of the filter... If it is not easily disassembled and impossible to repack you are not going to get that CO2 out.
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Yeah, the CO2 filters would be a few options. LiOH is pretty simple- stick canister in life support system to soak CO2, switch and bake as needed. A zeolite system like the ISS uses is pretty much a gimme in that regard. Molecular sieving is really handy stuff for getting carbon dioxide and excess water out, and regeneratable by bake-and-cool too.
Given steady power supply, it's a fixable problem even if they have to strip the disposable filters for raw materials to do it. Fun read here, though:
https://sploid.gizmodo.com/this-is-the-actual-hack-that-saved-the-astronauts-of-th-1598385593
Now that I have read the chapter, I am going to add, I enjoy the little author's notes everytime. Its so nice to see you go through exactly why you did what you did, why you changed what you changed, and how it all makes sense.
I mean its clearly important to keep things mostly scientific in a fanfic based around The Martian (well as scientific as a story involving magical unicorns can be) and the IC perspective covers this quite throughly, but the OOC authors notes adds so much more that I would not have considered or been aware of. The ability to pre-answer questions you suspect some readers might have, while also covering in detail things that have changed, things that the original author screwed up, technological progress and why you have/haven't used it and as well as a whole bunch of story relevant data and your thoughts and ideas, even those that you didn't use give a fascinating insight into your creation and the world you are building.
In a way, I feel like I am reading "Science of the Discworld," again.
I especially like the insight into NASA in this chapter. Annie Montrose had a nightmare of a job in the original story. Right now it got so much worse. I am curious if we are going to get a look at the response by the Russians, Chinese and ESA as well as the other lesser space agencies. The book and movie obviously need the Chinese, and the original situation in the books paints the Chinese in a much more realistic light then the movie did.
But their are now aliens involved. Depending on the leader of the space agencies and governments in question, thats either potential major diplomacy points between the rescuers and the alien homeworld, or potential dissection and experiment subjects.
Hermes could signal Watney using a mirror or a laser and Morse code. Act like a big ole’ Iridium Flare with a repeating message. It should be easy enough for the folks on Hermes to make. Of course, someone at the base has to look up at night or dusk to see it.
8654232 It only works if Watney knows to look up. He doesn't. He also doesn't know Morse code yet.
Ironically, Dragonfly knows the pony version because of her training as a flight engineer. But the language barrier...
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1. Ah, true. Not flying over vs not taking pictures while flying over. I missed that distinction
2. Hmm, Interesting. You just sent me on a wikipedia research trip. The more you know!
3. Ugh, that sucks. The old gdocs converter used to do weird stuff like that too. I've noticed this happening when pasting stuff into the comment box here, too, especially around opening or closing markup tags. Imma report it on the Discord...
Sweet a Martian crossover. Time for Mark and Twilight to science the shit out of this.
Good to see Starlight's working out the bugs on her translation spell. Will she ever be able to make some kind of semi-permanent spell matrix that Mark can just wear, so that she doesn't have to drain her magic reserves every day?