MISSION LOG – SOL 59
Well, tomorrow’s the big day. The harness for Rover One’s battery works well. The fourteen solar panels stack stably enough on top of the rover, although I have to use the ponies’ parachute rope to keep them there. I have three layers of clothes- mine under Martinez’s under Vogel’s- for insulation in case Fireball’s flame isn’t enough to counter Mars’s freezing temperatures. And I’ve loaded the equivalent weight of twenty-five days worth of food and water for two people into the back of the rover. There’s barely space left for me, my passenger, and our port-a-john.
Better yet, in the loading process, I found a whole bunch of spare CO2 filters. Apparently NASA decided to pack the rovers full of emergency reserve filters, because they don’t weigh much and the space in the rover was otherwise empty, so why not? I’ve been worried sick about my EVA time, considering how much suit time I’ve put in these past weeks, but the new supply is more than half the supply I had before. That’s more than 800 hours of EVA, or almost twice as much as I’m going to use on my entire upcoming trip.
Still better- I found Lewis’s personal bag tucked under the driver seat. She’d been scheduled to do a long EVA on Sol 7. She even had a flash drive in the kit- yay, more entertainment! I just hope she has better taste in driving music than in television.
And, best of all, the experiment with turning off the Hab’s oxygenator worked. So long as at least three of the pony suits are operating, there’s enough air exchange to keep the CO2 levels from spiking. What the magic life support doesn’t take care of, the plants seem to catch. So, despite my having stolen more than a third of the Hab’s power generating capacity for the cave and for the rover, our power budget is firmly in the green.
Now, I’m not leaving the hab tomorrow. Fuck, no. I’ve only done a bit of testing between the hab and the cave to make sure nothing falls off. But I am doing the first long-term test to see how far I can get with the two batteries and no heater. In fact, it’s not really a test, unless you count Mercury, Gemini, and early Apollo flights as all “tests.”
I know, that’s what they were, but NASA didn’t call them that. NASA called them missions. And since I am the sole representative of NASA on Mars- hell, I AM NASA on Mars- I can call what I’m doing missions, too.
But it’s not a mission without a fancy mythological name. So… since this is about testing our rover modifications, I’m calling tomorrow Sirius 1.
Sirius. Because dogs. Get it? If not, then fuck you.
Now, I need fancy mission goals and protocols, because these are things NASA does.
So:
Sirius 1 Mission Goal: find out how far I can drive, in kilometers, on the charge in the two batteries, without the heater.
Sirius 1 Mission Protocols: (a) Drive as far as I can, in kilometers, using the two batteries. (b) Don’t turn on the heater.
Huh. It sounds better when NASA does it. Maybe there’s a class that teaches them to write in engineer jargon and bureaucrat jargon combined. There probably is- I just skipped it.
Anyway, I’ll stay in sight of the Hab at all times, so Fireball and I can walk home if something really bad happens. I’ll just drive back and forth on a half-kilometer or so stretch of Mars and watch the mileage log on the rover computer. When the battery hits 5% charge, I stop and swap the power cable to the second battery. (There’s a small emergency battery built into the rover that’ll cover life support for the ten minutes or so that’ll take.) When that hits 5%, I stop, set out the solar panels, and see if my math is right.
I’m looking forward to tomorrow. The only thing I dread is waking Fireball up. I want to drive in pre-dawn time as much as possible so I have as much of the Martian winter daylight as possible to recharge. That, unfortunately, requires waking a large reptile up at oh-God-thirty in the morning.
I wonder if Spitfire will lend me a feather.
MISSION LOG – SOL 60
Sirius 1 is complete!
And by complete, I mean “pulled the plug after an hour and a half,” but hey. Even Neil Armstrong aborted a mission once. So I’m calling it a “successful failure,” in that I didn’t achieve the mission goals, but we got back to the Hab safely.
Things started out fine. Fireball didn’t complain about waking up early. We suited up, got into the rover, drove out about a kilometer to the first gully towards the cave, and began driving back and forth along the rim of the gully.
Things began to go sour when I plugged Lewis’s data stick into the rover computer. I should have known better. Lewis has collected what I suspect is every disco song known to mortal man on that one flash drive. At least, I hope it’s every disco song known to man, because I don’t want to live in a world where there’s even one disco song more.
(Come to think of it, so long as I stay on Mars, I’m guaranteed of that. Silver linings and all that.)
Fireball hates disco even more than I do. After two songs he turned it off. But after fifteen minutes of silence he turned it back on again. After one song he turned it off again. And then he turned it back on, kind of sheepishly, and it stayed on the rest of the trip.
Fireball had damn good reason to be sheepish, too. It turns out he couldn’t sustain a flame for more than a minute or two without triggering some sort of coughing fit. The fit sent clouds of smoke through the rover, which probably saturated the CO2 filters. I don’t know for certain, because the alarm never went off. Fireball had his suit on with the helmet off the whole time, which meant that we got the benefit of air exchange through his life support. It took its own sweet time clearing the smoke away, though.
By the time he turned the music back on for good, he’d given up on trying to relight his flame. It was already pretty chilly in the rover by then. Fireball’s suit air just couldn’t keep up with the rover’s heat loss. The rover’s got the best insulation NASA could devise- the contractors didn’t cheap out on that, at least- but it was competing with a Martian pre-dawn temperature of ninety below outside.
So, from about half an hour into the mission on, we were down to nothing but body heat. And that didn’t last long at all. Three layers of clothes helped, but not much. Half an hour after the music returned, my teeth were chattering and my hands and feet were getting numb. But I soldiered on, trying to push my limits.
Then I looked at Fireball. Remember, he was wearing his spacesuit and getting a constant direct rush of warm air from his homeworld. Despite that, I could see he was suffering pretty badly. At about the ninety-minute mark, he was barely moving at all.
Once, not long after I joined the astronaut corps, I went to speak at a special event in Houston. It was summertime, and the hotel had cranked the AC up to the max, especially in the green room where I waited with a couple of the other guest speakers. And somebody, for whatever reason, had put a stuffed iguana in the middle of the conference table. I got curious, and I was just about to touch it to see what it felt like when its head sloooooooowly moved and one beady eye swiveled almost imperceptibly to watch me. It wasn’t a stuffed iguana at all- it was somebody’s pet, and it was so cold it was on the verge of torpor.
Fireball looked like a white-red-and-gold edition of that iguana.
Jeopardizing my own life is one thing- it’s quite literally what I’m paid to do, even when I’m not stranded on a hostile planet with no hope of rescue. But putting somebody else in jeopardy is just plain wrong. I cranked the heater up to maximum and beat it directly back to the Hab.
Now I’m thinking- well, sulking, really, and I know I’m sulking because Dragonfly just hugged me and told me not to feel so bad. But I’ve got a real problem, and I need to figure out a solution.
Fireball is out as a traveling companion. He never complained once the whole time, unless you count his playing with the radio a complaint. But he appears to be even more vulnerable to cold than I am, and his internal fire just doesn’t work as a heat source. And I can’t drive without a heat source that works a lot better than body heat.
I don’t have to turn the heater on all the way. I could turn it way down. How low can I turn it so that I almost, but not quite, freeze to death?
Blurgh. My head hurts, and in a few hours it’ll be English Time with Professor Watney again. I need some honest relaxation time. I think I’ll crack open another of Johannsen’s Agatha Christie e-books. It’ll be nice to lose myself in the life of someone more intelligent than me for a while.
That’s not saying much. After today, I’m not saying Poirot is smarter than me. I’m saying Hastings is smarter than me. And when you fail to reach the mental benchmark of a World War I infantry captain...
… yeah, today was that kind of day.
It could be worse. I think I’m still outdoing Bertie Wooster.
Starman in his car in space live feed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBr2kKAHN6M
The Disco fever begins! Muahahaha!
8717655
This song is literal now!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXt-e4sjB_4
Well, you need to have some standards. At least he’s not comparing himself to Sergeant Colon. Yet.
8717655 The two side cores landing... wow! Pity about the centre core, but for a first mission in that configuration, it was a magnificent success.
Is there a "Jeeves and Blueblood" fic out there? Somebody's gotta have done one.
Wait... So nothing interesting happened on Sol 58?
Gah, what are you doing, Mark? Don't use direct open flame for heat. Grab some of those big quartz crystals, and hot 'em up good. Fireball is heatproof, he can carry them.
Or better yet, just have Equestria preheat the air around his suit intake. Crack a window if it gets too pressurized. Depending on what the Equestrian setup is like, they could have both heat and A/C...
8717690
It's reaching the point where things are stabilizing a bit. Not every day is a horrifying struggle anymore. (Or at least not a horrifying struggle by stranded on Mars standards.)
He changed the numbers without explaining why? It was clearly for the same reason that Toriyama drew Giten and Trunks without tails:
He forgot.
Well, let's see.
Dragonfly, Cherry Berry, Starlight or Spitfire?
Cherry Berry is probably out, because she's needed to keep the food growing (although Mark is unaware of this at this point I believe), and as the pony C/O she probably needs to stay at the hab.
Starlight is viable. She has the best communication with Mark at this stage (possibly Dragonfly's empathy might count for more) and her ability to magic up stuff can help cope with some unexpected situations. She's probably not critical at the hab, unless she's required to re-magic the cave at any point. The possibility of her having to apply touch-ups, plus having her around for testing with Equestria, probably mandates she stays at the hab.
Spitfire has no mission critical roles at the hab and is therefore free to go. It means giving Starlight and Spitfire a break from whatever issue they're currently going through, although without Spitfire around Starlight has a tendency to over-use her magic. Something Cherry Berry would need to crack down on. So Spitfire is a candidate. Only question is - what advantage does Spitfire in the rover mission give? I can't think of anything.
Dragonfly is a good option. She doesn't require food for starters, so there's bit more room for extra supplies for Mark (and contingency equipment space). She can also make more changeling rope if it's required. She may also be able to on-the-fly repair minor components or seal air leaks with some changeling goo. Recent chapters have shown her communication is coming along very quickly, so it's possible Mark can teach her how to drive so they can take split shifts. Plus they seem to have a good relationship at this point with no signs of friction, so they're more likely to survive each other in a confined space for such a lengthy period of time. There's no specific need for her to be in the hab. The only issue I can see is whether or not Dragonfly can survive feeding from just Mark (and whether he can survive being fed on) for so long. Plus, then Mark doesn't have to worry about what Dragonfly is doing on the computers while he is away.
So my money would be on Dragonfly being the first pick, unless she can't survive on Mark alone, and Spitfire being second, and Mark going all on his own as a third option.
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Even better: He could get Equestria to send warm water to the suits and do the same heating setup he did in the book. With the water temperature being controlable (Due to Equestria not being a nuclear reactor and able to turn off) he wont need to rip the thermal shielding of the rover off.
Unless, of course, one of the astronauts on Ares I or II brought a disco song that Lewis didn't and for some reason wound up leaving it on Mars.
And thus, Mars's Boogie Fever begins. *evil thestral laughter*
*Proceeds to google Bertie Wooster
I forget, do the Equestrian suits work indefinitely in terms of air and heat? Particularly now that the ESA knows their situation? Granted that doesn't help Mark... Unless they found a way to get it to. Not enough for the Rover cabin with just one suit, but... Hmm...
Anyway, hope the new van works out for ya.
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I hate double postings but phones are too finicky to edit in a reply. Dragonfly is NOT a good option. The poor changeling would starve as it’s not that changelings don’t eat, but that their allies provide nourishment. Taking Dragonfly separates them from their only source of food.
Suppose my questions would be 'how insulating is changeling goo' and 'how much can Dragonfly reasonably make'.
Oh, no. Disco in Mars!
As long as its just alpha radiation you can shield it with paper or foil etc.
On Red Mars, Radioactive turkey roast You.
How much Battery cable does a rover have? Can you wire the batteries in parallel? Again, Doh! moment Mars has wind Build a Windmill turbine to drive an electric motor (free power!). If the wind is strong enough put a Mast on that buggy and make a sail. Then again he's not necessarily an engineer.
8717793 Mars atmosphere is a fraction of the density of Earth's. It could be done, but it would take special engineering and parts that Watney doesn't exactly have just lying around. A windmill isn't going to be a high priority for him so long as solar power and other sources are sufficient.
As for wiring cable, Mark could have done it but didn't bother, because the wiring harness apparently can stretch to the saddlebag, so it's about a five minute EVA to swap the cable from one to another, twice a day. No big deal, and less risk of something going wrong.
OK- 870-word chapter written, so buffer remains at 4.
Is Mark including the co2 filters from his human crewmates in his count? They're sure to have left most of them behind when he evacuated and even though each suit may be custom, the filters should be interchangeable.
8717687
Sort of. There was one called "The Rummy Business of Old Bluey." It was by Cloud Wander. Possibly the best Blueblood fic ever written, in my opinion. In fact, it says it's a parody of the Jeeves and Wooster stories.
Summary: Barney Trotter and his valet, Cheese, struggle to assist young Prince Blueblood, who has accidentally become engaged to be married. On the night of the Grand Galloping Gala, Barney unfolds a masterful plan to rescue his pal from the harness of matrimony.
8717897 Mark's including every filter he has except for the emergency oxygenator, which is basically a five-day giant CO2 filter in case the main oxygenator fails.
I've always wondered.... we hear over and over about Lewis' 70's obsession, and Johannsen's Agatha Christie novels, and how everyone else has boring reference material or stuff in german that Watney can't read.... Not once did Weir say anything about what *Mark* brought for the trip. Why doesn't he have any stuff that *he* chose, and thus he would like?
Just a thought for future chapters, maybe? What sort of thing would Mark have brought, and why didn't he, or why can he not access it?
I wonder if hes going to reference the Tesla at all? Like when star-man comes on or something.
8717982 He has no interests. He is, in fact, a robot.
(That was the surprise twist in the unreleased version. True story, bro!)
8717982 I'm given to understand that Weir has said (not in the book) that Watney accidentally left his personal data stick on Hermes. At the time he didn't think much about it, because he figured he'd be too busy to really need it. That's how I'm playing it in this story, anyway.
I now have this unstoppable desire to see Dragonfly stuck in a rovor, endlessly singing to the beegees...
Appropriately:
Dragonfly: Whe-tha yu a brutha oh whe-tha yu a mutha yu stayn live... stayn live... Feed da city brakeen an ev-ry body shakeen an we stayn-live, stayn-live! Ah-ah-ah-ah... Stayn'live! Stayn-live! Ah-ah-ah-ah stayn-liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive!
Watney: I don't know what is stranger. The alien bug horse liking the song, or the alien bug horse perfectly matching it.
A pegasus capable of flying at near-supersonic speeds is probably extremely resistant to temperature extremes. Though much of that is probably because of magic. I don't suppose it's possible for Starlight to rig up a means for Spitfire to draw from a battery?
Probably doesn't matter. Twilight has a plan in motion involving the massive pile of crystals they have laying around. Whatever she has in mind might be a game-changer. Semi-related, while I realize the author here has expressed some distaste of having magic solve all their problems...gems don't contain carbon. I'm not seeing any reason why Twilight couldn't enchant or charge anything she wants into a gemstone and simply send it to them. All of their problems could be solved that way. All of them.
8717897
There was in fact another one, Canterlot Follies: Birdy Rooster and Greaves in this case, sent packing by a couple of aunts to help a cousin out of a spot of bother he'd got himself into with some common seamstress or other. Quite good, and illustrated even, but sadly abandoned after ten chapters in 2012.
8718015
img00.deviantart.net/6864/i/2013/238/8/6/invader_zim___doom_song__by_h0ll0wed-d6045pa.png
One thing that was off in the book is the spare canvas that gets used for a million things even though it's REALLY limited... already just the "saddlebag" would have used almost half of the amount available...
8717744
Mark is Dragonfly's biggest source of food right now. Him going without her is what separates her from her biggest source of food. That's why she has to overfeed on him, because she's not getting what she needs from the crew alone. She's even flat-out said to Spitfire that Mark can't find out what she eats, otherwise it will most likely dangerously cut into her food supply. Mark wasn't even considered when the Equestrian mission was launched. The fact that losing his love is dangerous for her is clear proof that she's not getting what she needs from the Equestrians alone, as if Spitfire having to force herself to think anything positive about Dragonfly wasn't proof enough.
A case could be made for Cherry feeling strong enough positive emotions for Dragonfly because of her leadership role within what the hive has become, but the same could be said of her having weaker feelings from being forced to spend so much time around changelings being changelings.
I don't know that that makes Dragonfly the best choice, but since it seems like she's been going easy on Mark since she was warned about it, he could probably handle having her along. And it would certainly be what's best for Dragonfly, since even with all of the Amicitias crew feeding her daily she still appears to be slowly losing energy.
My mom had a Honda Odyssey for over a decade. Then had a VW Routan for a few years, until she crashed it into a building late last year (she was fine. car wrecked). Now she has a Dodge Grand Caravan.
Really enjoying this fic and having something fun to read every day after work. In fact, I enjoyed it so much so I went and binge-read all of the Changeling Space Program fic.
8718049
*Silence and martian wind...*
*Music builds volume as rover drives by...*
*Music slowly drops in volume*
*Silence and martian wind...*
8717699
Pointing that out is likely to bring the peaceful streak to an end, though. Universe loves to shit on us when we need clear skies.
8718134
Now, more than anything, I want to see a road trip with Mark and Dragonfly. Maybe a 1970s-themed buddy-cop series, or something involving them driving around in a big van and solving problems for people like "Highway to Heaven" or something.
Or just any excuse to have Starlight Glimmer getting funky to disco, really.
You are a beautiful person.
8718087
Changelings need unconditional snuggles.
8718267
Truly, unconditional snuggles are best snuggles.
Dragons live in high cold mountains. They are evidently much more suited to live in cold than humans. That you made him into coldblooded being is nonsense. Such being wouldn't be able to support big brain. His intelligence tells us he is warmblooded. In adition his inner heat source should make him active even in very cold enviroments.
8718300
There's cold. And then there's polar climates.
Mars laughs at that and goes: 'Ya wont cold m8t?!'
Though I do feel like the heat loss is being greatly exaggerated. A thinner atmosphere of heat-trapping CO2 and a vehicle that SHOULD be well insulated should be slowing convection down. Plus, even at reduced irradiance, solar heating the vehicle skin should be doing something for preventing heat loss.
8718300
Take a dragon's magic away, and their impossible thermal regulation goes with it.
Equestrian dragons live in the cold to be badass, and they relax in lava pools to be badass.
Magically assisted thermal regulation means they need something hot or cold enough to overcome their "natural toughness" so that it can count as badass in dragon terms.
8718018
The teleport gems use sympathetic enchantments that apply to surface contact only. Reconfigure it to accept crystal through the filter barrier at the the input end and it will appear to slip into the input gem's surface while the output gem would spew mineral powder on the far end. Make sense?
8718388
Impossible is a good word for it.
Lava looks at organic life and goes "haha, fuck you". A quick check with Google tells me that even the coldest form of lava is still around 500 to 600 degrees Celsius. Normal lava can be anywhere between 700 to 1250 degrees. At the upper end, lava is hot enough to melt copper and make iron glow.
The idea that dragons rely on their magic to survive extreme temperatures, hot and cold alike, makes perfect sense to me.
8718329
The book likes to exaggerated about mars's atmosphere, like the storm having enough power to be dangerous the heat loss is exaggerated too.
In reality, mars's atmosphere has a fairly low thermal conductivity due to its low density of an average of around 0.020 kg/m³, compared to earths average of 1.2041kg/m³. This means that it can transfere and store heat rather poorly, add mars's solar radiance of only 586.2 W/m² (around 43% of earths) and you can guess why its an average of -63°c on mars's surface, it doesnt get much heat and it cant store it any better. But this also means it takes a long time for mars's atmosphere to absorb the heat out of an object. I sadly dont remember the exact comparison, but it was something about earths northpole killing you severals times faster than mars.
8718015
Obviously its the bug alien popping up out of nowhere to sing along.