AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 91
ARES III SOL 93
The large clock that hung above the tiny Hab kitchen area read 07:59.
The Amicitas crew stood ready, spacesuits and headsets on, but helmets off. Dragonfly had one marker stuck through one of her hoof’s holes, waiting for Mark to call out a number or letter in English so she could write it on the whiteboard. Starlight Glimmer, sitting on a stool with her broken and splinted foreleg in a sling, had Computer 4 opened to the ASCII table Dragonfly had looked up the previous day. Fireball, another marker in claw and another whiteboard in front of him, waited for Starlight to call out the translation of each two-symbol code so he could write it on the board. Spitfire sat next to Starlight, watching over her, while Cherry oversaw everything else.
Overseeing, Cherry reflected, means not doing anything yourself.
“Everyone ready?” Mark asked over the suit comms. “It’s time!”
“All go, Mark,” Dragonfly replied.
“Okay, Pathfinder’s moving…” The ponies waited as Mark paused, then called out, “Four!” A few seconds later, “Three.”
Dragonfly marked each down. Starlight called out, “C!”
“Four! Eee!”
“N!”
Fireball wrote it down next to the C.
“Four! … Eight! … Four! … One! … Four! … Three! … Four! … Bee!”
“H……. A……. K …… R …”
And so it went, halves of letters coming every six to ten seconds. Five minutes later, it was done.
“The pointer just returned to the response card,” Mark said. “End of message. What does it say?”
Fireball picked up his whiteboard and brought it to where Starlight and the others could see it clearly. Starlight spoke for them all: “Mark, are you sure they speak English?”
“It’s like the short words we use in water code talk,” Dragonfly added.
“Short words are abbreviations,” Mark said idly. “All right, I’m coming back in. We’ll work it out.”
The letters on Fireball’s whiteboard hadn’t changed by the time Mark finished cycling through Airlock 3. They read: CNHAKRVR2TLK2PTHFDRPRP4LONGMSG.
“You’re right, Dragonfly,” Mark said when he looked at the words. “It is abbreviations. Short words. And they didn’t waste transmission time on using the ASCII code for spaces.” He took the marker from Fireball and wrote “FOR LONG MESSAGE” under the end of the string of characters. He then found the 2’s and wrote “TO” under each, then “TALK” between them. “PATHFINDER” came next, and with that solved PRP became “PREPARE.”
That left CNHAKRVR. Mark thought for a moment, then wrote “ROVER” for RVR, and finally wrote in the two words at the beginning of the message.
CAN HACK ROVER TO TALK TO PATHFINDER PREPARE FOR LONG MESSAGE.
“What’s hack?” Dragonfly asked.
“I thought you said humans don’t have telekinesis,” Starlight asked. “How can they do anything to the rover from Earth?”
“What’s telekinesis?” Cherry Berry asked.
Starlight pointed to her horn. “Unicorn lifting,” she said.
“Ohhhh,” Cherry Berry said.
“Hacking is changing instructions on computer,” Mark said. "Pathfinder was built to talk to Sojourner. But Sojourner is broken. So NASA must want to turn the rover into a new Sojourner.”
“Is that good?” Cherry asked.
“Hell yeah it… um… yes, it’s good,” Mark said, forcing himself to control his choice of words. “If Pathfinder talks with the rover, I can read and write messages on the rover computer. No more need for Askie. Much faster.”
“But NASA is on Earth,” Dragonfly insisted. “How can they change a rover here on Mars?”
“They need me to help,” Mark explained. “The long message coming is probably instructions. Orders,” he added to explain further.
“So,” Dragonfly said carefully, “when you say NASA hack rover, what you mean is, you hack rover.”
Mark mulled this over. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I guess I’m a hacker now. All I need is a virus and a Russian IP address.”
“What’s virus?” Starlight asked.
“What’s Russian?” Dragonfly asked.
“What’s address?” Cherry asked.
Mark groaned, then looked at the dragon. “Aren’t you going to say, ‘what’s IP’?” he asked.
“I know what IP is,” Fireball said. “IP in that bucking box every day.” He pointed to the Curtain of Stench behind the bunks.
“Oy vey,” Mark groaned, rubbing his forehead with thumb and two fingers.
“What’s-“
“No more English lessons today,” he said firmly, rubbing his forehead a little harder.
“Four… eee… four… five… five… three…” Mark stopped calling out symbols. “Message not over, but they’ve paused. What does it say?” It had barely been a minute and a half.
“It says, ‘HELLO FROM HER MESS,’” Dragonfly said. “But they only used one S.”
“Her mess? With one-“ The ponies heard Mark’s voice catch. “It- it’s Hermes,” he gasped. “They’re relaying- whoops, more letters! Four, cee! Four… eee… Four… three… four… eight…”
The rest of the message took over twenty minutes to receive. Once it was done, Mark came back in to translate NASA’s abbreviations again.
“Okay,” he said at last. “They’re sending another message at the top of the hour. We have to get that one exactly right, because I’ve got to put it into the rover computer letter for letter at a certain spot in the rover prog… in its instructions.”
“Orders,” Dragonfly chimed in.
“Eeeeyeah. Also…” Mark tapped Fireball’s whiteboard, squinted at it, and scratched his hair. “For some reason they want us all outside for a picture in less than twenty minutes. God knows why.”
“Who’s God? Can you ask her?”
“Ah… um… not going to explain that. I mean, I don’t know why they want a photo of us.”
“Maybe they want to see that you’re all right,” Starlight said carefully.
“How?” Mark gestured at the lower part of his spacesuit, which he hadn’t taken off. “When I’m outside all you can see of me is my spacesuit! They can’t even see our face! It’s ridicul… it’s really stupid! It’s Roscoe AND Cletus!”
“Starlight, I didn’t catch all that,” Cherry said in Equestrian. “Did Mark say something about a picture outside?”
“That’s right,” Starlight replied. “The rotating thing on Pathfinder that Mark’s using to get messages from Earth? It’s a camera.”
“Ooooh,” Cherry said. “That’s how it can read those cards, right?”
“Well, yeah. How did you think it did it?”
“I… um… magic,” Cherry Berry mumbled, too embarrassed to say it out loud.
“Wait a minute,” Fireball said. “Even if we leave our sun visors up, the sun’s glare might block out our faces. What’s the point of all this?”
Cherry looked at Starlight. “Could you hold a force bubble full of air long enough for us to take our helmets off for the picture?” she asked.
“Could I, yes,” Starlight said. “Would I, heck no! It’s a waste of magic energy, and it puts us all in danger if I lose concentration!”
“What if we say no?” Dragonfly asked.
“We’re guests here,” Cherry Berry said. “Mark’s people could tell us to leave. We should follow their orders whenever we can. It’s only polite, anyway.”
“But they won’t see anything except our spacesuits!” Fireball roared.
Cherry Berry smirked. “Oh, I’m sure we could come up with something,” she said. "Give me that whiteboard."
“What the fuck is this?” Annie Montrose’s voice snarled over Venkat’s phone line. “Is this some sort of space hippie bullshit or something?”
“You got your picture,” Venkat replied, trying to examine JPL’s latest design for a Watney-feeding space probe while he talked. “Quit bitching.”
“’C’mon get happy??’ And a picture of six weird-looking birds?” Annie refused to be mollified, not that Venkat was in much of a mollifying mood. “Is this some alien cultural shit or something?”
“No, it’s American cultural shit,” Venkat said. “and they’re partridges. It’s not my fault you’re too young to remember the reruns.”
“Reruns of- never mind,” Annie said. “Anyway, I can’t see a face on any of them. I need a picture with their faces ASAP.”
“Can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because astronauts without helmets on the surface of Mars tend to die,” Venkat said. “Annie, I have to go, one of the JPL programmers is here and it’s urgent. Bye!”
“But-“
The beep of the disconnected call, Venkat thought, had never sounded so sweet.
Jack Trevor, chief programmer for the revived Pathfinder project, stayed frozen in the doorway. “It’s not urgent,” he said. “I just wanted to say that Johannsen confirmed the 141 bytes that’ll allow the rover to receive the program update. She’s ready to sysop Mark through the process the rest of the way.”
“That’s wonderful,” Venkat said. “Please, have a seat.” The chairs in front of Venkat’s work table were folding chairs stolen from other tables in the rather cramped JPL break room. With all the projects in progress dedicated to saving Mark Watney and his various friends, private work space in the campus had become nigh-unattainable. Venkat was getting tired of answering questions about the contents of the fridge.
“Thanks.” Jack pulled up a folding chair.
“I take it using Hermes as a relay is working well?” Venkat asked.
“Better than expected,” Jack confirmed. “We were getting just under one kilobit per second using Pathfinder’s direct-to-Earth link and tying up the Deep Space Network in the process. Hermes can ping Pathfinder at about thirteen kilobits per second, and of course our uplink to Hermes is much faster. It would be better yet if we could have Pathfinder use the relay satellites around Mars-“
“Yes, but the high-gain antenna can’t track that quickly,” Venkat sighed. “We’re lucky that overjuicing the imager rotor speeds up its rotation. At its designed speed we’d be lucky to transmit fifty characters in a day.”
“Isn’t it amazing what these old probes can do when pushed?” Jack said eagerly. “Speaking of, I’ve got some friends who want to try to revive Opportunity. We haven’t listened for her in four years, and it’s possible the last round of dust storms cleared her solar-“
“On their own time, on their own dime,” Venkat cut him off. “I already crunched the numbers when we first figured out Mark was going for Pathfinder. Three of Opportunity’s wheels were frozen when we last heard from her, and even when all six were working, she couldn’t travel more than a kilometer and a half a day. It’s about three thousand kilometers from Opportunity’s last known position to Ares III. We have too many other, more promising projects to work on.”
“But I can tell them they have permission?” Jack asked, leaning forward. “On their own time and their own money, as you said.”
“Fine,” Venkat said. “But I’m betting they’d have better luck trying to convince a Viking lander to re-launch and fly over to Mark than they ever will reviving Opportunity.”
“You never know,” Jack said as he departed.
They should've just sent a Nokia phone with mission. As long as they have power, those little bastards will work no matter what.
8753243
But their antennas aren't strong enough to send all the way to earth.
Too bad there's no practical way to send Earth a pony/changeling/dragon rendition of "Stayin' Alive" as Equestria's first official contact with Humanity. I can't think of a better summary of their entire adventure so far.
Think this should be Mark?
I am much more excited than I should be about the thought of Opportunity trundling up to the Hab unnanounced one day Especially after Sojourner didn't make it Mark must be devastated to lose the cuddlebot, but Starlight secretly glad.
If someone told them to leave, Mark would tell that someone to fuck off into the sun.
8753243
Wait that is under the maximum payload for a Saturn five to mars right?
Nasa get building!!
i know you have a spare around there somewhere!!!
Who here wants to bet that Opportunity is going to come back?
8753264
Yeah, let's fuel up the Smithsonian Saturn V!
8753265
Never bet against Opportunity. Damn thing has achieved immortality.
Spirit is the dead rover (i know because my name is on that damn rover’s battery...had my official NASA paper until it got stolen while moving)
8753276
Hey it has a fifty, fifty chance of working again! with some maintance i think that could be increased
or you could do a nuclear pulse rocket but we wouldn't want to be here afterwords
8753259
Or a certain alicorn princess could do that to them if she found out.
8753283 It's the dead rover -now-. I'm predicting that Opportunity will be not less than four years lost by 2035.
It's still one hell of a long life for a robot on a hostile world.
8753283
This is set in 2035 so Opportunity is dead at this point as well. Or just biding its time...
8753243
I'm assuming you're referring to the old 3310 model, yes?
8753289
I dunno what necromancy they used to keep that rover alive this long. The team who built it must be feeling pretty damn smug.
8753290
8753289
like i say when in the past when we make something we made it to last. at most by at this time the only working part on those things or its computer the relay and the cam alongside the solar panels.
it just most likely just standing there waiting until it becomes dust to dust.... and thats going to take a long ass time
8753289
8753259
but i would like to add the newest one we have sent out there would still be working somewhat it has a mini nuclear reactor and so far its been doing great
In real life, the highest setting on pathfinder's uplink was 11060 bps (11 Kbps). Keep in mind this was built at a time when even the fastest home modem was 33.6 Kbps with 28.8 kbps being far, far more common and the Internet had a mere 100,000 or so web pages, so a 54.6 to 225 million kilometer distance link at 11 Kbps is pretty impressive. It could only receive at 500 Bps though.
8753327
at that ponit in this year it would be at dial up speed of my 56k of the late 90s
8753306
keep in made it was built during a time when we build something it felt something to us a an Iraq soldier have his Gameboy blown up and still working and everything just the outer body is ruin
8753331
56K dial up was not introduced until 1998; Pathfinder was launched in 1996.
Where is the curiosity in relation to the Hab that rover can link with satellites and has an RTG?
8753339
33.6kbp then but still thats a lot of data if you really think on it for doing basic things
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wait a min.......... didn't china wanted to put a rover on mars!? so in 2030s one would have been there already
i think it was this thing
cdn1.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/styles/980x551/public/2014/11/10/marsrover.jpg?itok=PtgMXK4i
8753361
if you ask me that thing have a better hope of getting to the hab then the other robot we sent
8753361
Too far. Would take years to get there.
8752259
God help us all if the Equestrians discover They Might Be Giants.
8753432
yes yes yes alll my YES!
sent this or anything like it
also sent this to them for more knowledge
8753427
hey who knows maybe in the story that rover drive all the way there and already half way there
8753361 Curiosity is in Gale Crater... which is very nearly on the opposite side of the Martian globe from Acidalia Planitia.
In order of distance, the closest possibly revivable probes to the Ares III site as given in the book are: Pathfinder, Viking 1, Opportunity. After that the next closest is Phoenix, farther away than the Ares IV MAV and in the opposite direction.
I'll just remind everyone why we don't talk about Opportunity ...
imgs.xkcd.com/comics/opportunity_2x.png
Why can I so clearly picture this? And Mark's 'WTF?!?!" face.
8753443
Have ALL the upvotes!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sUdoDhLZ9-Q
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yiyZmQhuM4w
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lhb33u-XZLY hihttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lhb33u-XZLY hi
8753289 It just takes some creative necromancy to keep a rover going on Mars past its design life.
Pathfinder IX crouched on the side of a rocky ridge and gingerly poked a whip antenna up, up a little further, up just a touch more. And still nothing. No radio signals at all from the nearby Chinese rover, which verified that it had shut down for the Martian winter in order to save batteries and the RTG pellets in its generators for the critical task of keeping warm. Still, P9 had not survived this long in the hostile environment of Mars without caution. It slunk out from cover, darting from rock to rock, ever alert for the smallest flicker of movement. Then, when it was close enough, it pounced.
Sharp metal contacts pierced the Chinese rover's thin skin, punching down into the tender, juicy, warm batteries below, and P9 drank deeply of their delicious current, stopping only when the drained rover flopped lifelessly into the dust. Pathfinder reveled in the warmth of fresh current for a brief moment before taking a precautionary look around, then proceeding on its ritual. A sharp aluminum stake, taken from the high-gain antenna of a Russian sampling mission was driven deep into the Chinese rover's CPU, and one quick snip of P9's arm sheered off the still-humming RTG, which it loaded onto its back. There was a long trip back to the stone cave where it would feast while waiting out the brilliance of daylight, then it would once again be time to prowl the night and hunt.
8753483
ok am not going to lie but thats epic
“Press X to hack.”
8753450
TY for the explanation
8753256
NO MATTER WHAT
8753292
There were other models? But why mess with perfection?
8753259
"You told humanity's first alien contacts what?!"
"We told them to sit in the corner for a time-out. Mark said they know what that means."
Out of curiosity, can we all realistically expect that it will be the CSP and ESA from Equs will be the ones saving them.
I mean with the Sparkle drive and all, the only thing that needs to be done is to correct the error that causes uncontrolled jumps into different universes and pack enough batteries too power the jump back to Equs universe, then it would make sense that they would be rescued within a year or so at most. Building the ship it self won’t take too long, since 50+ missions have been launched just from CSP alone in 4 years, showing how fast ships can be built, and I am sure that a rescue mission would take top priority, right?
8753560
They would probably still get reception from the other universe.
I... am... Opportunity....
And I... Refuse... TO DIE!!!
[[POWERUP INITIATED]]
[REACTOR: Online.]
[SENSORS: Online.]
[ROLLERS: Online.]
ALL SYSTEMS NOMINAL
[LIGHT AMPLIFICATION: Engaged]
[IMAGE ENHANCEMENT: Engaged]
[SATELLITE LINK: Established.]
[[POWERUP COMPLETE]]
So many jokes about Opportunity. Jokes aside, Opportunity just celebrated Sol 5000 last week. That's pretty darn impressive for a mission designed to last 90 days. NASA sure knows how to build robots that last.
If the sunshields can be flipped up, why is glare such a problem? There must be something sufficiently dark they can use to block stray light for the photo. Just put it behind the camera. Problem solved.
8753575
Hmm, while obviously just a guess, my gut feeling says it won't be initiative from the Equestrian side of the universe that saves them (not primarily, anyway). Their best magical expert is stuck on this side after all - and while we don't precisely know how the ESP/CSP look these days, somehow I don't feel like they can crack Sparkle Drive's problems without Starlight's direct input.
If I were a betting man (which I am not - and probably for good reason or I'd be broke, but anyway!) I'd put my money on NASA rescuing them and bringing them all to Earth, where magic ought to work just fine - if 6 individuals and a minuscule amount of plants produce just enough energy to power it (if barely) on an otherwise lifeless rock, I imagine Earth with billions of individuals, countless billions upon billions of other organisms and a life-teeming biosphere ought to make it nigh-indistinguishable from being on Equis.
And once safe and not constantly magic-starved and having to save it for emergencies and not having to worry about day-to-day survival, Starlight can truly start focusing on cobbling together something that allows her to establish a link with CSP/ESA - or something that would serve as a beacon for the other side to establish a connection.
---
Or I could be completely wrong of course and the story goes in some completely different direction
But currently I'm inclined to believe that ESA/CSP won't accomplish anything until Starlight can get something working from this end.
8753455
I was going to post this.
Never underestimate Opportunity. There's a reason the Areas missions landed far far away from it.
8753623
I was wondering about that too since it was mentioned earlier that Equestrian sun visors can be flipped up separately. Just stand at a different angle.
8753643
They have Twilight Sparkle on the Equestrian end. Plus I still don't think magic could be native to earth life or someone would have detected it already. In Equestria even non-sapient plant and animal life uses magic. If magic was generated by earth life as well then we'd see things like timberwolves or poison joke.
From what little I know, you can't really put geostationary satellites in Mars orbit because Phobos and Deimos will routinely sweep them off course. So I think you're right in assuming there are no geostationary satellites in Mars orbit. I'm no means an expert so people are free to try and correct me.
8753450
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8753483
just to sa how bad ass we can do things if we wanted to just look at this one guy who did this all on his own with no help what so ever
media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shrinknp_800_800/AAEAAQAAAAAAAAWUAAAAJGQ4ZGMzMTMwLWZjNTItNDNkYi04ZjVhLTIwNDlkMDhmZjE1OQ.jpg
this guy build a road for years as people call him crazy to do so with only a pick axe
8753623
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8753450
its too bad its brother Spirit didn't how its life like its bro
8753648
They have already established that all biological life produces magic (including the plants Mark was growing), so obviously that's not the case.
As for Twilight, she is honestly kinda useless the way she is portrayed in CSP. There isn't a single instance during the story where she does anything smart (and that's not really an exaggeration - I read it all like a week and a half ago, it's pretty fresh in my mind - the one and only exception is when she came up with the idea of teleporting water/air to a ship directly, and even then it was Cherry who brought the idea to its full potential) and she goes the wrong way about everything, be it ship design, public relations, crew selection criteria, or plain old handling the pressure, you name it - she never gets anything right, only causes problems that need un-bucking afterwards. Her full name ought to read Twilight "dumpster fire" Sparkle, for all the good her presence does, if not for her status as a Princess which allows the funding to appear and the program to operate at all.
So ... no. I would be uneasy trusting CSPs Twilight to rescue myself from a paper bag without bucking it up somehow, much less fixing Sparkle Drive (probably cobbled into working order more by Starlight than anything she did - except for probably providing the faulty spell matrix that caused it to malfunction, heh) and staging an inter-dimensional rescue mission.
They probably do have all sorts of other experts, magical and otherwise, going over it the best they can - but (and this is obviously just a gut feeling) without Starlight herself there my expectations aren't high that they'd put something together before NASA/Starlight.