Mark Watney is stranded- the only human on Mars. But he's not alone- five astronauts from a magical kingdom are shipwrecked with him.
MISSION LOG - SOL 407
Well, we didn't have to start weaving insulation out of hay, so that's good.
The combination of the RTG in the habitat deck and shutting down all air flow to Rover 2 and the bridge, plus the ugly-ass insulation job we did on the walls of that compartment, kept the room warm enough during the early part of the evening and only a little chilly by just before dawn. That'll have to do, because we can't really afford to run heaters, and we don't have anything else to use for insulation except hay, which has problems.
We decided one other thing: when we leave, we're going to line the floor of the habitat deck with the mattress pads from the Hab bunks. They're only a few inches thick- they were made to be thrown across a string base to save launch weight- but they're better than nothing.
Today we're going to make sure everything's in its proper place. Then tomorrow, Sirius 7, the dress rehearsal.
Fingers crossed...
(I need to ask Starlight what the pony version of that is.)
Sorry, but two things happened today. (1) I committed to helping a friend in Dallas, whose apartment lease is up and can't afford the new higher rent, get her crap out before the landlords lock her out and shitcan all her worldly possessions. And (2) I found a problem for our heroes, but not yet the solution, and I just spent an hour and a half verifying that the problem is, if anything, worse than I thought.
So this is all I had time for today, what with unloading the van and filling it with boxes and paper for moving stuff. And since tomorrow involves about twelve hours of driving plus five hours or so of moving house, I won't have any time for writing tomorrow.
Hopefully two chapters on Thursday to make up for missing a day.
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If they miss the launch date there mostly screwed
Take all the time you need. Quality over quantity, right? Also, that landlord sounds like a jerk.
Oh, dear, that doesn't sound good. That storm going to interdict liftoff? The RTG break containment? The song Friday mutate into a looping Heartsong that they can't get rid of? The suspense, it's unbearable!
"...only a little chilly by just before dawn."
Guess who is going to wake up being snuggled by a changeling every morning...
9096611
There is a bigger issue...
If you have read the book, you know what happens during the launch
9096613
The RTG breaks they will be dead in less than an hour
9096618
Yup, and that'd be a real problem wouldn't it? Do you know how much systemic radiation damage messes with revivification? Turns a simple procedure into a gorram thicket of issues.
And no matter how careful you are something always manages to go wrong. And then it's complications, and exemptions, and blacksites, and Incursions, and then suddenly there's Necrofungus all through the ventilation, and the walls are bleeding, and then THIS BUGGER!
nafilmu.cz/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/doom.jpg
Never again. I refuse to handle radiation cases.
9096616
Oh shit, I forgot about that...
Good luck with the moving, and with solving that problem.
Is it Fireball's food supply? Because several dozen (hundred?) extra kilograms of quartz can't be good for Rover and MAV performance. And that's to say nothing about the amount of space such a supply would take up in either vehicle.
Because if I remember correctly, he'll need a small amount of quartz every day, not just on the trip to the Crater, but also while aboard the Hermes. Which means that they need to bring a supply of quartz with them in the MAV.
In a worst case scenario, in which the Sparkle Drive fails to bring them all to Earth in a much faster pace, they need to bring enough gems with them during the launch to sustain Fireball for a potential multi-month trip to Earth. They can't just assume the SD will work without a hitch; they need to bring up that supply of gems.
Edit: Well, I suppose in the worst case scenario, Fireball could always grit his teeth and eat chunks of the drained magic batteries and/or the Sparkle Drive itself.
thanks for the update, good for you helping out a friend, that's the kind of friend everybody needs
9096614
Her and all 3 ponies. 😂 We know what happened last time Starlight spent time in close quarters with Mark.
9096668
Hmm If the Sparkle Drive doesn't work he can eat it...
They could shred some stuff from the Hab to make fluffy filings. Don't they have spare spacesuits that don't fit? Those should be soft enough if shredded.
Also: sand. If one were to shift the sand end up with uniform size grains and fill a pillow with it (or in this case stiched up bedsheets) it can be pretty confortable if a but heavy. Some pillows do this with plastic beads but none of those in mars.
9096697
I second that thought!
9096613
There is a keyword here that is important.
So this can't be something that the author planned, some evil thing that breaks, but rather something that has to happen, but no one has considered yet.
9096668 guess is a fairly good one. The Quartz is a big problem with zero solutions and it will weigh a lot.
The next on the list would be the launch weight problem that forced Mark to rip all the stuff out of the MAV in the movie and books....that shouldn't be an issue here due to the sheer thrust of the magic drives.
Lastly in the books, their is an issue of accuracy that is still present. As is the new problem of slowing the MAV down even if it is accurate, to dock with the Hermes. These spell engines are good at shooting the MAV into space but not so much the steering or the stopping. In the books this is fixed by Mark risking it all to fling himself into space and having Chris Beck catch him. Chris is good, but their is no way that Chris is going to catch 1 Man, 1 Dragon, 3 Ponies and a Changeling.
And I can be fairly confident Starlight doesn't have the Magic to guide them all to the Hermes.
9096612
I had a landlord tell me that I couldn't have my deposit back, before I moved out of my apartment in college. Six months of bacon grease and used lard, hot, down the kitchen drain and then turning off the refrigerator with a mammal collection and ten pounds of fish in the freezer was a good start on vengeance.
Question, when is CSP going to be updated? I really want to hear about Dragonfly's Mission 21. No rush, I don't mind, but when do you estimate? Just for peace of mind.
9096611
Well, if they figure they're going to miss it soon enough, they could turn around and go back. If the cave farm survives they could possibly survive long enough for another rescue attempt (or for the Equestrians to find them). They'd even have cherries.
"Could possibly not die horribly" is not a great situation, though.
When Mark decided "eh, it gets chilly but we can manage" I wonder if he considered it was currently a Martian heatwave (above freezing!) due to the strange weather. The cabin might cool much faster during winter or the dust storm NASA was predicting.
As for Fireball's food supply... I wonder if Starlight could transmute ice into quartz. I know it was decided she couldn't do it for organic food but quartz isn't organic. Trixie could do a teacup, after all.
For that matter... quartz and other crystals aren't organic or carbon based. If the Equestrians ground them down to sand, I wonder if they could send a water/quartz solution through the life support system for him to eat? (though if they can, I would expect an "WHY DID YOU JUST FIGURE THIS OUT NOW?" that could be heard from Earth.)
Try sand bags cut the hab up if you need also a dumb question any space blankets. In the emergency of the Amicitas she has to have some in the emergency kits I mean she did fly in the atmosphere.
9096800
The issue of maneuvering is eased by the fact they don't have to use the MAV engines to get into space (thanks to the rather absurd capabilities of the magical engine), so they'll have most, if not all of the fuel available for course corrections up there.
As far as the quartz goes, there was a suggestion of a special modification on the Equestrian side of things, where they grind up quartz or something fine enough to add to water, and during a set time, the water is replaced with this high-quartz (or whatever other gems they grind up) variant, specifically for Fireball. They have a storage container to keep some in, he uses his suit to pipe the water through during the timing window, cut the flow, return to a normal water supply for the ponies (and Mark, if need be). Bam, total weight problem of hauling all that quartz for Fireball solved, along with the collective facepalm of NASA going "HOW HAD THEY NOT COME UP WITH THAT YET?".
9096869
Well, given that quartz is silica dioxide, it shouldn't suffer from the teleportation instability... and moreover, I remember reading that fine-ground SiO2 is sometimes used as a filler for pills, since it passes through digestive system without harming it. So water supply contamination won/t be that much of a problem if they take care.
Unless the system is literally calibrated to transport only water and a set selection of gases. In which case, recalibrating the receivers remotely might be problematic.
The second problem is that ESA have other active missions, like Concordia. And as far as I remember, they all use the same transmitter crystal. So by doing stuff like that they would complicate things for other astromares.
9096887
It's a bit more complex than that; Quartz is silicon and oxygen in a crystal structure, but without the crystal structure it would just be glass. It's unclear if it would remain crystalline through the teleportation (it wont after being melted and cooled). Given Fireball's metabolism is clearly magical, it wouldn't shock me if the rule is just that is has to be a crystal.
OTOH, it's possible to grow quartz crystals, but I'm unsure if the Hermes would be able to improvise something.
What about all that fur shedding?
9096869
9096887
9096833
Except their attempts to send more complex molecules through that feed tend to end....badly.
Its why its not used for anything other then water and air, both off which are largely 2-3 atom molecules.
Quartz by contrast is not that simple. Its a 5 atom molecule, with 2 Oxygens shared between each part. Overall is SiO2 but for the purpose of individual tetrahedrons ( the finest it can be ground while still being considered Quartz) its SiO4.
In its SiO2 form it is akin to plastic, long repeating chains of silicon linked by oxygen. Its only not organic due to being Silicon instead of carbon. Lets be clear... this is NOT a molecule you want to risk this way.
9096953
This is also something I had not considered.
9096971
I remember author mentioning that it's carbon-carbon links that are affected the worst. No carbon, no problem.
You guys building a bomb without me?!
Im wondering how theyre going to handle the drop down into the crater at the MAV, given the ground is unstable, the Whinneybago is rigid and top heavy and cant steer into the slide at all. And they dont have enough materials to make an Elephant Sled.
9096991
Let's not argue with GM, if you can't OMH them.
9096613
Unless someone would bring a welding torch to RTG, it doesn't need special containment. RTG is akin to a low-power pellet reactor. It can't meltdown, it can't go critical or explode, it can't leak radioactive materials unless active zone will be mechanically destroyed.
9096991
We don't get an exact scientific explaination. All we are told is:
The reasons for this are never fully explored, HOWEVER, we can make some statements:
1)Despite the fact their are many fuels that do not rely on Carbon bonds, for example Hydrogen based fuels and Nitrogen based fuels, the problem of fuel teleporting is never fixed, and thus must always be carried with them. This SUGGESTS that its not just Carbon bonding that is the issue.
2) Silicon bonds are INCREDIBLY similar to carbon bonds. As in "If life in the universe isn't made of Carbon, its made of Silicon" levels of similar. They behave chemically in very similar manners, they have similar physical characteristics as atoms and this all makes sense as they are in the same Group. Thus, as they react very similarly chemically, but Silicon bonds are WEAKER, anything that disrupts a Carbon bond should disrupt a Silicon bond.
For this not to be true would imply that the disruption caused by teleporting has nothing to do with Activation Energy, or completely destroy our understanding of Covalent bonding. Both seem like a path Kris is unwilling to take. These stories have stuck reasonable close to Science fact, as far as having magical ponies has allowed.
3) Lastly, the Dragon Space Program, while (according to Chapter 1) it has folded into likely the ESP, was around long enough to get Fireball a long EVA time, and thus his part on the ship. If the Dragons got into Space, they would have likely used Twilight Sparkle's Water teleporter, AND being stubborn Dragons, would have tried to send Crystal over it, as "Stupid Ponies wouldn't have tested Dragon food."
Actually, if we are completely honest....they also would have likely tried the fuel test again as well, just because they don't trust ponies. So this would have been tested multiple times.
Long story short, the idea that this wasn't tried and failed by the Dragons before the launch of Amicitas makes no sense. And it HAD to have been failed because otherwise, when the ESP absorbed the DSP, they would have told them, "You don't need to carry Dragon Food, you can teleport it."
Combining these statements together makes it VERY unlikely that we can just Teleport the Quartz as a solution.
IN ADDITION: There is a small arch of the story based around trying to get "Salt" on Mars around chapter 105. If they could just send stuff "Dissolved or Mixed in Water" this would never have been an issue, as they could have sent Super Saturated Water through and then grow Salt Crystals.
Pity there's nothing they can put under the wheels at night, since that's probably the main source of heat loss. How big is the Whinneybago anyway? We have the weight, but I've been assuming it's salyut sized or smaller. Is that about right?
Out of interest, is there anything interesting happening with the resupply probes? It's been a while since we're heard about them.
9096618
I kinda doubt that they would freeze to death in less than hour without it
9097205
Actually ran the numbers, heat loss to atmosphere is bigger. Surprised me too.
9097247
How would they break it anyway, to such an extent as to no longer allow nuclear decay?
Transmutation / Time spell gone wrong?
9097302
Blame Starlight
9096618 9096643 9097247 9097302
It is extraordinarily unlikely* that anything the castaways could encounter would breach the RTG short of deliberately dismantling it. And a shadow shield could easily be built out of any remaining scrap metal or even rocks should they decide to reduce their risk of exposure further. 238Pu is primarily an alpha emitter (and a strong one, make no mistake about that) and thus requires very little shielding; it’s one of the reasons it’s the RTG heat source of choice for space missions.
Here’s a video dating back to the Galileo program on safety testing of the previous generation of RTGs to give you some idea of the failure scenarios taken into account when these things are designed. Safety testing begins at about 2:25.
* Note that I didn’t say impossible. When magic is involved, seemingly nothing is impossible.
9097299
I'd be curious about those numbers, though I suppose the fact that no mention of the whinneybago needing active cooling in the daytime should be a giveaway. I suppose in a way they should be glad they're logging all that quartz. It's probably helping to stabalise the internal temperature.
Has anyone considered hot water bottles? Any conventional sealed container should do. Fill them up in the evening, use them to keep things warm, then dump them out the airlock in the morning. Cabin would still getcold, but the crew might get a better night's sleep, and that is probably going to matter at some point.
9097797
These numbers should be taken with at minimum 3 grains of salt, considering i do not have much to base it off.
Loss at wheels = Less than 200W for a rover based on how long the things remained unplugged from the wall and with enough range to get home, Thus less then 500W for this combination.
Loss at surface = 500W - 5000W Depending on paints, isolation, Properties of superplussteel,... Based on guess of surface area, don't have that calculation stored.
Oh, and consider bleeding atmosphere, replace it with nice warm air.
Their hooves grow tiny two disgusting fingers and cross.
9097463 Always do.
9098115
When ever anything goes right, I always credit her for it. 😈
9097797
Hot water bottles aren’t a bad idea, but just cramming as much water as they can in at night would also help. The room temperature would stabilize around 0°C while the water goes through the phase change to ice. It’d start to drop again afterwards, and the ice would need to be dumped every day before setting out to keep the Whinnybago’s weight down, but it would slow the nightly cool down somewhat. They’d need some large buckets or bins that were tapered to make it easier to release the ice when upended.
9096665 The 'ponies' on Humanquestria are 'human'. We don't know exactly what the magic portal does with regard to germs and genetics, but clearly it makes some MAJOR changes.. such as turning a dragon into a dog... thus confirming even interdimensional principles consider Spike the butt-monkey of the show.
9096668
It doesn't seem that Fireball's food is actually required to be that heavy. His ration packs were a similar mass to everybody else's, just supplemented with a small amount of crystal. They might need to bring some Martian quartz for that if the Hermes resupply didn't address the need already, but most of his diet could be filled by human ration packs.
I don't remember whether his ability to live on crystal-supplemented potatoes has been addressed, which could be a weighty problem for the rover trip.
9096800
She might - you don't need a lot of telekinesis when you're in space. Particularly if she's got a partially-charged battery available.
But they really want to take along the Sparkle Drive too if at all possible, which probably requires docking the whole MAV. OTOH, the MAV-Hermes docking is something that those vessels are designed for. I don't remember what prevented that in the book...
9098716
Speed....well Velocity technically
The rocket was low on fuel as it was never meant to go to Mars twice before refueling. As such they could not slow down and enter Mars orbit. They had once shot for Mark to get on the rocket before it slungshot home.
IN THEORY this is less of a problem due to the Sparkle Drive. Note that I said less, not none due to 2 possible problems.
1) The Hermes is bigger then the MAV and humans generate less magic as such its possible that while there MAV cam teleport there Mark and the ponies home it could boot do so with the Hermes.
2) Its possible that even if the Sparkle Drive works on the Hermes, that the fuel saved won't be enough to enter then leave Mars orbit. After all, leaving a gravity well is far more fuel intense then flying between gravity wells and its THAT part that the Sparkle Drive really shines.
This is a completely separate problem, that probably do not need a solution:
https://youtu.be/84IA5OUzHDE
Edit:
Oops, that comments belongs to the first chapter, not the last...
Moved it here: 9099324
Yeah, so apparently Starlight might be good friends with Spitfire in the show. Now we just need her to make friends with Cherry Berry and my life will be complete. She already has the dragon and changeling with Spike and Thorax.
derpicdn.net/img/2018/7/28/1792162/full.png
Did we finall miss an update? That was one hell of a streak! :) Hope everything is going well, or at least OK.
9098767 Note: Hermes is STILL not going to orbit Mars. Flyby only. Otherwise the ponies could have just flown up in an unmodified, unboosted MAV.
Short but fine. Good question. What is the equivalent of fingers crossed?