AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 524
ARES III SOL 514
TRANSCRIPT – VIDEO TRANSMISSION FROM ARES IV MAV, BEGINNING 16:11 HOURS (ARES III CLOCK)
MARK WATNEY: Hello, Johanssen. Sorry we’re getting a late start today, but Starlight and I tackled the first stage engine removal today. It was a lot of hard work, mostly because we had to remove one of the outer ring of engines to make room to get at the middle one. And we got just a little bit nervous lifting up the ascent stages, because it would really have sucked if the launch program triggered while I was under the thing. But it didn’t, and it’s back on the landing stage, all nice and secure again. Tomorrow we go in and install the booster targets where the central engine was. More hard work, and expensive on magic, but once those tasks are done the worst is over.
Anyway, I hope you don’t mind my eating lunch between questions. We all worked through normal lunchtime. As you can see, my lunch is a beef Stroganoff entrée and three potatoes. I dip the potatoes into the beef pack before I eat them. That way I feel like murder only a little bit.
BETH JOHANSSEN: Good morning, Mark. It’s morning shift on Hermes right now. Fortunately, our scheduled flyby and rendezvous on Sol 551 will also be in the morning, so we don’t have to change sleep shifts. We’ll be ready and alert when the time comes.
Okay. Here’s the first question. Um. Mark, remember, I didn’t write these, okay? The question is, “How do you feel about being the only human on the face of Mars for so long?”
WATNEY: Wow. Start with the big ones first, huh? Well, not a sol goes by that I don’t miss you guys, all of you on Hermes. But at the same time, well, I’ve got my new friends. And maybe they’re not human, but they’re still people. So it’s not like I’m absolutely alone. God, if I had been I might really have gone nuts. Maybe paint a face on Rover 2 and call it Wilson or something.
Anyway, next question?
JOHANSSEN: “We’ve been reading your logs. You seem to tell a lot of jokes. Where do you come up with them?”
WATNEY: Well, I’ll let you in on a little secret. I met some other aliens. They’re gray and tall and skinny, with heads like those Easter Island statues. About once a month they give me some lame jokes, and I let them pet the ponies for an hour.
Now obviously that’s not true. The truth is, that sort of thing just pops into my head sometimes, especially when I’m angry or stressed out. And I get really angry at this place sometimes.
DRAGONFLY: It’s true, he does!
WATNEY: Hey! Wait your own turn! Haven’t you got some snuggle seconds to go eat?
DRAGONFLY: Seriously, if he could blast Mars into a million pieces, he would.
WATNEY: Go on, move it! Yeah, anyway. Making bad jokes makes me feel better, like this fucked-up situation is somehow under control.
Oops. I promised NASA I’d try to watch the language. This effed up situation.
JOHANSSEN: Next question. I promise, Mark, I didn’t make these. “What’s with the potty mouth?”
WATNEY: Now that one has Venkat Kapoor written all over it. Well, I’ll tell you. When I wrote the early log entries, I really expected to die here. NASA believes that astronauts should be perfect, morally upstanding examples to the world, right down to not knowing a single swear word. Well, the truth is, astronauts swear just as much as anyone else, or as little. Martinez swears as much as I do, and he’s a good Catholic boy. And I’ve caught Lewis a time or two letting one slip. But you and Vogel never cuss at all.
But back to my point, spending months expecting to die kind of put NASA rules about clean language in perspective. Bad language makes me feel better, so I use it. And if some sensitive soul is upset because I said a dirty word, well, fuck ‘em. They get a vote once they’ve spent some time marooned on another planet.
All that said, I really am trying to do a little better. NASA is going to a lot of trouble to bring me home, and the least I can do is not add to that trouble. But it’s a hard habit to break, especially since I’m still millions of miles from anyone else who cares. See, I could have said, “who gives a shit,” but I didn’t! I’m getting better! Next question.
JOHANSSEN: Um, okay. Next question… “what have you got against potatoes?”
WATNEY: What have I got against them? Nothing! Potatoes are easy to grow, adapt to a broad range of environments, and provide high calorie content plus a respectable nutrient and protein load if you leave the skins on. They’re not nature’s perfect food, but they’re pretty good, especially in a desperate struggle for survival.
And before this trip I used to like potatoes. Baked, fries, hash browns, fritters- I even tried latkes a couple times. They were pretty good. But when you eat one thing, ANY one thing, the exact same one thing, over and over again for a year, you’re going to get really tired of that one thing. And as you might tell by the faces I’ve been making as I eat, I am absolutely done with microwave baked potatoes. Maybe I’ll change my mind after I spend some time eating other foods. Seventy or eighty years ought to do it. Next?
JOHANSSEN: Next one: “What’s it like, being humanity’s sole representative to our first alien visitors?”
WATNEY: If you want to be honest, really messed up. I mean, you’d expect a first contact to be carefully planned, the best of one world seeking out the best of the other and making one small step at a time. What we got instead was a whole series of extremely improbable events that ended with five aliens and one Earthman on Mars. And believe me, nobody, least of all me, would have picked me to represent all humankind to a bunch of shipwrecked aliens.
Early on I was really nervous. I mean, this is the biggest opportunity anyone’s ever had, and if I said the wrong thing, history would say, “And that was Mark Watney, the biggest fuckup humanity ever had the misfortune to spawn.” But it helped when I figured out that the ponies weren’t chosen for this any more than I was. We just focused on surviving and working together without killing each other, and we kicked diplomacy up our chains of command. Next?
JOHANSSEN: “How does it feel to have met, lived with, and worked with, what was previously considered mythical creatures?”
WATNEY: About like this: “Oh those silly ponies and things, how cute they are, HEY THAT ALMOST KILLED US ALL huh that’s interesting MY GOD ARE YOU SUICIDAL oh the diabetes OMFG DID YOU SEE THAT THAT WAS AMAZING!” Yeah, that seems about right.
Seriously, they’re already interdimensional aliens from a culture which is remarkably close to, and yet in some respects radically different from, our own. The fact that they resemble some of our own myths is still kind of small potatoes, pardon the phrase, compared to that.
JOHANSSEN: “What effects have you experienced as a result of being exposed to the ‘magic fields’ the aliens make?”
WATNEY: I could make a joke, but the honest truth is, I have no idea. The ponies say Earth should have its own magic field from all the life there, but we won’t know until we can test it somehow. One thing I know for sure is, NASA doctors and scientists will be examining my body for any interesting changes for years to come. If there’s anything different about me, they’ll find it.
JOHANSSEN: “Is magic still magical to you?”
WATNEY: Hmmm… that one’s actually a good question. I’ve been living around magic since Sol 17, more or less. And I’ve gotten used to the idea that magic is a tool that can be used to make life easier- or, here on Mars, to make it even possible.
But there are still moments- and it’s not always the big moments- when I sit up and think, Holy shit, this is a unicorn holding a wrench with nothing but the power of her mind, things like that. So yeah, it’s still magical to me.
But you know what else is? Growing plants. Think about it. We know how plants do it, and we know the conditions to encourage plant growth, but we can’t actually make plants grow. They do it for themselves. One time we can work our asses off and end up with a barren field, and another time we just have to wave the plow at the dirt and the crops just jump right up.
And as tired as I am of being in space, it’s pretty magical too. It’s unimaginably vast and empty, except for the occasional planet or moon or star. No two planets we’ve discovered in this universe are alike. And the views are just incredible.
So I think you make your own magic. Everything’s a miracle.
JOHANSSEN: Um… again, not me. “Considering the traditional first thing about learning a language, what are the curse/obscene/bad words of the pony language?”
WATNEY: Well, almost every time I try to speak pony I say something horribly obscene by accident. You’d think I’d have a huge vocabulary of pony swear words, but I don’t. As far as I can tell, ponies don’t actually have cursing rougher than “shucks” or “darn” or, in dire circumstances, “roadapples.” What they have is a lot of double-meaning words that can be either innocent or filthy depending on use. Their F-bomb is (unintelligible), which means buck, or a full-body kick that ends with lashing out with the hind hooves. And it also means exactly what you think it means.
JOHANSSEN: “Mark, in the event Hermes has to take the long way back, will your roleplaying games continue? Do you plan to expand them to include the rest of the Hermes crew, and who among the eleven of you would have the most evil gamemaster laugh?”
WATNEY: Um… did a reporter actually write that one? Really? Whatever. If the Sparkle Drive doesn’t work out, maybe we’ll keep playing and maybe we won’t. Out of the Ares crew, Johanssen was the only active gamer. Commander Lewis had slung some dice as a junior officer, and I played in high school and some in college, but we didn’t have time to do any of that while training. And so far as I know, Martinez, Beck and Vogel just aren’t interested.
But I’d pick Vogel for most evil GM laugh, because he’s German. The problem is, I’ve never actually heard him laugh. No one hears Alexander Vogel laugh… and lives…
JOHANSSEN: That’s not true, Mark. Vogel laughs all the time. Just a gentle little chuckle. Next question: “What things were unexpectedly useful on your mission?”
WATNEY: Oh, come on, don’t you want to help build the legend of Vogel, Ares III mad scientist and supervillain? Well, anyway, there’s a huge list of expectedly useful items, like the duck tape, the sample containers, the spare electric cables… but the most unexpectedly useful things were the whiteboards and dry-erase markers. We pretty much destroyed those whiteboards re-using them. Whether using them to work out grammar or make plans for building something or other, they were more useful than anyone could have imagined when NASA included them in Ares standard supplies.
JOHANSSEN: Um… I’m not even sure I should ask this… “who is best alien?”
WATNEY: Shame, whoever wrote that question! I don’t play favorites among my alien buds! I like them all equally!
DRAGONFLY: It’s totally me.
WATNEY: Will you get out of here??
JOHANSSEN: Last question… “We heard that a couple of your crewmates…” um… “…got engaged. Do you have your eye on anyone, in a romantic sense?"
WATNEY: Sorry, everyone, but I was too busy to date for more than a year before launch. And for the dirty-minded among you, there’s nothing going on between me and any of the aliens.
DRAGONFLY: Also true, darn it.
WATNEY: Ugh… anyway, once I get back to Earth, I’m going to be too busy just learning how to be among other humans again for any romance. So sorry, ladies, but I’m off the market for now.
JOHANSSEN: Okay, that’s it. Thanks, Mark, I’ll send the recording immediately. Hermes out.
WATNEY: Thanks, Beth. Friendship out.
Now I feel really bad for Dragonfly...
Now we wait for her to confess her love
Health before story please.
So that's Mars's secret weapon. To keep them from escaping alive, it'll simply make the author too sick to ever write that scene!
No but seriously take care of yourself. You've updated this daily for months. Get better.
Darn show stealing bug...
(Kidding Dragonfly, we love you)
#hugabug
I know there’s no alien romance, I know there’s not going to BE alien romance... don’t care, still shipping him with Shimmer or Dragonfly.
#spaceshipping
Hope you feel better. I hadn’t considered that working booths must mean a constant case of the con flu :(
I hope you feel better, man. Take a break from writing if you need it
don't worry mark there are dating sims to help you to get back into the game..... or make you into a shut-in that hate sun light
9187676
Absolutely. While it'd be sad to see the streak broken and I'm rooting to see a chapter tomorrow, that's because I'm pulling for you to be healthy enough to write it.
Take care of yourself first. Hope you get better quick!
Health before story please.
(seconded)
9187675
Several months later, on Equus...
Ursula is Chrysalis in this scenario.
#kissabug
#spaceshipping
I kid, of course. Dragonfly has quite alot to say, thank you.
#butseriously
#kissabug
I fully expect Fireball to be asked stupid stuff related to mythical dragons.
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I'll
secondthirdfourth these comments: get better is first priority, anything else is second (or third or fourth or whatever).If you gotta take a few days off writing to kick that fever's arse, then we'll all be waiting patiently for your victorious return. With expectations of hearing the tale of the glorious battle between Kris Overstreet and the Triple-digit°F Fever!
Ooh, yikes, sorry; I hope you feel better soon.
Too many Cons, too much cross con crud hybridising and coming up with new ways to kill you.
Dont forget, unwashed hands have killed more people than all the wars put together, infectious agent transmission.
As for most evil games master laugh?
Starlight Glimmer.
Eat healthy! Drink lots of fluids! Get lots of sleep!
Take care of yourself!
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More like Earth... With a large magic field she could stay human longer with no drain
Hope you feel better soon.
Dragonfly really stole the show here. Not that I mind at all.
Also, #Spaceshipping
Right now, I agree with Dragonfly about "best alien". She is very complicated, but lovable.
Hope you get to feeling better! That kind of stuff can land you in a hospital, I can attest.
Honestly, take care of yourself as well as you can, or have someone do it for you.
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To be fair, I think she's more upset at the fact that there's nothing going on between Mark and any of the other crew, because there's no excess Love she can feed upon as a byproduct.
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That devious motherbucker.
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You're reminding me of various discussions on how unlimited ANYTHING is a game breaker.
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True, I put it in Equestria to have the option for singing wildlife but...
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Probably. But since when has simple reality had ANY bearing on the audience?
#spaceshipping
9187676
Very this.
As much as I enjoy story, we must avoid author existence failure at all costs.
9187836
Remember, last chapter Kris had in Equestria he said it was likely the last time that we would see Eques in the whole story...
Alternate version:
DRAGONFLY: "Sadly, he's telling the truth about that. But I'm on board with it if he's interested. *wink* *wink* *nudge* nudge*"
MARK: "Oh for the love of...get off camera, you pest!"
DRAGONFLY: "I'd love to get off. You want to help me with that?"
MARK: *facepalm*
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You win
Hope you feel better soon! Triple digit fevers are no joke! Take some time off from the writing to get well again.
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Mark: Ugh, why me?
Dragonfly: I've just been feeling so guilty, let me make it up to you. You wouldn't say no to these eyes would you?
Mark: You're forgiven. Again. Go play with a wrench or...something.
Dragonfly: I'm just saying, there are much more enjoyable ways I could eat you...
Mark: OUT!
I hope next chapter we will see affairs on the Earth (NASA or/and public mood (lats thing wasn't shown for long time) or/and Equus.
Starlight's interview should be next.
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To be fair, Ms Cuddlebug has been stealing the show since day 1
*shipping intensifies*
But seriously Bestbug is such a troll. But possibly extremely thirsty.
Fireballs interview is probably going to be cringe. Dragon and Human PR just don’t mix. But I do want to see Spitfire kinda wax poetic about Wonderbolts.
Would also like to see more Earth/Equus stuff.
Lastly I am amazed you can put out such quality each day, especially while sick!
Oh no! He is boiling!
Oh. This is Fahrenheit scale. This is a severe fever.
You need some time to rest, it's not like Mars kill everyone if you don't write chapters for couple of days.
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Well of course Glimmer has the best villainous laughter. She actually has experience being a villain. No one else does really. Dragonfly was only a nameless mook in the Bad Old Times.
So looking forward to the next interviews, this chapter was really fun. And hey, the news outlets managed to only be slightly offensive and cringey!
I think you're missing a closing quotation mark. Don't rush to correct it, but at least I'm documenting it here so that it's known about.
NOOOOOOOOOO!!
I desperately wanted to believe those two had done it, just for the cute and Kirk factor, but damn.
Well, there's always Earth after the rescue. Or Hermes
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Keep in mind that until they get to Hermes they have basically no privacy. And if you think Spitfire would keep the sarcastic peanut gallery to herself...actually that’s kind of a hillarious image but I don’t think it would get mark in the mood at all.
Not to mention it would make the cuddle piles awkward.
“Used to stink like monkey. Now stinks like Changeling goo.”
“It does not. And that’s rich coming from the guy who snores smoke.”
Dragonfly/Death Box OTP.
Vogel: [Drops a heavy crate on his foot] Aaaah! Gottverdammte Schweinef***erscheiße!!
Watney: What was that?
Vogel: Uh… I said, "Oh, that hurt a lot. I should endeavour not to do that again."
Watney: Riiiiight…
Martinez: [grinning] Such a beautiful language. We should all learn some German, so we can understand Vogel when says something like that.
Vogel: No, that's okay; no need to bother. [sweatdrop]
Whoa dude. I'm sure you hear this a lot but if you're not well, there's no updates OR booth-selling. So, take care of yourself first. I'm sure we'd understand if you had to take a day or two to get well!
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Considering comparison to KSP, the suit thrusters have about 500m/s of delta-V. You won't get that much by dumping 200kg from the top stage. Pulling Mark along, in case of missed rendez-vous, the ponies will be able to fly to Hermes on their own.
Suit thrusters are useless in this universe. Look at how quickly the suit died when Spitfire enabled just the navball.
Their suits can provide life support indefinitely. That means they would even be able to rig cold gas thrusters, lousy ISp and thrust but unlimited delta-V. So, again, a chance to fix a missed rendez-vous.
Correct. I agree. But personally I'd put the cold gas thrusters on the MAV.
With Starlight's magic, EVA fixes go way beyond "what you have redundant parts for". She'd be even able to fix Hermes systems that otherwise would mean death of the entire Ares crew. But she needs to see what she fixes. Meaning EVA suit at least for her.
She can feel by magic. And teleport small objects.
As demonstrated by teleporting a spoon from friendship for fireball to eat perchlorates.
Alternatively she can use a camera in her telekinesis and use it to see.
...and many more such problems solvable by friggin *magical EVA suits*. So, by risk management standards, the redundancy/repairability/survivability these suits provide beats pretty much any other redundancies one could provide.
These suits are in extremely poor condition. They add risk whenever used.
BTW, the extra engine would reduce delta-V, and provide just enough thrust to kill the weakened crew through excessive acceleration.
True, Delta-v would be reduced. But not by that much:
Hope you get to feeling better Chris. if you've got one of those lunchbox sized Coolers, fill it with the Flexible blue Ice packs (frozen of Course). Take one wrap it in a tshirt so it has at least a double layer of cloth. use the shirt to tie it along the back of your neck.
One Day maybe 7-11 or oit assorted cousins, will start stocking a shelf in the freezer with the Gel packs...
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I'm still hoping that hers is last, and that she drops a bombshell about goddess-princesses telekinetically moving celestial objects without understanding why it's a big deal.
NASA was reluctant to do a live interview for exactly the reason that something crazy might happen. Would hate to disappoint them.
Yeah, poor Dragonfly, has to make do with friendship hugs...
This was a good blend of thoughtful and silly! And I think it's a better display of friendship than anything Mark could say that Dragonfly is there just casually trolling the answers
One imagines the interview ended, the laptop was put away, and only then did Mark realise that Spitfire had been lurking in the background the whole time, arse-first.
Get home, wrap up, go to sleep. We'll be here Tuesday.
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Friendzone, the diet buffet.
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For a MAV that is accelerated by the engines alone, without aid of a magic pusher, and under full load of 6 crew, and all the redundant systems. And with fully healthy crew. This means they'd likely never break 6g. Throttling engines is wasteful - lower chamber pressure, lower exhaust speed, worse specific impulse; it's better to operate fewer engines at full power. And in case of a symmetric ring layout, in case of an engine failure you just disable an engine opposite to it and continue on the remainder. An extra central engine won't be all that helpful. And you may want to limit the top acceleration by switching some engines off as your TWR grows anyway.
And last but not least they need a good place with a firm support for the target crystals. I don't think gluing them around MAV with changeling goo would be good enough.
And as for savings due to reducing time to orbit: you way overestimate the gravity losses caused by Mars.
3,400 m/s of Mars LEO speed. until gravity losses are zero. Starting at 6g (or make it 6.37g, to account for Mars gravity), that's ~60m/s^2 of usable acceleration and 3.7m/s^2 of losses. Assuming just 6g sustained, that's 56 seconds. Assuming (wrongly) the losses don't fall at all until full orbital speed, you'd have about 200m/s to gravity losses.
Now let's plug 8g instead. 42.5s, and 160m/s of lost delta-V. You just saved 40m/s. Out of 3,400 m/s. And from that point on the engine just adds to dry mass of the stage (which will still burn for a while) never mind what it cost to bring it to the orbit already.
Considering the losses are even smaller because they drop as the ship approaches orbital velocity, the savings would be even smaller. Less than 1% of delta-V to orbit.
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Maybe not, but Chrysalis would likely love it.
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What he said. I got some other fics that can keep me busy until you’re 100%.