My Little Pony: My Little Pony The Martian

Mission Log – Solar Day 195

Let’s talk about food.

Today is the fourth day in a row that I've made the decision to eat nothing but potatoes and dried alfalfa, and I'm sure you can understand why I don't even want to think about it now.

I have three hundred and thirteen food packets for myself and keep forty-nine packets for the three ponies. That's enough food to last me about one hundred and forty days, or seven for the ponies, if I limit my intake to two-thirds. Considering that we need to prepare seven days of onboard food for the MAV in case of emergency and return to Earth directly, all forty-nine vegetarian food packages were requisitioned, including sixteen for myself.

The average weight of each food packet is about 126.7 grams, which means that the total weight of so many food packets is about 22.75 kilograms. The total food package to be eaten on the spacecraft is only 0 kilograms, but the geniuses at NASA who are responsible for designing the plan for us to go to Schiaparelli and take the MAV to space are obviously not satisfied with this. I'm not saying, if they can find a way to make us feed on love like dragonflies for a week (a full week of love is only kilograms), they will definitely do it by any means.

The problem was that no matter how long it took to get to Schiaparelli and prepare the MAV for liftoff, it was clear that the food packages we had on hand were not going to be enough. That meant we had to carry hay potatoes with us - a whole lot of hay potatoes.

According to the current plan, we will arrive at our destination on solar day 501, and the next fifty days can be used to implement various necessary transformation works. Current estimates from the JSC Dream Team show that the entire journey, including various unexpected delays and increased load on the rover, will take approximately days. Their plan is basically to put Friendship on the chassis of rover No. , add a few more wheels, and it will become a decent simple travel trailer that can be towed behind rover No. .

That’s right, an oversized heavyweight travel trailer. It’s not an exaggeration to call it a mobile home.

Such an astonishing weight will also significantly affect our maximum daily mileage, which is why even if we try every means, the estimated data given by the big guys is only an average of 35 kilometers per day.

So we spent the whole day today finishing the disassembly work of the Friendship, stripping off the outer skin completely. After we are done, we will place the middle section of the fuselage on a large pile of temporarily piled rocks, remove the tail thruster and main engine, and finally remove the rear half of the spacecraft directly. These tasks require magical assistance to complete, but Starlight insists on waiting until the next round of batteries is completed. During this period, magic is not allowed to be used extensively, so this last step will have to be postponed for at least a few more weeks. The waiting time cannot be wasted. We will clean everything that can be dismantled inside and outside the spacecraft.

Those cabinet doors in the living quarters and galley? All gone. We may also remove the cabinets themselves later on - the compartments are built around them, so moving them out of the airlock door may be troublesome. Co-pilot flight control system? Goodbye to you. Two spare flight seats? See you soon. (This leaves five seats, three of which were rebuilt using MDV flight seat parts and will be installed on the MAV after we arrive at Schiaparelli.) All other equipment is treated equally, as long as We agree that any items that have no use value during or after the trip will be disposed of as scrap. The lighter our DIY RV is, the less energy it requires to move, so the longer the mileage it can continuously travel after each full charge.

But the problem is, we need not only food, but also space. For us, the space requirement is even more urgent to some extent, because currently there is almost zero free space left for us in the rover. However, the more space we need, the better, otherwise it will be like being shut in. Same embarrassment in a moving sardine can.

The situation is this. I mentioned before that the food packs we were carrying on this trip weighed more than a quarter of a ton, but the packaging design of the food packs themselves was extremely compact and easy to stack vertically, so the actual space occupied was much smaller than the weight. It's not worth mentioning at all. The storage space on the pony spaceship was originally designed to store more than 600 food packages. It was a piece of cake to put our food storage into it this time.

But dry foods like alfalfa and freeze-dried potatoes are looser in comparison—and much heavier. One kilogram of alfalfa and/or potatoes contains as much energy as three-quarters of a food packet (approximately eight hundred grams). Potatoes take up about half the space of so many food parcels, and hay rolls take up more than twice that.

Fortunately, we still have Fireball, which can survive on just a few mouthfuls of gems. After all, the ore sinks very heavily and is much denser. But even so, the fireball still had to eat at least 157 kilograms of gems along the way.

In other words: in order to meet the food needs for these 150 days, we have to add an additional 607 kilograms of load to the 127 kilograms of food packages, which is equivalent to a full four points if rounded up. With a mass of three tons, it will basically occupy all the storage space in the Friendship's living cabin. You know, we haven't counted the other messy things we have to carry on this trip.

This is far beyond what we can afford. As mentioned in the previous news to us, this time we have to rely on the Friendship's onboard life support system to survive the entire journey, which is connected to the No. 2 rover through a traction dock. There was no oxygenator, no water recycling machine, no air conditioner, and we had less than fifty liters (fifty kilograms) of emergency backup water. It’s not that someone at NASA is being clever; when the weight of such a card is so heavy that it cannot even carry a backup for a mission-critical system that is completely irreparable, it means that even they have no time to consider the safety margin and have to A dangerous move dances on the tip of the knife. We cannot afford to eat this three-quarters of a ton of food.

I propose two solutions to this. The first is to find ways to shorten the trip. There are a hundred solar days to travel on the road, a time span that is exaggerated for us anyway. The less time we spend on the journey, the longer we can live in the relatively spacious and safe environment of the cabin, and the amount of food we prepare for the journey can also be reduced a lot.

The other is to recreate the pathfinder journey of Starlight and I. The No. 2 rover, which has been modified to some extent, is equipped with 14 solar panels that were used in previous journeys. The maximum daily mileage can reach twice that of the towing plan. Therefore, I can carry a large number of food bags - the total amount can roughly sustain us for a hundred days - and place them at convenient locations along the road to the MAV every ten days (for example, about 700 kilometers) to find for the actual journey. Buffering food sources used in.

(Why one hundred days? The ten-day trip on the No. 2 rover takes twenty days in the trailer plan. During these twenty days, food for five people needs to be considered, which means waiting until the rover and trailer arrive. One hundred food packets will be eaten at each buffer point.)

This second option also has many problems. First of all, the weight that can be saved is less than 80 kilograms, but it requires me and Starlight (or another person) to be locked in the rover and live a long self-isolated life for twenty days; We are ready to make a move, maybe we will end each other directly. And the conditions were much better last time. Sealed food packages are easy to store, unlike hay potatoes that are scattered and easy to spoil. Maybe those nerds can figure out how to do it.

In contrast, I am more inclined to study methods to speed up travel, which are much more reasonable to implement. If we could cut travel time in half - which would average out to about 70 kilometers per day - we could reduce the weight of food required by a third. Saving a quarter of a ton is already a very good result.

But the food issue that concerns me the most now is actually that I cannot eat any food except potatoes and alfalfa before solar day 412. There are still two hundred and seventeen solar days left to go.

Suddenly I remembered: I haven't calculated how much salt weighs. This time we are sure to eat a lot along the way, and to be honest, we are almost running out of salt now. I need to go talk to Starlight.

But for now, let's go back and deal with the affairs of the Friendship first, and sweep away all the dispensable and insignificant things, such as the fuselage skin bolts, partition doors, landing gear, wing thrusters and other burdens at once.

Now doesn't seem like the right time to make such a joke. I can’t even imagine how they will let us start when we modify the MAV later. Just thinking about this makes me shiver...

The crystal component used in the standard life support system carried by all Malaysian spacecraft is corundum - ruby ​​for hot water, sapphire for cold water, and emerald for air supply. These crystals are very durable, non-flammable, and easy to enchant, but they are easily broken if they encounter strong shock waves or collisions. In view of this, the Amicitas airborne life support system introduced pressure wave baffles to block explosions and small shock-absorbing springs to protect crystals in collision scenarios to deal with the above problems.

Each crystal is linked by mysterious magic to large crystals mined from the same ore in mother worlds that span several universes and are millions of miles apart. As long as the system is active, this large crystal continues to absorb water or air at one end of the link and transports it to a smaller crystal at the other end of the link. The process of air transportation is more complicated. It not only transports the air to the destination, but also carries a part of the air back to form an air circulation to prevent possible carbon dioxide accumulation accidents.

The spell will terminate on its own while the system is inactive. The magical link between the crystals still exists, but unless the system is reactivated by either end, the small crystals will no longer make any physical transfers.

As long as you have the ability to understand this mind-blowing fantasy theory that actually turns the magical link between crystals into some form of magical wormhole, the structure of the entire system seems to be very simple and effective. . However, the only significant flaw in this system is very stubborn. Twilight summoned many unicorn/non-unicorn elite scientists and mages to brainstorm for a long time but failed to solve it well: this magic that essentially uses teleportation The wormhole link is very handy for dealing with general air, water, and even stable substances with simple molecular structures... But when it comes to molecules with complex structures, enemies will definitely be jealous when they meet.

Simply put, basically any combustible substance will, with some chance, immediately spontaneously ignite upon being delivered to the other end of the system. However, this does not represent the overall chance of spontaneous combustion (for example, the overall chance of a substance exploding is 30%); the so-called "probability" here refers to each individual molecule. To give just one example, if you input half a gallon of ethanol at one end of the system, the output at the other end is the reaction products of about 70% alcohol and 30% water, hydrogen molecules, carbon dioxide, etc. This is accompanied by enough heat to ignite the remaining alcohol in the presence of an oxidizing agent. Relevant experiments have been conducted many times, and in addition to alcohol, there are also petrochemical products and various flammable solid liquids, resulting in varying degrees of destruction and/or flames.

One of the infamous experiments even used actual cup cakes. The decomposition of carbohydrates during the transmission process generates a large amount of heat and by-products, which envelop the unaffected remaining substances, turning into a horrible and disgusting hot mud, and a Rafflesia blooms at the receiving end.

The ponies led by Twilight Sparkle once conducted experiments to explore the feasibility of using this feature as a rocket engine; the problem is that the high temperature generated in this process and the shock waves and expanding gases caused by deflagration often work together to destroy life support. The system crystal exploded into pieces within seconds. Various related experiments continued for four years after the system was officially invented. However, whether the purpose of the experiment was to build a rocket or to prevent this system from becoming a rocket that exploded into the sky, only a very limited amount of progress was made.

In the early stages of deployment, the air delivery system used a pure nitrogen-oxygen mixture with a composition of 75%:25%. After extensive experimentation and tuning of the system, it was decided that transporting ordinary air would not pose a safety issue, despite traces of methane in the atmosphere. Everyone was finally relieved; after all, the impact of long-term consumption of flight meals on the digestive tract of space horses is a safety hazard that cannot be ignored. Trace amounts of methane will gradually oxidize, decompose and dilute into the surrounding environment during the transmission process, which will basically not cause the temperature at both ends of the system to rise significantly, which means that this problem does not exist under normal operating conditions.

However, just in case, each life support system has a special spell set on the horse side. If the crystal at either end of the transmission link is heated above a certain temperature, the valve will be triggered to automatically shut down and stop the operation of the system on the opposite side. . This safety measure is intended to prevent flames or potentially toxic smoke from spreading via the magic link in the event of a fire, and like other failsafe measures can only be overridden and reset on the crystal side of the Malaysian drive's emergency shutdown system.

In a well-known cave somewhere on Mars, a bubble of methane hydrate trapped in a patch of permafrost has thawed. Different from the previous trickle of methane released, the large bubbles that suddenly regained their freedom this time were not willing to accept the fate of most of their predecessors being trapped in the soil and absorbed by bacteria. Instead, they broke through the layers of artificial soil and left behind A ventilation opening approximately five centimeters square and five meters deep.

As more and more methane comes to light in successive small eruptions, the released gas continues to circulate and spread in the cave air, gradually drifting toward the air inlet of the life-support system equipment box.

The temperature of the air transmission crystal at the other end of the system was only a few degrees higher than room temperature. At this moment, a cluster of flickering flames flickered on the surface and quietly licked the crystal.

After a while, the crystal is heated by the flame to the set dangerous critical temperature, and the fault protection measures are activated.

The alarm bell in the Life Support System Management Building at Cape Friendship, Malaysia suddenly rang.

In a small cave on Mars, the circulation of air stopped. The work indicator light of the life support system component, the only source of light in the cave at night, is now extinguished.

The cave stagnated in boundless silence, returning to the tranquility that had lasted undisturbed for billions of years before the invaders arrived.

But a certain creature who thought he could hear the whispers in the cave didn't sense it this time, and my silence here turned into a big deal.