My Little Pony: My Little Pony The Martian

Mission Log – Solar Day 207

Today is a rest day. It is not only our body that needs to be relaxed, but also the nerves that have been tense for a long time. After the small accident of overpressure in the cave airlock on Sol 196, we spent a full ten days trying to save the cave farm in every possible way. In addition, I spent the whole day yesterday busy making up for the long-term neglect of equipment in the living area. The consequences of maintenance. Today I finally had the opportunity to lie down and stretch out my sore and tired back muscles, while the aliens were killing their time in boredom. But Ting Ting is an exception; she went to the cave alone today for daily maintenance inspections.

Then let's briefly report on the situation now.

Habitat Module - No evidence of structural defects was found around the cabin canvas and airlocks two/three. Both the air conditioner and the oxygen synthesizer are operating at a rated efficiency of about 97%. In my opinion, this data is very good; their current operating environment can be described as very harsh. Putting aside other miscellaneous things, the primary natural enemy is actually It's a lot of hair floating in the air. Cleaning the filtration system almost killed me; luckily the air filtration system uses a filter element that can be reused after cleaning, otherwise we would be out of luck. I don't mean to exaggerate: the pile of lint and scraps you clean out can be used to start a fire. But maybe there will be such a need in the future, so I now collect them in a small sample box to prepare for emergencies.

Interlude: At that time, I made a few remarks about my collecting habit. Fireball heard this and asked me what I thought about it. What I said at the time was, if you were a dragon, I would naturally have no objection, but humans generally do not hoard gold, silver, and jewelry. Instead, they tend to collect old newspapers, waste wrapping paper, dirty dishes, old medicines, or Cats and many other weird things. It turns out that after hearing what I said, Berry wanted us to have newspapers, Starlight wanted wrapping paper, and Spitfire just wanted more medicines, old or not. It seems that I didn't speak clearly.

Back to the topic, there was a big trouble in front of me at that time: the water recycling machine collapsed. Since various toxic substances that may exist more or less in the Martian soil have to be guarded against, decontamination sprays are definitely a necessity for life here on Mars. The Ares 1 mission demonstrates this. But decontamination showers, which were originally designed to clean light to moderate dust adhering to the surface of space suits, clothing or skin, are now completely beyond the scope of their design capabilities to deal with black, sticky and smelly sludge laden with various bacteria. It has shut down twice in the past week due to clogged pipes, and each time I had to troubleshoot and clear the pipes before I could take a shower.

As a result, it went on strike again yesterday, but this time for a completely different reason. The wastewater holding tank is full.

The "wastewater" here does not refer to toilet sewage. The toilet has its own independent sewage treatment facility. All recyclable water will be extracted from urine and feces, and then the solid residue will be vacuum-sealed, packed into small bags, and stacked in an area behind the living cabin. (Of course, there is no such treatment method at all now; even if we had transferred the feces and urine to a bucket for other uses for several months, the sealed packaging bags in the toilet had long been used up.) The wastewater storage tank is connected. It is the sewer pipe for laboratories, kitchen sinks and decontamination showers. Now the container is basically filled with long-term sedimentation - which means it can no longer hold sewage. When encountering a situation where the storage tank is full, the water recovery machine will directly treat it as a fault, automatically shut down and notify the engineer (that is, me) to solve the problem.

Although it took a lot of trouble to remove the sewage tank full of silt, it was relatively easy compared to the subsequent operations. The connection valve was almost clogged with mud and it took me half an hour to close it so water wouldn't spray everywhere when I disconnected the line. Later, I found that I couldn't move this heavy thing. I tried to force it to work, but it seemed that I hurt my back. In the end, I asked Fireball to move it. Then I installed the only alternative I could find - an empty CO2 tank from the MAV fuel generator to use as a waste water tank. The capacity is much smaller than the original water tank, but the valves and interface fittings are all standard sizes. Anyway, I can make do with it in the short term, as long as the water recovery function can temporarily run.

After removing the old sewage storage tank, I have two options for solving the problem: one is to let my all-powerful unicorn (which is really a good helper for home and travel) use magic to get rid of this mess, or I can You can also manually flush the tank repeatedly until all the sludge is removed. Unfortunately, my Unicorn assistant was on strike because of the magic battery thing, and she didn't consider deteriorating sanitary conditions an emergency. (Considering how smelly we will be before we get out of the shower, is there any room for negotiation...)

It seems that I can only flush the water tank myself. Wash, wash, wash hard, wash endlessly.

The problem is that much Martian soil contains basalt. Basalt dust will stick together after being soaked in water, and sometimes even form chemical bonds. The ancient Romans made the world's first underwater concrete by mixing this stuff with quicklime. Coupled with a large number of various metabolic decomposition products of aerobic and anaerobic soil bacteria, it becomes the ultimate invincible stubborn dirt that even Mr. Mighty can only express his powerlessness about.

So I wasted about 80% of the fresh water resources in the residential area in order to get rid of these old stubborns in the water tank, but in the end I still couldn't move any of these dirt. No matter how many times I rinse it, the sewage that comes out is still black and smelly and disgusting. We took all the sewage directly outside the airlock and dumped it.

Of course, the water shortage in residential areas will be gradually replenished. The ponies use their nearly inexhaustible supply of space suit water to irrigate the settlement farm every day. Not all the water absorbed by the plant is used to build new lignin, and the remaining unused part is expelled through the respiratory pores of the leaves. In this way, the humidity in the air will increase, and then the excess moisture will be absorbed by the air conditioner, shunted to the water recycling machine, and finally purified and stored. And if we really have an urgent need, we can also ask Xiao Ma and his superiors to directly override the shutdown protection measures of their space suits and rely on the space suit's life support system to fill the habitation module water tank at a very slow speed. But judging from the current situation, no one should be able to take a shower.

I have always refused to accept the fact that this issue is insoluble (sorry I couldn’t help it). Now I am looking through the extremely limited number of chemical reagents in the soil analysis experiment material library, trying to find some kind of antidote that can clear the sludge in the storage tank without damaging the storage tank and pipe materials. Even if the worst happens and I am at my wits end, I can still wait until Starlight builds enough batteries and feels that his magic inventory is finally enough, and then clean out the hardened Martian sludge from this jar.

But the real problem is that the current dilemma in the water storage tank may also be playing out in various mechanisms inside the water recycling machine. In this case, the problem becomes serious. Reducing the use of indoor sewer lines in the short term is just an added inconvenience; permanent damage to indoor lines could threaten mission safety.

So I reported all the current situation to NASA, and then our old friend Dr. Venkat Kapoor responded in his usual calm and professional style with the following understanding:

[16:42] JPL: Mom, look at it! Our dear baby Mark finally thought of us after so many days! It seems that our self-made little expert actually needs help this time. Is it possible that he even needs us to give him an idea? Good son, is there any need to say it? Do you want me to wash your clothes for you?

What a dick. Only I am qualified to complain, so get out of here.

Continuing the report: Of course there are other problems with the habitation module. Since one-sixth of our current power supply capacity has been moved to Area E for heating the cave, the power system in the residential area is beginning to show signs of insufficient power supply. My guess about this is that the power demand of the habitation module is too high (especially the water recovery machine that is still barely surviving). So I turned off the MAV fuel generator, and the MDV flight simulator had no choice but to go offline. After such adjustments, the power supply margin seems to have stabilized temporarily. There are now less than a hundred solar days left before the summer solstice, and then the length of the day will gradually begin to shorten again, so we still need to continue to pay close attention to this issue.

The alien spacecraft is now as cold as an ice cellar, but the hay stored inside has not been transformed into a freeze-dried form, but has been refrigerated. The airtightness of the cabin is normal, and the electronic system is also very strong. The only problem is that this spacecraft does not have any power generation capability, so it is another burden on the power system of the residential area - and its internal battery capacity is also very small. . In other words, this aspect also requires our further attention.

Alien Spacesuits - Dragonfly had another spacesuit patch day yesterday, and then it's my turn to trim their hooves again tomorrow. She ate most of the leftover freeze-dried alfalfa to prepare the raw materials for repairing the space suits today, recoated the inside and outside of their space suit boots, and lined the back lining (wings or more) of the Fireball space suit. or less wear and tear) and the legs of her own spacesuit (as are the holes in her hooves) were patched.

Another weird thing happened midway: yesterday Fireball complained that his space suit was starting to feel tight. If this matter does not develop well, it may cause him to directly play GG. Apparently dragons are creatures that continue to grow at an extremely slow rate throughout their long lives, never stopping. What's even more amazing is that sometimes a dragon will experience a period of explosive growth due to emotional imbalance or changes in the number of treasures hidden. This is a phenomenon that is capricious and cannot be explained by scientific principles - and this was told to me by a certain dragon himself, so even they admit that this kind of thing is nonsense. But long story short, the consequence of this happening is that Fireball might not be able to fit into his space suit, and he'd be stranded on Mars - with no way around it.

But things quickly took a turn for the better... This morning he discovered that someone had stolen one of the five sapphires he brought from Malaysia and all two original food packages. He roared incompetently at the air for a long time. . However, when Tingting asked him to shut up and put on his space suit and let her make some fine adjustments and patch it up, his space suit miraculously became fit. I don't think we need Inspector Poirot or even Jim Rockford to come forward to find out who is behind this.

Cave Farm – I admit I saved the worst news for last.

But let’s not forget that the situation on the farm in the residential area is currently good – this still needs to be made clear. Today, I took advantage of my free time to cut some branches from the small rows of alfalfa in the potato field, and filled the soil cultivation bucket with fresh soil that had been recently treated, ready to try cuttings. They will then wait a week to see if they can take root. If all goes well, all surviving plants will be packed into space suits and taken to the cave farm for transplantation.

In fact we have to do this.

After experiencing methane leaks, black bacteria, cave explosions, and ground collapse and flooding, about 60% of the alfalfa has died. About one-third of the few survivors were fished out of waterlogged pits and transplanted, and their current growth status is far from healthy. Another third escaped the flooding but is still plagued by root rot, so there has been little sign of growth over the past two weeks. In other words, after a methane event, only about 20% of the alfalfa crop is still in a healthy state and can be harvested normally after ten solar days.

I have also tried before to take some cuttings from plants whose root systems were so rotten that they were obviously unviable and tried to transplant them, but in most cases the best opportunity was missed. In total, only about a quarter of transplant attempts took root properly, and it would be at least another sixty days before there was a chance of harvest.

In contrast, the situation of potatoes is much better. Soil subsidence and flooding only caused us to lose 15% of the potatoes; their root system depth was also too shallow for anaerobic bacteria to cause trouble, so apart from sinkholes, our only losses were a few plants that were unfortunately burrowed. The strong airflow generated during the brief burst ripped off all the leaves of the potato plants. And we already have enough potatoes in stock in the residential area anyway, so the loss of potatoes here in the cave doesn't really have much impact.

All the cherry trees survived, but the roots of six of the saplings still needed a little care. Cherry trees are planted near cave walls, so they are less susceptible to sinkholes. The root system of the only cherry tree that happened to be located on the edge of a pit was deep enough into the soil to avoid the fate of falling over.

So from one perspective, about 60% of the plant life in the cave has survived, and is likely to return to normal eventually. Of course, this has also greatly reduced the charging efficiency of the magic batteries. Now the charging speed of placing them in the cave is not even much faster than bringing them back to the habitation cabin. But we can always replant potatoes, and even cherries, and we should be able to return to the original level in a month.

But think about it from another perspective. More than two-thirds of the ponies' main food sources of protein and minerals have gone cold. As long as there is even a slight possibility, we must find ways to fill this gap.

Fortunately, it's almost summer here on Mars, and the shortage of light and heat resources will ease a lot. If you think about it carefully, the surface temperature of Mars may even temporarily reach above freezing for a few days. But this should be the only development that is beneficial to us at the moment.

As for the subsidence area, the alfalfa seed reserves we have on hand can only cover most of the area, and we are not yet able to achieve full replanting. For this reason we may have to use a small portion of the alfalfa seed emergency reserve. The rest of the gap will have to be filled with the seedlings I'm trying to grow from alfalfa cuttings.

There's good news, of course: As long as our last harvest goes well, it won't be a big problem. I am looking forward to another two rounds of bumper harvests, which can increase the proportion of protein in the pony's diet to provide energy and reduce potato starch. We can then let the farm grow until we pack up and hit the road.

Although we have gone through many difficulties and dangers, the road ahead is still long and difficult.

I hope everything will come true.