My Little Pony: My Little Pony The Martian

"Xiao Wen! We have to go now!"

There were only a handful of times when Teddy visited Venkat's office in person, but not vice versa. Normally, NASA managers only come in person to urge them when they completely lose patience with a task that should have been completed an hour ago, and this time is no exception.

"I'm about to finish writing my reply to Member Dubois in the Parliament," Venkat was typing on his keyboard as fast as possible. "She was preparing to take Ares 3 family members into the conference room for a real-time video call with Hermes. I sent such a request. I can't delay this kind of thing." For this reason, he also left more than phone calls without answering. He knew very well that the situation with Teddy would only be much more serious, and there were a lot of important matters waiting for his decision; so how on earth did he get out so cleanly and leave when he wanted?

"Mrs. DuBois is one of our strongest supporters on Capitol Hill," Teddy replied, "and I'm sure she'll understand even if it takes a few days for you to respond."

"Teddy," Venkat responded angrily, "it is precisely because she is on our side that I dare not neglect her. I hope to keep her as a supporter of ours."

"Xiao Wen, it will take at least more than an hour to drive to the Bush Intercontinental at this time," Teddy said. "Even if we can use the fast boarding lane, it will take another half an hour for us to be seated. The flight to Beijing is still two hours away. It's taking off." Teddy paused and looked at his watch, "Two hours and fourteen minutes more. Where are your luggage?" Teddy was holding a large suitcase and a slightly smaller one in each hand. Carry-on bag.

"The suit for the media event is in the box behind the door," Venkat replied. "The other clothes and tablet are in the carry-on bag underneath."

"Okay." Teddy didn't jump impatiently on the spot, nor did he pace back and forth. Years of experience have made this NASA veteran reach a state of perfection. Even if he is calm, his whole body reveals eagerness and anxiety, and at the same time, he can still show no signs of panic on the outside.

Venkat briefly concluded the letter by praising NASA and the other party's political career so far, expressing his regret that he was unable to accept the other party's request when the critical period of Hermes' flyby of the earth was approaching, and then sent this email. "Okay." He felt relieved. "My deputy can basically take care of all the other matters on the table."

"The taxi is waiting downstairs," Teddy said, "Let's go."

Richie Purnell got his own office. The space wasn't very large, and it didn't have the private bathroom facilities he originally proposed, but a bed was put in as he requested. The corner of the carpet was painted, and a sign saying garbage area was placed next to it so that the cleaning staff could Separating used trash from the work he was still doing. In addition, there is a coffee machine and disposable plastic cups for him in the room, and the consumables are replenished regularly. These were actually requests from the employees he worked with because they really didn't like having to make a special trip to the dollar store every half month to buy new coffee cups.

The ownership of the Watney Award is still controversial, but not surprisingly, most of the prize money will eventually go to his name. Administrator Sanders had approved it, but Congress was still stuck on the final decision because the oversight board insisted that Purnell was not eligible to receive the bonus as a NASA employee. And the focus of this debate - whether Rich's vacation at his work station meets the definition of "free time" - does not look like it will stop until the next election.

Richie was completely indifferent to this. He is very satisfied with the current situation.

The two flight trajectories displayed on the computer screen were not the result of his labor, but the importance of the launch trajectories of the Sleipnir 4 and 5 missions cannot be underestimated. Sleipnir 4 will first be launched into orbit from the Kennedy Center, and then perform a long-term orbital propulsion to adjust its orbital plane to match the Hermes flyby path. The expected orbital inclination of Sleipnir 5 launched from Jiuquan is too large, so this adjustment is not applicable. The orbit change link will be directly omitted during the flight phase. Sleipnir 4 will advance to the Hermes orbit change. The timing will also be changed according to the launch situation of Jiuquan.

Both vehicles have a velocity delta surplus of about five percent that can be used for orbit correction during launch or to compensate for small errors if they occur. Afterwards, their only power source was maneuverable thrusters, and they rendezvoused with Hermes approximately twenty-four hours after Hermes' perigee.

Both data and simulation results were successfully verified. Rich signed his name at the end of the review list, officially announcing that the final draft of the aircraft launch plan was completed. Afterwards, he reopened the Ares 4 MAV simulation model that had yet to be modified, and tried to adjust the parameters to see what the effect would be if the pony thrusters were mounted on various parts of the spacecraft.

Rich's left hand was busy typing on the keyboard, while his right hand was holding his mobile phone and opening the takeout app. He randomly selected a restaurant and placed an order in one go according to the historical records. At the same time, his attention never left the computer screen. .

No one would say hello to him. No one would disturb his thoughts by asking him for advice on trivial matters. No one reminded him that it was time to get off work at five o'clock. No one was singing birthday wishes or passing notes betting on the Houston sports teams that season. No distractions, no distractions. The food was delivered as usual, the garbage was taken away regularly, and Richie lived freely in his own little world.

A square peg wedges into a square chiseled hole, and the genius will eventually find his place.

This is the first time in months that Mindy Parker is working on something that doesn't involve maneuvering Mars' orbiting satellites or analyzing pixel-by-pixel images of the planet. The human resources of the satellite communications department have long been stretched thin, and all available manpower has been mobilized for current key tasks. Hermes is flying at an unprecedented speed except for natural celestial bodies. NASA must point out a clear path for it in the space near the earth.

To successfully perform the Richie Purnell maneuver, Hermes must fly along a narrow orbit around the Earth, build up momentum and perform a sharp intrasystem orbital turn to further accelerate with the sun's gravity. If there is space debris in the flight path, maneuvers can be carried out to avoid it. Therefore, 275,183% of the personnel in satellite communications are currently busy checking the trajectories of a total of pieces of space debris that are larger than the size of a pencil lead and recorded by NASA as of o'clock that morning. . (The tracking range does not include the same large number of smaller in-orbit debris, but after the workload exceeds a certain level, even Hermes can only choose to resign itself to fate.)

Although Hermes can maneuver to avoid space junk that has no ability to move, all other aircraft must actively retreat and hide as far away as possible. The remaining one-tenth of the satellite communicators are focusing their attention on investigating the possibility of a collision with the forty-six (the total number of low-Earth active orbiters exceeds 0.1) Hermes in the event of a serious accident in its flight orbit. % of active satellites. The fuel margin of the onboard thruster is naturally one of the factors to consider; in addition, orbital stability, whether it is necessary to ensure that the target satellite continues to serve in orbit, and whether it may collide with other satellites when avoiding Hermes must also be taken into consideration. scope.

In addition, of course, it is also necessary to ensure that the satellite strictly avoids the hundreds of thousands of pieces of blind electronic equipment during the migration process, those debris that stubbornly stay in orbit and refuse to fall back to the earth and burn up in the atmosphere. Just a little careless adjustment of the orbit to make way for Hermes could cause the satellite to collide with scattered bolt washers, broken Russian solar panels, or the camera that Mike Collins left behind during the Gemini mission's extravehicular activity. Full of energy, resulting in large tracts of scattered debris. Once it encounters Hermes, it will inevitably be bloody, triggering an expected nightmare-like Kessler chain reaction, and ultimately ending eleven lives in an extremely tragic way.

The workload is extremely huge, and if Hermes can always stay within ten kilometers of the expected flight orbit, all these plans will ultimately remain on paper as a precaution and a dispensable decoration. But NASA will never accept "possibly" as an answer. All kinds of special circumstances must be taken into account, and there is not much time left for them.

It seems that the media can only tolerate a period of time without paparazzi following Mark and his outdoor activities day and night. For the first time in her life, Mindy was fully engaged in her real job, and the other employees in the department were also busy; there was no gossip, no one was chewing cakes and cookies, and everyone tacitly gave up their workdays. A chance to rest. Most of the tops, short skirts, shirts and slacks that reflect professionalism are replaced by loose T-shirts and undershirts, and comfort becomes the first priority.

The occasional ringing phone or email alert is often an update on space debris data from the Department of Defense. Supervisors from four different departments constantly shuttled between workstations, quietly discussing the situation with employees in charge of satellite movements, collecting information and carefully making major decisions step by step that would affect the final fate of the forty-six satellites.

The symphony of the mouse and keyboard is the eternal background sound.

Meanwhile, Hermes is still approaching.