My Little Pony: My Little Pony The Martian

As usual, Venkat's call interrupted him mid-sentence. Venkat's day is usually divided into reading reports (or, in rare cases, some papers on exploring the theoretical possibility of using magic; it depends on whether humans can really find ways to use this power in the future) way) and write various letters of thanks, pleas, or orders for someone to do something on behalf of the Ares Project. The importance of the work at hand cannot be underestimated, but no matter how important it is, there are still dozens of people who have his office phone number who think that the problems they have to deal with are even more impossible to delay. Some of them are even right.

He looked at the caller ID. It's Bruce Wu. That's easy to say; Bruce would never waste Venkat's time on trivial matters. Bruce himself never had time to waste.

"Hello, Bruce," he greeted immediately after picking up the phone, "How are you doing in sunny California?"

"I know that there is a sun in theory," Bruce replied, "but I haven't had a chance to observe it directly. I have been working hard for over a month to find a way to make the MAV landing stage operate as a thruster. I called this today The phone call is to tell you that this is impossible."

Venkat leaned back in his chair. "I'm listening," he said. "Explain to me why such an indispensable and crucial step in our plan to allow Mark Watney and the others to directly rendezvous with Hermes in orbit is completely impossible."

“Ultimately it comes down to weight and timing,” Bruce explained. “The whole purpose of keeping the landing stage and running the Pony engine on it is to accumulate excess speed gain to make up for the weight we can’t reduce on the MAV. It's a hindrance. We have to remove more than five tons of mass from an aircraft that weighs twelve and a half tons in order for it to reach escape velocity with only autonomous power, and the various weight reduction items we have found now add up. It's less than two tons, unless we decide to take more radical measures and abandon the MAV's ability to support long-term survival - that is, if we want to continue to reduce weight, we can only make holes in the cabin hull. It cannot be used as a backup system.”

"Yes, I understand all of this," Venkat replied, "but we are adding the landing stage and the engines removed from the Friendship to overcome these problems."

"As for this, we have tried various possible take-off configurations," Bruce replied. "We assumed that the ponies could find a way to convert or synthesize hydrazine, and simulated filling up with fuel before launching. We also tried Everything that could be dismantled was removed, and only the downgraded frame was used to mount the pony engine. Of course, we also asked Starlight Glimmer to make a larger battery that could run the engine for one minute as we originally planned. Extended to a full three minutes.”

"But Venkat, none of these plans can pass the simulation. No matter how we try, there is no way to push the thrust-to-weight ratio above 1.3. After including gravity and air resistance in the calculation, the three-minute propulsion time can barely lift the spacecraft at best. At altitudes as high as the edge of the Schiaparelli Basin, the failure rate of attempts to separate the landing stage, the first stage to ignite and steer the vehicle remains stable at a level of fifteen percent. Failure refers to hitting the ground before the operation is completed, and even in the remaining % of successful results, the average speed increase is only an increase of meters per second. More than five kilometers per second.”

"Okay," Venkat asked again, "Then what will happen if you move the pony engine to the first stage and upgrade it?"

"The situation is not improving," Bruce replied. "If there is no way to separate the engine and the accompanying battery, they will continue to remain on board and become a liability after the energy is exhausted. If we reduce the thrust of the pony engine to fifty percent We may be able to extend the propulsion time to cover the entire first stage of propulsion, but the loss of efficiency means that they will not be able to get to where we need to go, and the eight tons of added mass of the engine and battery will also cost us. Remove the most efficient part of the ascending process.”

"Bruce," Venkat carefully arranged his thoughts, "you don't need me to emphasize that you understand how bad this conclusion is. You know it better than anyone else. But I didn't hear what you said. Potential solutions.”

"We... are still thinking of a way." Bruce replied with difficulty, "But we have reached the point where we need some guidance from the ponies. Is there any way to reduce the weight of their engines, or do something to make them more durable? Transformation to generate more thrust soon? I know we have shut down email, but I still want to ask you to make an exception and allow me to send them the progress of our work so far through Pathfinder.”

For a whole second, Venkat was speechless and choked. Although he regained the ability to speak, he still spoke intermittently like a broken car with a broken fuel injector: "What... this... no... Bruce, you are closer to the Pathfinder signal relay than I am. A full two thousand miles. Your team knows that we are having trouble maintaining the signal for the past two days. You can't understand why we decided. You have to turn off all functions except the core business. And if you think we are still able to send the data you want, you will not ask for my confirmation. You should have sent the data long ago."

Venkat heard Bruce sigh on the other end of the phone. "I understand," he replied, "and you're right, the current communication link can only barely cope with emergencies, and we can't send a lot of data over at this juncture. But if we don't do this, we will It means that we can only stare at it for more than a month. This month originally gave us a chance to solve the problem. "

"Well, you guys continue to think of other solutions first," Venkat finally compromised, "I'll try my best to convey this issue to them during the morning situation report, but I can't make any guarantees."

"Thank you." Bruce said and hung up the phone.