My Little Pony: My Little Pony The Martian

Mission Log – Solar Day 342

Today NASA decided that the new communication link we established through Hermes is stable enough to restore service to our email account. Our bandwidth is only about 600 bits per second - Hermes is indeed closer to us than the Earth, but not much closer, and will be very close to the sun for at least the next month. So NASA limited our total email volume to thirty—retaining only the most urgent internal agency news and what they thought were the most interesting letters that appeared during the weeks when we didn't have email.

You can imagine four of us glued to our computers, busy reading and responding to messages from the outside world. But it doesn’t include Starlight, and it doesn’t include me. We both still have homework to do, which means the emails we both receive will have to be stored on the computer for a while longer.

Today, Starlight actually set up four magic field projection devices running together to provide energy when she was making new core crystals for the Sparkling Engine. She won't allow any chance that the final product will perform less than expected. In order to prepare for the crucial crystal enchantment step, she filled two large whiteboards with dense notes, used up all the sample labels, and even turned some hay that had been stored for a long time into something that was unbleached and smelled the same. A makeshift paper material that resembles hay was used as a draft.

After the enchantment was completed and all the equipment was turned off, she checked the crystal over and over again until she fainted from exhaustion. (This has not happened to her for a long time, so I know she is really concerned about this matter. Starlight has become better and better at saving magic energy during her time on Mars.) She finally told The results of our enchantment were consistent with the final design she and Twilight Sparkle settled on. Unfortunately, this is not the same thing as “we did it and it worked.” The results won't be known until we test them.

The test mentioned here refers to "if we can really live that long when we are in deep space and don't know where we are going, we might as well try our luck by trying our luck." We couldn't do ground testing because whenever the engine was turned on, it and anything physically connected to it would move with it. We either have to take it for a spin in space, or we have to wave it goodbye and watch it reach warp one, abandon us and head straight to the Klingon Neutral Zone. And Starlight had repeatedly warned me that the incantation used by the engine blurred the distinction between "attached", "sitting in" and "standing on". If we use it for a ground test, there is a high chance that the engine will take off with a large piece of Mars.

So let me explain: according to our escape plan, if something went even slightly wrong during the launch, we could only hope that this completely untested magic stone would correct the problem. , let's rendezvous with Hermes or fast travel to Earth. You can also guess that NASA is not very satisfied with this solution, so they have been working overtime to maximize our chances of successful in-orbit rendezvous without using the Shiny engine.

So next we will mention Starlight’s homework. After replacing Sparkle's engine, Twilight Sparkle was pouring out a river on the magical hydro telegraph relaying to her the specific details of the additional enchantments she needed to set up. But this time the enchantment is much simpler: you only need to add a spell that tells the enchanted stone to push away another specific enchanted stone when triggered. In theory, that's it, there's nothing difficult about it.

There is a rather funny story behind this spell. The spell used is old enough to be called an ancient relic. It was invented long before the pony races unified to form modern Equestria. The reason seems to be that the unicorns want to build a city in the sky that can rival the ancient (according to the spell) Pegasus Apolis. So they created a small crystal forest, enchanted it, and then used its power to lift a large chunk of land approximately five thousand feet into the air. Dang dang dang, the flying city was built like this... But then some earth ponies came here, saw some beautiful crystals, and then dug away the enchanted thrusters. The unicorns couldn't stop the earth ponies from tampering with their enchanted stone, so they had to rush to get their flying city to the ground before it crashed, and the whole thing basically ended there. Of course, there are many follow-up plots to this story, most of which are about how the humiliated unicorns tried to take revenge on the earth ponies and pegasus, and how this series of events eventually attracted the wind monsters (Go Windys, referring to Snow Demon - Windigo), but Starlight ends here...

Having said that, there is a design problem with the current device, which I generally refer to as the "magic punkin' chunker." Currently we have no way to remotely activate it. We don't have any radio controlled switches available here. We have to come up with a solution before launch day or we'll leave someone behind.

Let me be clear first, it doesn’t count.

Did I just say there was a problem? In fact, it should be said that there is a major problem. In addition, there are a lot of minor issues, such as how to transfer the magic energy from the oversized battery to the cannon enchantment, and how to regulate the energy output so that all the thrust is not released at once. Turn us into hunks of pâté or something like that. So Starlight once again bothered with the water and telegraph about these things. From afternoon to night, she and Twilight discussed every detail. At night, I was almost ready to force a stop; the auxiliary water tank of the water recovery machine was almost full, which meant that we had to pour the extra water out of the airlock again.

Speaking of airlocks, the time from the explosion of Airlock No. 1 to today has been about three times the time from the completion of the assembly of the habitation module to the explosion. Tomorrow I'm going to have Starlight, Spitfire, and Dragonfly help me give the Hab Canvas a thorough inspection and look for any early defects that may exist. It’s been over a month since our last checkup. I certainly don't expect to find anything wrong, but that's why we do these inspections. Things that catch us by surprise are the most destructive, and we are almost at the end of the day to leave this broken rock. At this juncture, we cannot afford to literally blow up.

So why can't we do it tonight? This is of course because I also have homework to do. CherryBerry asked Starlight if she had any ideas for keeping the farm going after we left. Starlight said she had some ideas, but first she needed to understand what factors were key to keeping the farm healthy and sustainable after we were gone. So she gave me this task.

So I have been busy all night today calculating the oxygen and carbon dioxide cycles between aerobic bacteria and plants. I also want to calculate water consumption and respiratory effects. I am working on a scientifically based estimate of heat loss from the cave based on past data (collected from cave exhaust and subsequent events). I now feel compelled to measure the amount of insolation currently passing through the solar relay crystal, which will allow me to speculate on what the insolation rate will be during the Martian winter, about 300 solar days from now.

But there's one problem that no amount of magic or hammering can solve: bees. We don't have one here.

Let me explain. If we could somehow create a self-sustaining ecosystem suitable for plant life, cherry trees could survive for a long time—perhaps fifty Martian years, or until they outgrow their caves. It depends on which one comes first. Theoretically, the tubers of potatoes buried underground can continue to grow new plants, so potatoes in caves will survive for years, perhaps even decades.

The bottleneck is alfalfa. Alfalfa crops can survive for about five to seven years if left to grow, but they will eventually senescence and die. Alfalfa does not sprout like potatoes, and cuttings require human care and careful management to survive. And if there are no animal life forms in the environment, without the nitrogen fixation function of the animal digestive system and the specific types of amino acids provided, alfalfa becomes the only line of defense to prevent soil nutrients from being completely lost within a few years.

After experiencing several rounds of replanting caused by cave exhaust, land subsidence and anaerobic bacteria, our seeds have basically been used up. And after raising hay for more than 300 solar days on Mars, there are so many alfalfa plants here, but we can't even see a flower bud, let alone see a real flower. And if we do see a bud, whether it's feasible or not is another matter. We have to pollinate it manually, because there are no bees on Mars.

Without bees, alfalfa would not produce seeds. The same goes for potato flowers (we had seen a few before) and cherry blossoms (which were still very early). No seeds means no new alfalfa.

If NASA goes ahead with the Ares 4 landing at Schiaparelli as scheduled—which would mean a quick resupply mission after Hermes returns home—Ares 5 is rescheduled to our site for follow-up cleanup work Picking up the trash we left behind, they would arrive in about eight Earth years from now. Even if the cave farm is not completely dead by that time, it will definitely look sick due to lack of soil nutrients. And I just can't think of a way.

Well, maybe I'm overthinking it. Maybe Starlight can use magic to create a swarm of tiny crystal bees. Maybe the alfalfa in the cave will suddenly spontaneously mutate and transform into parthenogenesis like in Jurassic Park. I just hope there won't be that kind of bloody predatory animal plot that comes in groups to kill.

(Now think about it, what does alfalfa hunt? How many clever strategies does it take to take away nutrients when the fertile soil is not looking?)

My mind is a little cluttered. It's almost time to put this aside and take out my other assignment: campaign design. Starlight has been too busy recently to try to design a new campaign for D&D, and we have already played all the previous adventure modules twice, so she recently arranged for me to design a Discworld campaign setting.

If I get my design right, they'll never even be able to get out of Ankh Morpork's door...