My Little Pony: My Little Pony The Martian

AMICITAS Mission Three – Mission Day 360

ARES 3 solar day 354

"It's true, these books feel like home."

Spitfire listened to Starlight Glimmer read the passage about Heavy Cavalry, and read about Sam Weems, an ordinary commoner who was forced to attend a meeting among the city's rich nobles in order to pave the way for his high-ranking wedding. The party was held and a smile gradually appeared on the face as they tried to blend in with the group.

At the same time, Cherry Berry on the other side felt extremely embarrassed and restless.

Over the past few years, she had been with a queen who, when things were going well, could occasionally catch glimpses of being a good horse at best, but when things hit rock bottom, she would be even worse than Tirek if it weren't for the restraint caused by daily paranoia. Maintain close contact. In addition, she has to deal with the three princesses on a daily basis, and maintains a very close relationship with the fourth princess (sometimes playing opposite each other), and understands all their major weaknesses and flaws. However, despite such experiences, Cherry Berry, like most ponies, has always believed that Celestia and her dignitaries are wise and kind ponies, and their work goal is always to do their best for the ponies. for the welfare of all citizens of the country.

Therefore, although this is a completely fictional story, and the background is also set in a world riding on the back of a turtle, these several pages of vivid descriptions of the despicable aristocrats still deeply shaken the foundation of her world view, "Spiky Fire, I still don’t understand this at all.”

"You've never been to Celestia's ball before Twilight and the others, right?"

"I'm sorry," Starlight complained, "Can you please let me read on first?"

"Of course not," CherryBerry simply replied to Spitfire, "I only went there once after the moon landing."

"I've seen Twilight look like before she came to the ball to disrupt things," Spitfire replied. "Hooked with the blue-blooded prince and pretended not to see where he was looking. Shaked with a bunch of dukes and counts and some rich horses, no. See them sneer at the working ponies. All so rich. All so...with such good parents, good blood. And only a few are not greedy, narrow-minded fools."

"That's not what I think. Rich or not, the Canterlot ponies I meet are just ponies."

"There is a reason why changelings fly on sightseeing missions."

"It's over or not!" Starlight Glimmer couldn't help but get angry, "Do you want the story to end early today? No? Then don't interrupt me all the time! Please wait until you finish reading before discussing it as usual!"

Spitfire finished reading the short paragraph assigned to her as usual, and then CherryBerry began to read the scene where Weems and Carrot entered the workshop of the murdered dwarf.

About halfway through reading, Dragonfly suddenly said, "Speaking of which, I can somewhat understand this paragraph. It always feels weird to use a tool that doesn't belong to you."

"Really?" Mark asked, "So this is why you liked to mess with my tools for the first few hundred days?"

"Those are two different things!" Dragonfly was unhappy. "At that time, I thought those might be interesting and strange alien tools, with some mysterious alien characteristics or strange functions." She sneered and continued. Said, "In the end, all I found were your electric screwdrivers and sampling probes. You know, we also have electric drills there."

"Well, I'm sorry that our race failed to improve the design of the hammer, which disappoints you, okay!" Mark continued to quarrel with Dragonfly, "I'm also sorry that there is no hydraulic wrench here, because it is too troublesome to transport it, and NASA didn't give it to us. Comes with it! Speaking of which, where did my half-inch ratchet wrench go?”

"I told you a long time ago," said Tingting impatiently, "Put it in the tool box of the No. 2 rover, because anything that can use your half-inch socket is only found on the rover."

"I've seen it, and there's none."

"Excuse me," said Cherry Berry, who was also very angry. "Can you two stop making this happen during story time?"

"sorry."

"Yes, sir."

"Thanks. Continue..."

“But it’s just as weird for someone to take their own tools as it is for you to take someone else’s tools.”

"It's even weirder. It's like I put my hoof on the leg of another insect, and then I want to..."

“I said we’d discuss it later!”

Three-dimensional silence.

"Go on. He rubbed his head with one hand..."

The story progressed to when the troll Sandstonetus and the dwarf Cudi went to visit the Alchemist Guild and the exploding billiard ball, it was Mark's turn to read aloud again.

"Now," Fireball said with emotion, "it feels like home. It feels like working."

"I can't tell you how many times I walked into Twilight Sparkle's lab and had to dodge something flying as soon as I opened the door," Starlight Glimmer complained.

"It feels like they found a group of changelings who were responsible for the final assembly of the aircraft," Cherryberry commented, "and then gave them a bunch of chemical equipment and gave them some research funding."

"But there is no old gryphon to guard them from messing around." Dragonfly continued, "Do you think his current retirement life is very comfortable?"

"If you offer him such a high salary, it's strange that he can't live a comfortable life." Cherry Berry replied.

"Thinking about it carefully," Starlight added, "These guys also feel a bit like Sunshine to me. Think about it again, so does Waltz. Well, in fact, every potion-making guy I've ever encountered That's what brewing experiment ponies are like."

"Quinn's Leonard," Spitfire struggled for a while before saying the name, "Do you think he's a Minotaur?"

"From what they're saying about him, he doesn't sound out of place with our herd," Cherry Berry agreed.

Then the discussion paused for a while, and Tingting took this opportunity to ask Mark, "Why didn't you ask us to stop and let you continue studying?"

"Why?" Mark asked, "In my opinion, what you are discussing is much more interesting. For example, if your space program operates like the Alchemist Guild of Ankh-Morpork , it becomes very reasonable that you would come here.”

"Hey, that's a bit mean when you say that," said Ting Ting. "It's an accurate description, but it's still too much."

"It's not just the space program," Fireball added, "it's all pony science and magic like that."

"All of them?" The shocked Mark looked at the visitors in front of him, "How come your planet hasn't been destroyed yet?"

"We have an immortal princess," Starlight Glimmer did not forget to reiterate, "I told you before, it's very effective."

Mission Log – Solar Day 354

The second bracket supporting the rover's saddlebags is completed. Based on the load capacity we need, a total of eight brackets need to be installed. The giant battery will be mounted in a metal ring outside the bracket, so most of the weight will be borne by the bracket. Food and other items that are protected from the cold will be stored in hanging bags between the stand and the rover body. According to our best estimate possible, the roof's load-bearing capacity is about a ton, which is about twice its rated load on Earth. Under the gravitational conditions of Mars, as long as we don't fall off a cliff or something like death, this is basically not a problem.

It feels good to work with your hands. I had Dragonfly and Fireball helping me while I was doing this, and I think they were happy to have something to do. With the exception of Berry, everyone has long lost interest in the chores of taking care of plants; in order to avoid getting bored too quickly, we have now limited the number of D&D starts to once a week. The mobile home is basically finished and is just waiting for final testing, but we still have to wait until we finish the work at the cave farm before we can start it. Chemical supplies such as solvents and reagents are almost running out, so geological science experiments are basically no longer possible. Boredom has become a growing problem, so now any opportunity to immerse yourself in work is a pleasure.

Just take Starlight Glimmer as an example. Since she plans to use the batteries she had saved to make more batteries for power, she will have to wait until Sol 360 before starting the repulsive propulsion enchantment. Due to the limitations of load and space, we cannot bring more batteries on the road based on the number of batteries we currently have. Therefore, in this case, we put aside the manufacturing of batteries and use the saved resources to build our batteries. It was a very reasonable decision for MAV to throw the power source of the rendezvous at Hermes. But now that she has some free time, she has devoted her energy to the "Save the Cave" project.

Today she created a new pile of sunlight relay crystals deeper in the cave. The idea is that the sunlight transmitted by the crystals also carries heat, so the more light there is in the cave, the less we rely on running water sources for heating.

This leads to a question that is so obvious in hindsight that the loud questions of you future historians should be loud enough to be heard by me in time travel: "Why didn't you think of using this method before?" Starlight can create so many other crystals with almost no magic energy, so why wait until now?" My answer is, because I have been busy making batteries, sealing caves, clearing methane, and awakening We really didn't think we could do that with the sleeping bugs and taking care of Starlight, who has a half chance of fainting and almost dying when casting a spell. That's right. They are all trivial and trivial problems. Why have you forgotten the real thing? But seriously, considering that we have previously discovered that the efficiency of those lighting crystals is unexpectedly high, at least we should be able to think of this method.

We will closely monitor the temperature changes in the cave environment over the next few weeks. Our ultimate goal, of course, is to be able to maintain the cave temperature while completely shutting down the hot water heating system. We are still far from the ultimate goal.

Of course, the problems we face are not limited to heating. But Starlight has recently been exploring another possible path: those rainbow crystals. After all, there are two things we know about that random enchantment now - it can store magic energy, and it can stack other enchantments on top of it. This means that, at least in theory, the rainbow crystals could be used to power other things; perhaps, for example, they could be used to drive some kind of water circulation mechanism that is more reliable than the condensation dripping from the cave ceiling. (By the way, to clarify, there is actually no condensation effect at all; the ceiling of the cave is very high, but not high enough to produce such a significant temperature difference. Moreover, the life-support system equipment box is always circulating air, so the air humidity is actually quite low of.)

Now the only one who has nothing to do in the free time is probably Fei Huo. She usually hangs around Starlight like a vulture, waiting for our cute little four-legged power tool to blow another fuse. She never complained when she was in charge of this, but it definitely felt boring to do.

Hopefully I can figure out some way to get her to do something useful. Maybe I can reopen the simple flight simulator modified by MDV. After we moved a third of the residential area's storage capacity to the mobile home, it lost power, but we might be able to save some for a few rounds of flight simulator.

(Speaking of which, it would be great if NASA could finalize the MAV modification plan as soon as possible. Maybe they can send us a flight simulation program with corrected data before we hit the road to Schiaparelli. In the previous simulation, Cherry Berry has already He is very good at controlling the original MAV, but the actual situation is that he has to escape with such a crude experimental product that has been pieced together. If the rescue is not successful, he will die without a burial place. The difference is huge.)

Well, let’s just say this much first. Several others took out their computers and started playing online Hearts. I should join the fray soon. At least it's better than watching a few episodes of California Highway Patrol. (Yes, I know that Punch is originally a kind-hearted bad cop, but he is also the only guy in the department who is not such a jerk that he looks like he has a giant red shirt stuck in his butt...)