My Little Pony: My Little Pony The Martian

Mission Log – Solar Day 423

Seventy-one point seventy-five kilometers!

Moreover, this time, we actually saved up a full battery of pirate ninjas before sunset!

This time we finally celebrated for real. For this reason, I specially opened two bags of food, picked out the vegetables and shared some with everyone to taste, giving our taste buds a change of taste that was already tired of the monotony of alfalfa potatoes (alfatato).

(Jesus, this is such a terrible idea; a genetically modified potato that tastes like hay, or a legume crop that grows potatoes on alfalfa stalks. Hopefully I won’t see something so horrific in my lifetime. Of course, it is not ruled out that some readers will start to think wildly after reading this, "This is really a genius idea! It would be a great honor if Mark Watney could personally witness his wisdom becoming a reality!" Then please readers Listen up, everyone, let me make it clear here: If you really can’t think of coming up with this kind of thing, please be sure to get away and don’t let me see it, otherwise I will put this thing on your head. Generally, I They all think that their words and deeds are relatively mild and non-violent, but I also have a bottom line, please be careful to stop it in moderation. I hereby solemnly warn.)

Okay, let me explain the solution: it’s a greenhouse roof.

It's actually a little more complicated, but conceptually it's pretty much the same.

On solar day 421, we went to the cave. Berry recruited Feihuo to help her take care of the farm, where the newly planted potatoes had just sprouted recently. The rest of us went to collect the best remaining large crystal rocks in the cave. The raw material crystal must be completely transparent so that sunlight can pass through it with maximum efficiency. Since most of the best crystals in the cave have been used to make giant booster batteries, it is not easy to mine at such a high standard; but in the end, Starlight also said that she could use more magic to change the shape of the crystals. meet our needs.

So she did it. We brought thirty pieces of relatively thick cut crystals and arranged them neatly in an open, flat space behind the farm. (Actually, it only costs twenty-eight yuan, but the rest is reserved for later use.) After casting magic for a moment, Starlight turned a large piece of thick-cut crystal into extremely thin crystal pieces, each of which was One meter wide and two meters long. This size is actually very difficult to pass through the cave airlock, but due to the need for the next step in the construction process, we can only reluctantly complete the slicing here first.

The problem with using crystal materials is that in some ways crystal is actually more fragile than glass. The expansion rate of cracks in glass is relatively slow because the molecular structure of glass is irregular. As a kind of crystal, crystal has a very regular molecular structure by definition, so once a crack spreads near a certain cleavage line, it will instantly break along the line, leaving only crystal fragments. This problem is actually quite serious, because every piece of thin crystal glass has to withstand countless bumps and vibrations on the way, and it has to go back and forth between the extreme temperature difference between morning and evening of 60 to 70 degrees Celsius every day. In this way, it will break The probability will be very high.

So we decided to add a coating to our crystal panels to make them structurally stronger and less likely to break – and also to make them easier to handle should they break and need to be replaced.

This task was given to Tingting. Naturally, she was not very happy, but after a few words of persuasion, she was able to listen to the truth. She concocted a clear and transparent mucus in her belly, and spread it on each crystal plate with an evenness that shocked me - I was shocked because this film was made by her a few meters away. It is made by spraying the material onto the crystal, and then wrapping the spilled part around the edge of the crystal plate. Finally, she will chew off the excess slime on the board and recycle it.

To be honest, changelings are pretty cute, but they're also disgusting as hell.

Back to the topic; we did not immediately take the finished products out to the rover after completion. There is no reason to expose them to the extreme temperature differences mentioned before before installation, which requires some preparation. And the film also needs to wait for a while to fully cure.

Yesterday we drove the entire mobile home near Area E. We found a suitable operating location in the ravine closest to the mountain, just enough to accommodate the vehicle, and standing on the top of the slope, we could almost directly overlook the roof of the trailer. Then we went to the cave again, loaded the processed crystal plate onto the roof of the car (for this installation, we temporarily removed the saddlebags from the car) and carefully drove the rover with the crystal plate back to the trailer. We then went back to get eight more magic batteries, because the next steps would consume a lot of magic energy.

The frame of the solar panel is designed to be impossible to disassemble. In fact, precisely because they were mounted on a supply vehicle that was launched at an acceleration that exceeded the limit of human endurance, they flew to Mars, and then were wrapped in a package with a buffer airbag and violently crashed to the surface of Mars to land. They were originally designed to withstand extreme conditions. Designed not to fall apart under large external forces. Fortunately, there is such a small protrusion around the surface of the panel itself, which was originally designed to prevent solar panels from being damaged by friction when stacking them. There's only so much room we have for structural support - this bump, and a lot of pony magic.

Fireball and I spent nearly two hours and used up six batteries. We were just suspended in mid-air. It was only the willpower of a certain unicorn that kept us from being broken all over. We "stand" on both sides of each solar panel, taking over the crystal panels that are also suspended and covered with film one by one, and carefully and accurately place each crystal panel in the protrusion of the panel's outer frame. Fortunately, every piece fits perfectly. We were very cautious when operating. We had to be careful not to damage the crystal plate, but we also had to be careful not to damage the gloves of our space suits. However, the thick transparent protective film wrapped around the edge of the crystal plate also protected our gloves from being scratched. All twenty-eight crystal panels were successfully installed.

Then Starlight put us back on solid ground and she went up to finish the work. Treating the protective film wrapped around the edges as some sort of rubber gasket, she tightened the outer frames of all twenty-eight solar panels to hold the newly installed crystal covers firmly in place. Then she began shaping the crystal plate. Instead of following my idea of ​​making two large one-meter-square pyramids per crystal slab, she came up with a better idea; she used a large number of small pyramids - one for each crystal slab. There are fifty boards in total, with a side length of twenty centimeters. The four edges and the sharp corners at the top have been rounded and strengthened. She later explained that the smaller the size of each pyramid, the less each side would sway during bumps, making them less likely to break. This idea is simply brilliant, and I completely agree that it is entirely her original creation.

Not only did she transform the entire car roof into a giant cheese grater, she also arranged a very simple zero-energy refraction enchantment on these crystal panels; no matter what direction the light comes from, as long as it enters the crystal glass, it will Directly pass through it and then illuminate vertically downwards to a certain part of the corresponding solar panel under the crystal.

Let’s put it this way, the finished panel will give you goosebumps when you look at it. In fact, it doesn't look completely black, because there is still a lot of light that will be reflected back by the original solar panel surface, and most of it can be emitted outside the pyramid structure normally. However, any incident light, such as from the air or the surrounding landscape blocked by the pyramid, will be sucked directly into the pyramid. So if you look directly at them, all you see is a distorted image of the solar panel, and a little bit of glare reflected from the surface of the panel. And this kind of reflected glare often does not appear in those places that you think are reasonable, such as the tip or side of each pyramid, which will always catch you off guard. It’s the ultimate uncanny valley.