My Little Pony: My Little Pony The Martian

Mission Log: Solar Day 37

Today is really a shitty day. I'm going to GG soon, and it's all the ponies doing it!

Okay, that's unfair. It's not entirely their fault. To be precise, even if it's Starlight's fault, she can't be entirely blamed on her, even if the mess here is all caused by her stupid idea. I had naively assumed that her chemistry skills were at least as good as mine, and therefore never had a hand in her genius plan to clean out the perchlorate-filled cave; otherwise we wouldn't be in the rover now. Shaking and shaking, we huddled together and drove like crazy back to the residential area. After all, that was what I called the "explosion safety zone."

And the damnedest thing is, we have to find a way to come back. There is only one cave in area e. Even if all attempts, including the planting plan, fail, we will still have to rely on the gems in the cave to feed the fireball. It also means I have to give future archaeologists a heads-up that if this journal is found in an ancient rover next to a collapsed cave, it means we're trying to clear out the largest waterless pile ever created. Unfortunately, everyone was killed when perchlorate crystallized, but at least I can still tell you the ins and outs of the matter here.

After cleaning the solar panels today, I drove Starlight and Spitfire straight to the cave. Starlight carries a magic battery with her, and judging from the readings, she still has about two-thirds of the energy; considering that she only used about 20% to lift the entire spaceship before, I'm looking forward to what will happen today. Progress. (Note: If I accidentally start an interstellar war between ponies and humans, Earth would be better off surrendering immediately; after all, if all unicorns are as powerful as Starlight, we will definitely lose. Cute little Long live the horse owners! I just hope they don’t accidentally let us all GG.)

I didn't know how they planned to get it, but judging from the pony magic talents in the previous week, such as unlimited water supply in the residential area, I can probably imagine that Starlight may use her indestructible iron hooves to command all Perchlorate disappears instantly. And Xingguang thinks the plan is fine, she agreed to it before, the situation seems to be fine, and so on.

All right. In fact, it is completely wrong.

According to the lively discussion that Starlight and I had afterwards, there are actually various clear rules and restrictions on the use of magic. The most important point is that magic cannot create or destroy matter or energy out of thin air. Theoretically, enough magic energy can be converted into matter, but no pony is powerful enough to do this. Even moving matter around takes a lot of energy.

So Starlight's idea was to design a spell to specifically search for the two types of compounds that account for 99% of perchlorate in the soil - potassium perchlorate and magnesium perchlorate. This spell will extract the perchlorate from the soil and place it in a location that should be convenient for us to dispose of. In this way, what would have been an almost impossible task becomes a lot of simple manual labor.

Sounds pretty good? Pull it down! Perchlorate is not as simple as you think. I really can't figure it out. This unicorn, who is obviously the most intelligent in the alien team and should be the best in the pony world, actually knows nothing about perchlorate? That stuff is used in solid rocket fuel!

The perchlorate ion is composed of one chlorine atom combined with four oxygen atoms and fragile covalent bonds between them. As a strong oxidant, it can quickly bring burning materials to a red-hot state.

The problem comes when you want to stop burning. It's impossible. Fires involving perchlorate combustion are extinguished by pouring sand and soil over the fire to disperse the fire, and then slowly allowing the fire to burn out.

To make matters worse, perchlorate ions can combine with various other ions to form a variety of acids and salts. This means that in addition to the addition of oxidants during combustion, perchlorate will also melt away and fly everywhere together with the ions of the burning material (usually metal) to continue to do evil.

Usually when perchlorate is diluted with water or something else - at least not another light perchlorate - the reaction won't be as violent. The heavy metal perchlorate tends to be on every chemist's "don't you fucking kill me" list, and any scientist who wants to leave an intact body wouldn't have the nerve to come into contact with the rare organic perchloric acid Salt.

But the content of Starlight's spell is not to "remove the perchlorate and surrounding substances together." The situation is not good. In fact, the content is: "Do you dare to swear that you will only remove all the perchlorate and leave everything else alone? I dare you!"

So Starlight chose the location near the entrance of the first cave chamber, where we planned to set up the farm, and then began to send streams of magic beams deep into the depths, extending to the bottom of the cave as far as the eye can see. Each magic beam brought back some yellow-white powder, which accumulated into balls suspended in mid-air. The sphere continued to expand...expanding...and seemed to have no intention of stopping.

I tried to stop her, but Starlight was obviously under her spell and couldn't see me. Feihuo also doesn't allow me to shake the starlight anymore. It's probably the same reason that you can't wake up a sleepwalker. Thinking about what happened when the spell failed previously (see the infamous 23rd Sol bullet incident), I finally calmed down and allowed the stars to continue to gather the huge ball of explosives.

By the time Starlight finished casting the spell, there was plenty left in the battery. Compared to previous situations, she didn't even faint this time. In fact she turned around and looked at me with an expression similar to that of one of my old pet dogs. Mark, how's it going? Is this a good trick? Where is my reward?

At the same time, the now huge cloud of perchlorate dust fell to the ground. It was fast, but it still took a while for everything to calm down and gather in a pile. When the dust settled, the pile was about three meters high and as wide as the entire cave.

It seems that a sand bucket may not be enough.

To be honest, if the only thing in the pile was potassium perchlorate, I wouldn't be so panicked. Potassium perchlorate is quite stable in environments below 250 degrees Celsius. It is only slightly toxic and corrosive, so as long as you take appropriate protective measures carefully, there will be no problems.

But 40% of that deadly stuff is magnesium perchlorate. A potassium perchlorate molecule has only one perchlorate ion, while magnesium perchlorate has two, as well as the divalent magnesium ions that eagerly grab electrons. In very rare cases, magnesium perchlorate may ignite spontaneously or ignite due to friction when in contact with certain substances. The logical safety rules for handling magnesium perchlorate include avoiding contact with any acids, flammable organic matter, and aluminum.

Here’s the problem: My sampling shovel is all aluminum.

Here’s the problem again: most of the space suit’s material is also aluminum.

It’s not over yet: all the sampling buckets are plastic and belong to organic matter. (Normally there are no safety concerns with exposure to only dilute magnesium perchlorate in Martian soil, and all plastics and carbon fiber composites used in the mission are classified as nonflammable. However, for completely pure perchlorate The result is difficult to say.)

The problem goes further than that: a large portion of the materials in all our space suits are also organic. (It is fireproof, but when it comes to pure magnesium perchlorate...)

The most serious and terrifying problem is: if the magnesium perchlorate here is ignited by something, the temperature of the flame is enough to cause the remaining 60% of the potassium perchlorate in the damn thing to start to decompose.

So I carried a pony under each arm (thanks to the Martian environment of 0.4 times gravity!) and escaped to the rover, where I had what is called a "sincere and open exchange and discussion" with Starlight in a diplomatic context.

But we can't just abandon the cave and end the problem. Somehow we had to figure out a way to get it away safely without actually touching that whole bunch of stuff. But I'm also pretty sure I wouldn't even dare to hang around when I think about it, not to mention that the Martian soil itself - rich in iron oxides, potassium salts, phosphorus compounds, etc. - might even be capable of destroying this large The thing exploded into the sky.

The Gem Cave is now a giant bomb.