My Little Pony: My Little Pony The Martian

Mission Log – Solar Day 484

The sky is clear and dark blue, and the northern edge of Cromlin is just on the horizon. It is so clear that it almost gives the illusion that it can be reached on foot in half an hour. The curtain of heavy dust shatters, and we are finally free.

Then you may have to ask, if this is the case, why are we still standing still like a piece of wood? Okay, then please listen to the following explanation.

The first reason is that Spitfire is still in bad shape after yesterday's miracle (which cannot be described in other words). In the end, we basically had to cut the wing envelopes off her body bit by bit, because the changeling goo that hadn't completely solidified was almost integrated into her wings. After completely peeling off the envelope, a lot of flight feathers were torn off. She woke up during the cleaning process and we had to give her a triple dose of Pony Painkiller to get her back to sleep.

Fortunately, the ponies' medicine kits contain the right medicine - now that I think about it, it would be more appropriate to say "magic medicine" - that can help promote the regeneration of Pegasus' feathers. It was basically the same medicine that Spitfire had been pouring down Starlight's throat when she broke her right front leg. However, the curative effect here is much worse than in their original world, so she usually only takes the medicine when the magic field is running... Now it has been shortened to three minutes a day. The specific reason for this change will be explained later.

But of greater concern now were her symptoms of decompression sickness. When Fei Huo first woke up, she said that her lungs felt like raw meat, filled with the smell of blood. Ha, this description really evokes a lot of memories for me. But the vitality of lung tissue is still extremely strong, and they also have another bottle of medicine specially used to treat smoke inhalation injuries, which has also been approved by the other end of their telegram for symptomatic use on Fei Huo. The healing process is naturally very long, but we are still confident in her recovery... but it is hard to say when the headache is added.

Every time Fei Huo wakes up recently, he complains of a severe headache and severe joint pain. At the same time, her eyes were full of stars, similar to the feeling you might have after a hard blow to the head. My guess is that our little hero will have a brush with decompression sickness during the thrilling battle. My previous accidental exposure to low-pressure environments was actually very brief, so I didn’t get hit - the first time was when I was stabbed by an antenna on Sun 6, and the second time was when I was stabbed by perchloric acid on Sun 40 The salt bomb set my suit on fire when it exploded.

(God, this was more than a year ago. It’s unbelievable... Looking back, I persisted in driving on Mars in a painful trance supported by an illusion that I later discovered was not an illusion at all. The scene of traveling on the surface seems like yesterday... Damn it, it can't happen again. I haven't escaped from the purgatory of this bullshit planet, so why am I here remembering the bits and pieces of my past when I was almost killed by Mars! )

Back to the topic; formal treatment for decompression sickness requires a high-pressure air chamber filled with a near-pure oxygen atmosphere. Decompression sickness is caused by gaseous nitrogen escaping from the bloodstream. Nitrogen, like oxygen, is completely dissolved in the blood under normal circumstances. However, once the environmental pressure suddenly drops, the nitrogen in the body will cease to dissolve. The formation of bubbles can instantly cut off blood circulation, just like a blood clot. Without effective treatment, decompression sickness can be as fatal as a stroke—in fact, it kills by exactly the same mechanism—and can cause permanent damage if not treated properly.

Unfortunately, we don't have any hyperbaric oxygen chamber available here. After Spitfire informed us of her symptoms, we immediately stuffed her into the star-studded spacesuit and asked Pony to increase the oxygen concentration and eliminate nitrogen as much as possible to provide overpressure to the spacesuit. During the meal, we took off her helmet, stuffed a rolled shirt inside to use as a pillow, then put the helmet on her and let her continue to sleep.

Fortunately, Spitfire seemed to have escaped the typical symptoms of decompression sickness such as paralysis, dizziness and nausea mentioned in the training I had received. (Ares astronauts have received this type of training to prepare for subsequent injury identification and recovery work in the event of a possible cabin leak.) We will continue to monitor her condition, but the most serious situation will be within a week. The test should be over. Feifei will then begin to recover, and only then will we know whether she suffered any permanent damage.

That's the main reason we've been holding back - we're too busy taking care of Spitfire. But there are other reasons too.

We weren't sure at first what damage the dust storm had done to the exterior of the mobile home. But one thing is clear to us; when the flying fire knocked down the dust storm, all the dust carried by the dust storm fell almost vertically. So this morning Fireball and Starlight Glimmer (who borrowed Dragonfly's spacesuit) and I went out and spent the whole morning thoroughly cleaning the rover, removing dust from the solar panels, and carefully checking every piece of equipment for damage. sign. We also specially brought a bottle of compressed air to blow out all ten rover drive wheels; we didn’t want the accumulation of earth and rocks to jam the wheels, leaving us with no choice but to drag a limp across the Martian plain.

During the cleanup we also discovered that four solar panel enhanced crystals had been damaged in the dust storm. For this reason, Starlight had to levitate Fireball and I to the roof of the car to remove the damaged crystal panel, and bring down the most complete fragments left. After she spent some spare crystals to repair it, she reversed the steps and installed the panel back as it was. Counting the crystals consumed to repair the crystal plate and make boosters, etc., the half ton of spare crystal blocks we brought from the cave farm is now less than half.

At the same time, Tingting spent the whole day trying to restore Spitfire's modified space suit to its original state as much as possible. The steps involved cutting off the wing covers, re-sewing the original covers in place, borrowing about two square feet of spare cabin canvas, and vomiting out a lot of black goo in the old-fashioned way. After all this tossing, she has now laid down next to Fei Huo. I asked her if she was okay, but she just gave me a "middle hoof", then turned over and continued to strike. It seems that our little snack lover has been in a very unhappy mood recently.

Finally there is the report. Absolutely endless reports. The ponies took turns recounting the events of the past few days to them, and the toilets were almost flooded. But they were much more relaxed than me; I had to give an oral report, and NASA always had endless questions, which had to be relayed through Hermes for me to answer. When the communication window finally closed today, I felt a little hoarse... like I had swallowed broken glass in my throat. (Well, I can also restrain my desire to make bad jokes!)

However, we only have one day to spare. Hermes is still getting closer. The light speed delay between us has now dropped to just five minutes. In sixty-two days, whether we are ready or not, it will fly by Mars as scheduled. And we are still more than 1,600 kilometers away from the MAV. We have to get going.

(Not to mention that NASA is still clamoring for me to send back the video of the flying fire process captured by the fireball. It can only be done after we can use the MAV's radio. So we'd better get there as soon as the last JSC scientist arrives. I rushed to finish the matter before I died of cerebral hemorrhage.)

The car battery is fully charged again. We have used up the energy storage of eleven magic batteries in total, and we will definitely not be able to get most of it back, but a little magic energy will be regenerated every day. If not now, then when?

Tomorrow we turn eastbound...and, to paraphrase BJ McKay, put the pedal to the metal and blast away.