My Little Pony: My Little Pony The Martian

Mission Log – Solar Day 59

Tomorrow is an important day. The battery harness for Rover 1 is coming along nicely and the fourteen solar panels are stacked securely on top of the rover, although I still have to tie them to them with some of the ponies' parachute cords. I wore three layers of clothing—mine on the inside, Martinez’s on top, and Vogel’s on the outside—just in case the heat from the fireball’s flames wasn’t enough to combat the cold Martian weather. Used to keep warm. In addition, I also installed a counterweight on the back of the rover, which is roughly equivalent to enough food and water to last two people for twenty-five days. The remaining space was a bit tight for me, the passenger, and our portable toilet.

But there is good news. During the process of loading the car, I found a large bundle of spare CO2 filters. Apparently NASA decided that since the filter element itself didn't weigh much and the rover was empty and useless, it filled the rover with emergency spare filter elements. I had been worried that judging from the consumption rate in recent weeks, the EVA time might not be enough; but these newly discovered supplies already exceed half of all my previous supplies. In other words, I still have more than 800 hours of total EVA left, which is equivalent to twice the estimated consumption during my entire future trip.

The good news was yet to come - I found Lewis' bag of personal belongings under the driver's seat. Her original plan was to conduct a long-distance EVA on Sol 7, and she even put a removable disk in it - awesome! There’s new entertainment! Just wish she had better taste in drive-in music than TV shows.

The first good news today is that the experiment to shut down the oxygen synthesizer in the residential area was a great success. As long as at least three ponies' spacesuits are functioning properly, the gas exchange is sufficient to prevent an explosive increase in carbon dioxide levels. And those problems that the magic life support system failed to take into account seem to have been solved by the planted plants. So even though I'm taking away more than a third of the residential area's total electricity generation for the cave and rover projects, our energy budget remains firmly below the yellow line.

But let me be clear, I am not leaving tomorrow. The work that needs to be done is not done yet. I just did a little test in the living area and cave to make sure nothing will happen. But now I'm getting ready to do my first long-term test to see how far I can drive it with two batteries and no heater at all. In fact, this is not a test at all, otherwise all the flights of the Mercury Project, the Gemini Project, and the early Apollo Project would be considered "tests."

I understand that this is indeed the case, but NASA says it differently. NASA calls them "missions." And now that I am the plenipotentiary representative of NASA’s Mars office—forget it, I am NASA on Mars—I can also call what I want to do a “mission.”

But it’s not a mission if it doesn’t have a sexy mission name that comes from a fairy tale. So...since this mission has to do with testing our modifications to the rover, I've decided to name tomorrow's mission "Sirius 1."

Sirius. Because it has to do with dogs. do you understand? If you don't get it, I'll see you again.

Now I still need a few fancy mission objectives and mission plans, after all, that's what NASA does.

So we have:

The mission goal of "Sirius 1" is to see how far it can drive on the power of two batteries alone without turning on the heater (units are kilometers).

"Sirius 1" mission plan: (1) Use up the power of both batteries and drive as far as possible (in kilometers); (2) Don't turn on the heater.

Well, it seems like it would sound more serious if NASA were to write it. Maybe they all took cram schools on how to write engineering and bureaucratic jargon. There may be...I just missed this step.

Anyway, no matter what, I will ensure that the living area is always within sight during the experiment; so that if something happens, Fireball and I can still walk home. I plan to drive back and forth on a path of about half a kilometer on the surface of Mars and observe the mileage records of the rover's computer. When the battery only had 5% left, I stopped the car and connected the cable to the second battery. (The car comes with a small emergency battery, which can provide the life support system for about ten minutes during a power outage.) When the battery was 5% used, I stopped and set up the solar panels on the spot; then recorded data to see if it matches my calculations.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow's experiment, but the only thing that worries me is waking up the fireball. I'm going to try to drive in the pre-dawn period so that I have as much time as possible to take advantage of the Martian winter sunlight to recharge. Unfortunately, to do so, I would have to find a way to wake up a large reptile early every morning.

I wonder if Feihuo will help me then.

Mission Log – Solar Day 60

"Sirius One" mission completed!

Of course, "completion" here means "retreating from the rapids after an hour and a half," but don't worry about these details. Even Neil Armstrong had to abort the mission once, so I'm going to call it a "successful failure", meaning that although we didn't complete the expected mission goal, we at least made it back to the residential area safely.

The progress of the mission was pretty good at the beginning. Fireball didn't complain when he got up early. We dressed up, boarded the rover, drove about a kilometer out to the first ravine toward the cave, and then started driving back and forth along its edge.

However, the situation began to take a turn for the worse after I opened Lewis's portable disk using the car computer. I should have thought carefully before doing this. Unsurprisingly, I suspect that Lewis collected on that disk every disco song a mortal could ever learn in a lifetime. At least I hope it contains every disco song known to man, because I'm totally over it, not even one more.

(Then again, since I've been stuck on Mars all this time, I probably won't be hearing any other disco songs. That's at least a good thing.)

Fireball hates disco even more than I do. After listening to two songs, he turned off the player. But after fifteen minutes of silence, he turned the music on again. After playing one song, he turned the music off again. Then he started to look a little embarrassed and turned on the music again, and he kept it on like this for the rest of the way.

Of course, this is not the reason why Fireball is embarrassed. The truth is, the fire he breathes doesn't last more than a minute or two before he starts coughing. Every time he coughed, the rover cabin was filled with thick smoke, which was probably filled with carbon dioxide filters. I wasn't sure exactly why, because the onboard computer's alarm kept going off from the start. Fireball was wearing a spacesuit the whole time, but not a helmet so we could use his life support system for air exchange. But even so, the time it took to wait for the smoke in the cabin to dissipate was still outrageous.

By the time he turned on the music for the last time, he had given up trying to rekindle the fire. By that time, it was already getting cold inside the car. The air supply of Fireball's space suit was completely unable to withstand the rapid loss of heat inside the rover. I want to clarify here that NASA has done the best possible job in terms of thermal insulation design of the rover - at least the contractors have not cut corners in this regard - but now it is the early morning of Mars that has not yet dawned, and what it has to face is The outside temperature is extremely low at around minus 90 degrees Celsius.

So, about half an hour into the mission, we had lost everything and had to rely on our own body heat to maintain temperature. And this is not even a delaying strategy. Wearing three layers of clothes finally came in handy, but it didn't really help much. Half an hour after turning on the music, my teeth began to chatter, and my hands and feet gradually became numb and lost feeling. However, I kept holding on and planned to challenge my limits.

Then I took a look at the fireball. Notice that he is wearing a space suit, and the warm air from his hometown is blowing directly on him. Even so, I could still see that his physical condition was very bad. Around ninety minutes into the mission, he barely moved anymore.

I remember one time, not long after I joined the astronauts, I attended a special event in Houston. It was still summer at that time, and the air conditioning in the hotel was turned up to maximum. The effect was particularly noticeable in the lounge where I and several other guests were waiting to go on stage. And someone, for some reason, placed a stuffed iguana in the center of the conference table. I was very curious about this. Just when I was about to reach out and touch and feel its texture, its head slowly turned around, and a bead-like eyeball moved slightly and stared at me. look. That wasn't a stuffed toy at all - it was someone's pet, and it was almost on the verge of going into hibernation because of the cold environment.

The fireball now looks like a white, red and gold mixed version of an iguana.

Endangering your own life is one thing - honestly, that's the nature of my job; even when I'm not stranded on a deserted planet with little hope of rescue. However, it is completely undesirable to put the lives of other people/horses/dragons in danger. I immediately turned the heater on to maximum and drove all the way back to the living area.

I'm thinking now - well, actually sulking, and I know this because Dragonfly hugged me and told me to relax and not be angry. But now the problem was right in front of me, and I had to come up with a solution for it.

The plan of having Fireball as a traveling companion seems to be unfeasible. Of course, he didn't complain once during the whole process, unless you include his constant tinkering with the player; but he seemed even more afraid of the cold than me, and his built-in fire breathing couldn't be used as some kind of Heat source used. And I can't drive normally without a heat source that's far better than body heat.

I actually don’t have to leave the heater on all the time. I was able to turn it down a lot. How low can I turn it down before I'm on the verge of freezing to death without any imminent danger to my life?

This issue needs to be put aside for a while. I felt like I had a headache, and in a few hours it was Professor Watney's English class again. I really need some time to rest. I guess I’ll open another copy of Johnson’s Agatha Christie e-book collection. It’s a nice way to relax and immerse yourself in the life experiences of someone smarter than me.

This doesn't seem to mean anything. After what happened today, I won't say that Poirot is smarter than me. I would say now that Hastings is smarter than me. And if you don't even have the mental state of a World War I infantry captain...

...Yeah, today is so fucked up.

But things could have been worse. I think overall I did better than Bertie Wooster.