My Little Pony: My Little Pony The Martian

AMICITAS Mission Three – Mission Day 71

ARES 3 solar day 73

"Change the extravehicular suit!"

In just a second, Spitfire saw dragons, changelings, and ponies jumping up from their bunks, leaving behind the Justice Strikers that were playing (why did they bring those cousins, Coy and Where's Vance? They look almost exactly like Bow and Luke. It doesn't make sense) and they're frantically climbing towards the space suit storage cabinet. After that, she also stood up and jumped to the storage cabinet, opened it and took out her space suit and helmet.

Do not wear underwear in emergencies. The spacesuit is on. Check the seal. The helmet is on. Turn on life support.

"Dressing completed!" This is Dragonfly.

"Dressed!" This is Berry.

"Dressed!" It's a fireball.

"Dressed!" This is herself. She glanced at the clock. One minute and eight seconds. better. The chaos and noise that accompanied the earliest spacesuit exercises have long since disappeared, replaced by quiet and efficient operations.

Of course, this efficiency is not high enough. She was sure they could squeeze it into less than a minute.

"The exercise is over," she said. "Well done to everyone."

"This is the third time today." Fireball complained, but then fell silent.

"Thank you, Feihuo." Berry was a little out of breath when she spoke.

"Want to help, Berry?" Dragonfly asked.

"It's okay," Berry said, "I just experienced another 'Ponyville moment'."

Berry never explained what the word meant, but Tingting roughly understood it and told Feihuo her thoughts. A "Ponyville moment" in the context of Berry means a panic attack that lasts only a few seconds. Due to its location on the edge of the Everfree Forest, Ponyville is always prone to all kinds of inexplicable minor (and sometimes major) accidents and emergencies. The daily operations of the residents of Ponyville in response to such incidents are to (1) panic; (2) move reinforcements everywhere; (3) panic even more due to too much experience; (4) start cleaning up the battlefield after the farce is over.

Feihuo wasn't too worried about Berry's condition. Berry has always maintained a calm and methodical style during the exercises - and moves very quickly. This reaction usually begins after the exercise is over, as if it were an unusually dangerous Wonderbolt mission. And no matter what happens, Tingting has a way to stabilize her.

All in all, Feihuo was quite satisfied with the recent arrangements. She conducts spacesuit drills once a day (sometimes twice a day), as well as evacuation drills to airlock three (the one closest to Amicitas) in the event of a sudden cabin depressurization. The plants in the residential area are thriving, and the alfalfa in the cave is growing well. She also kept watching the dragonfly, and was pleased to note that the hole in the changeling's body was slowly healing - at an extremely slow rate. Fireball's dragon breath is also back, although he only uses it very briefly sometimes. And Berryberry...

...Well, the commander was so happy after learning about the possible options provided to them by the few spacecraft parts left by Mark.

First, after cleaning up the dirt and dust in the damaged cockpit, they found that four of the six seats carried by the Mark lander were still intact. These seats are naturally not suitable for ponies, but the built-in buffer system below can be used to repair the flying chairs in Amicitas after modification.

Secondly, although the engine nozzles of the MAV ground level are much smaller in size than the Amicitas main engine nozzles, they are still universal. Dragonfly and Fireball have completely dismantled the two main engines at the bottom of Amicitas for inspection. Complete diagnostic testing will have to wait until Starlight returns, but at first glance it appears the impact damage only extended to the engine nozzles.

Thirdly, there is obviously some fuel left in the MDV - not a lot, but at least there is some. Once word from Starlight revealed the exact composition of the fuel—hydrazine mixed with a certain metal that could be used as a monopropellant—Dingfly took the lead in tinkering with the fuel system. Berry also agreed immediately. Again, any source of upward momentum must be exploited.

Finally, removing most of the outer skin of Amicitas exposed many hardpoints within the spacecraft structure that might be able to connect to the Mark lander. This makes it possible to connect the components of the two spacecrafts together. Berry was particularly excited about this.

But Feihuo wants to make sure that Berry can stay sane. The outer structural frame of the spacecraft has been broken in half along with the pressure vessel of the mechanical cabin. These would eventually have to be cut off, which meant the spacecraft would lose the entire stern, including the rear landing gear and the engine nacelle itself. And Starlight hasn't even started to make replacement magic batteries, let alone rebuild a Shining Engine. In addition, neither Amicitas nor Mark's semi-invalid lander was designed to control such a disparate piece of spacecraft made of unrelated spacecraft parts.

The clincher was that even if they somehow made it to the sky in such a monster, the craft would never be able to land again once it left the ground. Without the external skin of Amicitas, the aerodynamic performance of the entire spacecraft will be worse than that of a brick. It simply cannot withstand the tremendous heat generated during reentry. She has made it very clear to Berry that there is only a one-way ticket to the sky on this thing; once it is launched, it will be a failure if it fails, and there is no turning back.

However, Berry looked quite calm in the face of this death sentence. According to her words, she knew that the risks of doing so were extremely terrible and the probability of failure was also extremely high, but she felt that having an option was always better than none.

So there was a big change in their schedule: they did EVA in the morning, and each group of two ponies took turns to work in the cave farm every other day; in the afternoon, they either planned which bits and pieces of the spacecraft might be worth recycling, or they were busy Take care of the farm in the residential area. Evenings were reserved for English classes and watching stupid human TV shows. (They replayed the Partridge Family after Mark left. In fact, they also tried to watch several other shows on Mark's computer, but they soon discovered that their English skills were not good enough to understand why those programs were hidden in the background. The invisible man is always smiling.)

She and Berry had reduced the amount of food per serving to two-thirds of normal in an effort to keep their onboard supplies alive as long as possible before switching to Mark's food. The portion for breakfast is half a food packet, and a full portion for lunch, leaving leftovers for the evening. Berry deliberately saves her two food packets for last - her last two Cheerios food packets cooked by Pinkie Pie herself. She scrawled "Finally" in English on one in marker, and "Thanks for the Cheerilee Trap Mark" on another. (Spike is pretty sure that the correct term is not "trap", but the situation at that time was not suitable for her to correct the commander's mistake for an insignificant matter.)

Fei Huo has a very busy day, just like everyone else. She and her commander and team members once again had their own goals and will drive. Yes, everything went so smoothly.

but……

...something doesn't feel right.

She didn't know exactly what was wrong, but she couldn't sleep for three nights. Whenever she was tending the farm in the settlement, she could feel, in a vague and useless way, that something had changed. However, when she tried to trace the source, all she found was endless anxiety.

This worried Spitfire, especially since she had never been the type of pony to get anxious enough to explode. Before she became a space pony, she had always been the most confident pony in Equestria.

Forget it, never mind. She was still in a good mood anyway. In fact, it was even so good that she wanted to give Dragonfly a reward hug for a midnight snack. After all, it was the bug who came up with the ideas that kept us going, even if she refused to take credit for them.

Besides, who knows? This concern may be nothing more than groundless.

But now she has to take off her spacesuit and go back to watching TV. She bets five bucks (to be cashed out when they get back) whether Roscoe or Cletus will be the first to damage their police car this episode.