My Little Pony: My Little Pony The Martian

AMICITAS Mission Three – Mission Day 89

ARES 3 solar day 91

"Okay Mark, please turn to the next page."

Starlight watched from the bunk as Mark flipped through the Amicitas spacecraft technical manual lying on the ground next to her with extreme caution, fearing that she would accidentally break the fragile pages. The instruction manual is a binder, so it can be spread out without much effort, allowing Mark to take photos and record the information on two pages at once. After he was done, he would sit back on his bunk and type on the computer, while Starlight used magic to tinker with the other computer. Mark is recording his journal; while Starlight is trying to translate the text of the manual into English so that the entire set of materials can be transmitted once stable communication with Earth is established.

The Hab is very quiet today.她与莓莓、飞火一同享用了除去火球前一夜剩下的一小把口粮之外来自小马国的最后一餐。 They tried a small amount of frozen -dried and dried crickets left over after breakfast this morning, but after a few mouthfuls, they decided to leave all the food of this mini feast as the raw materials used in the future when they need to make mucus -related products in the future. .在此之后他们又吃了第二顿正经的早餐，马克与三只小马分食了他的两包主要为谷物的早餐食物包。

Our main task today is to turn over the soil to cover the withered potato plants, so that they can be put back into the compost bin to release the nutrients they contain back into the soil. At the same time, Mark would put on his space suit about every hour and go outside the cabin to see if there was any movement on the detector he spent time repairing the day before. So far it is still motionless, and the smaller rover is currently sitting quietly on a workbench without moving. The onboard battery has been removed and the unfolded solar panels are placed under a reading light.

Recently, apart from spending time watching the robot version of the snail race, Mark has spent the rest of his time assisting Starlight's projects. To be honest, she really wouldn't be able to do this without Mark's help. The electronic dictionary on her computer wasn't up to the task, or maybe Starlight's English wasn't good enough to help her find the correct explanation in the dictionary. She had asked Mark dozens of questions about technical terms, occasionally asking him to help convert human weights and measures that unfortunately didn't correspond perfectly to pony units. And even if typing with magic is a little faster than hooves, the slow rate of magic energy regeneration in the universe she currently lives in severely limits her typing speed.

"Hey, Starlight."

At this time, Starlight was about to enter a bunch of labels for the Amicitas spacecraft's heat exchange system into the computer, when she looked up and saw Spitfire walking towards her. I saw Mark's other computer carefully carried on her back. Mark expressed his emotional stability about this; after all, ponies have always used this method to carry various items in front of him, and nothing had ever happened to him, and he had long been used to it.

"Spike, what's wrong?" Starlight couldn't help complaining, "You just straightened my bones an hour ago, and the painkillers haven't worn off yet. I don't need to take any more medicine."

Spitfire frowned after hearing this, and for a moment Starlight was worried that she might start arguing about this again; but she just shook her head and said: "It has nothing to do with taking medicine. I just want you to help me find what you told us earlier. Where is that dictionary mentioned."

Starlight was a little surprised by this and asked: "Then why don't you ask someone here who knows English better than me?" She was afraid that Feihuo wouldn't understand what she meant, so she He also cast a small spell, projecting a luminous arrow pointing directly at Mark's head in the air behind Mark's head, out of sight.

Spitfire smiled and replied, "It's a surprise."

"What are you trying to find out?"

"Dinner."

After hearing these words, Xingguang became even more confused. "Okay," she said, "let me look for it."

Spitfire stretched his wings and picked up the laptop, turning the screen to the starlight. The unicorn brought up the dictionary program with just a few keystrokes. "Well, that's it." She pointed a few words by the way, "The label on the top has a long string of letters starting with 'T-H-E'." She used English when spelling these letters. " It’s used to look up synonyms. If you want to know a lot of different words for the same thing, this is usually where you start.”

"Thanks." Spitfire said, taking the computer back and carefully walking back to Pony's workbench.

"What was that for?" Mark asked.

"Uh ..." Xingguang tried to recall whether the word she wanted to say at this moment was learned in previous English classes, "What do you say that you can't feel before happening? Is it like what’s inside the box?”

"Is it a 'surprise'?" Mark asked, making a gesture similar to exploding.

Starlight looked it up in her dictionary, nodded and said, "That's right. Spitfire has a surprise."

At this time, Mark began to look a little melancholy: "I used to like surprises."

"Then what happened?"

Mark pointed to an oval patch on the canvas of the habitation module where the No. 1 airlock used to be and said, "After that, I will go to Mars."

Mission Log – Solar Day 91

I woke up this morning to find that the Pathfinder was in the same condition as when I left it yesterday afternoon. Considering that there are probably no saboteurs on Mars, this incident is certainly nothing to make a fuss about; but I was hoping for some movement.

If plugging the Pathfinder into the living area's power supply and using a heater to bring it up to normal operating temperature still doesn't work, I'll have to take it apart and examine the inside to see if there's anything I can repair with the tools I have on hand. 's damaged. If the processing chip or circuit board is broken, it is probably out of luck, but if you encounter various other problems, you can probably save it.

Now I'm thinking about backup plans in case the Pathfinder brain goes down permanently. The simplest experiment is naturally to remove the high/low gain antennas on the detector and connect them directly to the radio system in the residential area to see if it works. However, this should be implemented as a last resort, because I feel that doing so will most likely permanently damage other system components of Pathfinder.

Another option is to cut off the signal line connected to the high-gain antenna and find a way to make a telegraph sending button. In that case, I should be able to send signals out. But the problem with this is that I have absolutely no idea how to receive their response. And I don't know enough about the internals of Pathfinder detectors and residential radio systems to convert the incoming connection signals into audible tones or some format that the residential equipment can analyze and interpret.

This is the key flaw in my plan. It's a piece of cake to beam out; a radio like the one on the Pony spaceship can do it, even if doing so means competing for frequency with dozens of major public radio stations on Earth.

Wait a minute...I have an idea. I can use the Pathfinder as my radio transmitter. Assuming that NASA's radio telescopes pick up this unexpected microwave signal from Mars, I can use this method to send them instructions to reply using one of the five preset frequencies of the Pony spacecraft radio. The delay was long enough for me to move from the probe to Pony's ship and wait for their answer. (The signal alone takes about eleven minutes to travel one way - compared with the orbital speed of Mars, the Earth is simply a flexible fat man. In just ninety days, the one-way communication delay has almost tripled. times.)

Xiao Ma's radio was originally used for making calls. In other words, it processes analog signals. This was made clear in the instructions I sent out - the signal they returned had to be loud enough to be sent in Morse code. It is possible that voice communications from Earth can still be received here, but the signal quality is too degraded to be feasible; and the signal degradation will only get worse in the next two hundred and fifty days or so.

不过也没什么毛病。 This solution is also feasible, just leave it for the last means for backup. But I still hope that the next situation will not be really bad.

Anyway, the real decision will have to wait until some time later, so you can leave it alone for now. Now I want to give the Pathfinder at least two more days to warm up. After all, although the thin air of Mars is really good at dissipating heat, it is of no use when it comes to transferring heat to another object. Even if the pathfinder directly targets it like it is now The heat source didn't make much of a difference to the final result.

This is the case now. The power supply I have connected to the roads should also drive the built -in heater of the detector, but the premise is that they can still use it. But now I have no way to figure out what's going on inside the detector. This is why I also moved the environmental heater from Rover 1 - to serve as a backup in case the built-in heater fails. But the built-in heater may also have been stolen. I mentioned earlier that I couldn't find them yesterday, right?

Maybe I'll have to watch out for martian saboteurs after all. After all, when we arrived at Mars on Sol 1, both rovers happened to be missing their hubcaps.

Just kidding, I was just talking.

"Okay, everyone." Mark said, "Lunch is ready. Let's eat!" He put down a complete food package in front of Berry and Spitfire, and then walked towards Starlight's makeshift bedside table made of stools. , gave her the third portion.

"Mark, excuse me," Spitfire asked, "May I ask if I can choose something to eat by myself?"

Mark walked back to the two of them. "Choose something to eat?" he asked, "What do you want to eat?"

"Meat."

Mark's face suddenly turned pale, and he looked quite frightened.

"Fish," Spitfire continued. "Cod. Hake. Pollock. Trout. Carp. Salmon. Tuna."

Mark looked paler.

"Sardines. Anchovies. I like anchovies." Spitfire grinned and continued, "Eat them whole. Eat the fins. Eat the heads. Boom, boom, boom." She moved toward Mark looked in the direction as if he was going to bite someone.

At this time, Mark's face almost looked a little green. "Excuse me..." he said as he stumbled back toward the bathroom of the cabin, which had been rarely used recently.

Spitfire couldn't help but laugh. "He fell into the trap!" She cheered and spoke in pony language, laughing so hard that she was out of breath, "He deserves it! Let him...*haha*...every day...*hahahaha*...take us... *Hey hey hey*…Feed like a cow!”

However, she didn't notice that Berry's face next to her was already greener than Mark's; considering that Berry had pink hair all over her body, this sight was simply a spectacle.

"Okay, now we can finally eat something good," said Spitfire. "At least there must be eggs for breakfast. I really want to eat eggs, I almost..."

"Flying Fire," Berry said, looking a little out of breath, "Shut up now. This is an order."

The pink pony pilot then pushed the food package in front of him.