My Little Pony: My Little Pony The Martian

AMICITAS Mission Three – Mission Day 112

ARES 3 solar day 113

[08:14] JPL: Good morning Mark, Venkate Kapol here. An email was sent to you containing a schedule of upcoming scientific and medical experiments. All the EVA activities that need to be performed have been highlighted on the document. You can ask your friends for their opinions to see how much they are willing to participate; after all, we here hope that you can reduce the workload and the number of EVAs as much as possible.

In addition, please carefully inspect the EVA space suit of one of them and take relevant photos with their consent. We understand that their spacesuits all come from the same supplier. Since they were short of spare spacesuits and repair parts, we decided to look into the possibility of using Habitat Canvas and Sealant to perform emergency repairs on the spacesuits in an emergency to prevent the next similar accident. If all goes well, we hope you'll have the photos in your upload queue tomorrow.

In today’s news, the performance of the new Fantastic Four movie has astonished the world, and it quickly topped the box office list during its opening weekend; the Cubs signed Luis Bautista y Ortega to pitch for him; the Grapefruit League will start tomorrow, and the Chicago Cubs will face the Arizona Diamondbacks in the first game in Tampa .

But here’s another not-so-palatable news: NASA is forming an accident investigation committee to determine whether any avoidable mistakes occurred that caused you to be stranded on Mars. Now we are just informing you in advance, and the investigation team may question you later.

One last thing, although we can't send you music, we can still send some e-books in plain text format. Today's download will contain a book we think your friends will enjoy. After reading it, please let us know how you reacted.

[08:31] Watney: Venkat, in most cases I try to be careful with my language. This attitude should be considered very sensible. Therefore, after careful consideration, I hereby officially declare to you: I refuse to cooperate with any form of smart dog day investigation. You already have the diary and accident report I wrote, what else do you want? ! My flight suit was damaged in the perchlorate explosion before I could take photos to document the damage. I was a little guilty about this before, but now it seems that I am really happy, so at least you SBs will have less to blame when trying Lewis to find someone to take the blame; I will stop talking today: you guys The coward's mission protocol is useless in the face of an accident of this magnitude; now it's better, the scapegoat has been found first, no way!

In addition, please give me a few kind words to everyone on the investigation committee: your mother sells batches, and your father works on the streets.

I'm not kidding, please don't mention this again. I will do scientific experiments and write reports for you honestly. Sometimes I will pry into the lives of my friends under your pressure. However, I refuse to cooperate in any form of investigation. If you still want to continue wallowing in shamelessness, I can find Tingting and let her talk to you about how indignant I am about the existence of this evil investigation.

Also, none of their brothers and sisters are good.

[08:53] JPL: Mark, this is Teddy Sanders. We understand and applaud your loyalty to Commander Melissa Lewis. I think it is necessary to make a statement to clarify this matter: the purpose of this investigation is not to find the scapegoat. We here all agree that Lewis followed the mission protocol to the letter. Her only fault was that she took too long to find you, and that was no reason to blame her. What we really want to avoid is the kind of oversight and misjudgment that caused you to be stranded on Mars, similar to the broken glass visor of your spacesuit helmet.

Of course we will come to rescue you and go home. However, after you return, we still have to face Ares 4, Ares 5, and countless subsequent space missions. The Ares 6 budget bill has been submitted to Congress and is awaiting approval. And we hope that in the next missions, all six crew members will land and return neatly, so that similar accidents will not happen again. Therefore, we are now carefully sorting out every detail of the Sun 6 accident to ensure that the accident that happened to you will not happen again. We promise that you will never be asked to question Lewis and her decision-making at the time, but we will only ask you to answer some critical questions about the MAV, the habitat, the antenna array, and your flight suit.

I hope these words can change your perspective.

[09:08] Watney: No guarantee. But thank you for your recognition and support of Lewis. I hope you have said this to her yourself.

[09:22] JPL: Absolutely true. The investigation into Lewis began on Sol 22 (local time on Mars), and it took seventeen days to finally clear her of her guilt. She was also praised for not waiting for instructions from Earth before terminating the mission, and would have been quickly promoted to the rank of colonel if she decided to leave NASA and return to the Navy, depending on her physical condition upon return. Evaluate. Given your strong feelings about this topic, we have not mentioned these incidents to you before.

[09:35] Watney: Sweet words don’t work for me. Waiting to download. In addition, here is a quick situation report: the operating efficiency of the water recycling machine has dropped to about liters per day. I will conduct a diagnosis and troubleshooting this afternoon. Since we already have the unlimited water supply of the pony life support system at hand, there is actually no need to solve this problem as soon as possible; but having a backup system as a backup is not necessarily a bad thing.

"Richie."

Richie Purnell was snoring happily.

"Richie." Mike realized that raising his voice had no effect, so he began to shake Richie's shoulders vigorously. "Wake up, it's time to get up."

When Richie falls asleep in his work cubicle, there are generally only two ways to wake up. If he has only been asleep for a short while, he will usually wake up slowly and peacefully; however, if he has had a full sleep, he will wake up suddenly with violent convulsions, usually accompanied by his unbearable pain. The limbs flying around are controlled and killed in all directions. If the safe distance between the unlucky guy who woke him up and his body wasn't enough, he might have received a solid, indiscriminate blow to the face. Even if that guy managed to escape by twisting and turning with all his strength, he might not be able to avoid the seat that was ejected and hit his calf when Richie's body was shaken. And if that man gets lucky and manages to escape unscathed, then our poor man will have the opportunity to enjoy the mysterious pleasure of cleaning up the mess on the ground: Various reference materials and books , all kinds of coffee cups, various large and small items that came from the lounge were all missed, and Richie pushed them off the table as neatly as the autumn wind swept away the fallen leaves.

These were all painful personal experiences for Mike, which was part of the reason he usually made sure Richie was out of the building before six in the afternoon and not in until nine in the morning. However, the recent situation is really tense. Both JPL and the Kennedy Center require the orbit adjustment of the three Sleipnir spacecraft to be delivered immediately, so Mike had no choice but to hand over the job to Rich.

But this time Mike was lucky, Richie had just fallen asleep. I saw him slowly raising his head from the partition wall, looking like he was still unfinished. Loud yawns echoed in the large, empty Aerospace Dynamics Department office; it was still early for the shift. The used coffee cups were huddled together next to the computer (at least this time they didn't create a tower, which Mike was relieved to see), seemingly undisturbed. He asked in a daze: "Mike, what's wrong?"

"Are you done with those tracks?" Mike asked.

"It's just the beginning," Richie muttered.

As soon as these words came out, Mike's jaw dropped in shock and he shouted sternly: "Richie, JPL and others have been pressing for Sleipnir's orbital results, and they almost didn't come to the door!"

Richie looked confused, and it took him a while to react. "Oh..." he said, "You're talking about Sleipnir's tracks, right? It's okay, those have been taken care of. Just wait a moment." He slowly turned his head away, and his hands moved quickly on the keyboard at the same time. Typing, he quickly completed a document that looked like an email to Mike. Richie clicked send, and the interface on the display returned to the desktop. "Okay. It's been sent to your mailbox."

Mike did not thank him for this, but thought about it carefully for a while, and then asked cautiously: "Richie, besides Sleipnir, do you have any other tracks to calculate?"

"Speaking of other tracks..." Richie continued to mutter, "By the way, is there hot coffee in the lounge?"

Mike considered the two options before him. Rich always seemed cryptic every time he was asked to show off unfinished work. It's usually not worth the trouble, especially since Rich's work has always passed the peer review process, so there's no need to waste time. However, today for some inexplicable reason, Mike insisted on breaking the casserole and asking the truth.

But after thinking about it carefully, I decided to forget it. After all, there was not enough time. He couldn't even get Richie home to take a shower and sleep like he usually did. "Not yet, Richie," he replied. "It's only half-past seven. I just got to the office."

"Oh." So Richie began to rummage through the pile of scaled coffee cups, trying to find any leftovers that might have been left behind.

"Rich." Mike patted his talented mathematician on the shoulder and said, "Today your task is to adjust the orbit of the Mars reconnaissance satellite. We need to take as high-quality photos of the surrounding areas of the Ares 3 residential area as possible. photos for Sleipnir aircraft landing planning. They all adopt a tumbling landing configuration, so we can't just throw them over Mark's head. So please find me the lowest energy corrected orbit. Come out and let the satellite fly in a straight line as close to the target area as possible, okay?"

"Okay." Richie moved the page away and looked for traces of the coffee cup. Then he noticed his own handwriting on the paper, so he handed the paper to Mike and said, "Do me a favor. .”

Mike reached out and took the piece of paper handed over by Richie, and saw a few lines of crooked handwriting covered under the coffee stains:

Recipient: Mars – Dr. Starlight Glimmer

From: NASA JSC Aerospace Dynamics Division

Please confirm whether the following calculations about the performance parameters of the Twinkle engine are correct; assuming that the total weight of the engine and battery is 0.00008 kilograms, the energy consumption per second is % of the total battery capacity, which corresponds to the following spacecraft mass range...

There are seven different numbers (units of kilograms) in the bottom, and each number neatly corresponds to several sets of data of its own separate sets of data, and also comes with an equation as an explanation.

"Richie, I..." Mike didn't know what to do. He didn't know how to explain to Richie, who was a full three management levels below the minimum required to be able to communicate with Mark Watney through Pathfinder. After all, Richie couldn't even understand that Mike was his boss, so he really couldn't be harsh on him for this kind of thing. He hesitated for a while and replied: "I will process this material and let Dr. Kapol send it to them via email. Of course, I can't guarantee that they will reply."

"Thanks," Rich replied. "Besides, I need some supercomputer time."

Mike was a little confused about this. Satellite orbits have never been calculated without the use of supercomputers—the orbit calculation tool on the workstation computer is usually sufficient for such simple calculations—but Ritchie may have his own ideas about this. So Mike agreed to his request: "Okay, I'll try to see if I can get it this afternoon."

"I didn't have time to get ready this afternoon," Rich said.

"When are you going to get it?" Mike asked.

"I don't know," Richie replied, "but I'll definitely need it in the future."

It was still early in the morning, and Mike had sacrificed his breakfast in order to discipline his "problem child" subordinate, so naturally he was not very happy. "Rich," he said, "let me deal with those satellite orbit adjustment calculations first, and we will talk about other things later. But first I have to trouble you to complete another task," he picked up a coffee cup casually (there was also written on the outer wall (with the words "Mom Saigao" written on it) was placed in Richie's hand. "Please take all these cups back to the break room and clean them now. Immediately."

In the end, Mike helped Richie carry the cups back to the break room; but only because he happened to be on his way. He had to get some hot coffee...and pick up some donuts along the way.

Today's situation is a little special. The familiar video player interface of the past has disappeared, replaced by a screen full of text.

"Mark, where did the TV go?" Tingting once again expressed everyone's thoughts.

"We're not watching TV today," Mark responded. "NASA sent me a set of books that I read as a kid. They're pretty good. I'm going to read the first part of the first volume to you tonight. You can then decide for yourself whether you want to continue.”

"Is it the Agatha Christie from last time?" asked Starlight Glimmer, who was sitting on a stool. She has recently regained some mobility; although the inflatable brace is still on her front leg, she still gets out of bed at every opportunity.

"Agatha Christie? No," Mark replied. "This book was written by an author named J.K. Rowling."

As soon as this was said, everyone's ears pricked up, especially Berry, who looked particularly excited: "Is there an adventure story? A hot forest? Stone buildings? Various traps?"

Mark thought about this for a while. "Maybe?" he answered. "It's a story about a boy who travels to a magical place to learn about his past."

This sentence poured cold water on Berry's enthusiasm. "Oh. I still hope..." She originally wanted to talk about her opinions, but in the end she hesitated, shrugged and gave up the struggle.

Mark looked around and saw that everyone else was sitting upright and cheering up, but a few of them were obviously not interested in listening to audiobooks all night. "This book," he said softly, "is called Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. The sorcerer here refers to a wizard, who can do magic like Starlight. There will be many wizards mentioned in this book. He smiled slightly and added: "But to be clear, these stories are fictional and not real. Just like those TV shows we watched before, do you understand?"

The five people present nodded.

"Chapter One." Mark began to talk. "The Dursleys who live at No. 4 Privet Drive always say proudly that they are a very well-behaved family. It's absolutely true. They never have anything to do with any mysterious and weird affairs. Because they don’t believe in those evil ways at all..."