My Little Pony: My Little Pony The Martian

Less than eight minutes later, Mitch Henderson's image appeared on various workbenches on the bridge again.

"This is Mitch Henderson," he said, "Commander Lewis, we've looked at your opinion and your insistence on the Hermes' durability and advantages over satellites taking these photos. But trust me , this is indeed a difficult decision, and Mr. Saunders and Dr. Kapol are certain that the photos you are about to take are not worth the further risks Hermes will take."

He took a deep breath and continued: "I have to say that I very much agree with this decision. Perhaps using Hermes and the Mars upgraded vehicle as a combined communication platform will indeed bring different effects, but yesterday's test has already It turned out that this wasn't going to work. The area the signal needed to cover was simply too large, and Watney's rover couldn't pick up the signal at all, or he might have turned off the radio to save energy. Either way, we decided that the top priority was to get You and Hermes return home safely, the satellites in orbit are fully capable of monitoring the Ashidaria Plain."

In the scene, Mitch gradually approached the camera and then said: "The profession of astronaut is always accompanied by risks, so I also admire you for being willing to risk your own wealth and life to rescue Watney and his guests. But at the same time, You also involve Hermes, and the most likely way to rescue Watney is to keep Hermes intact and return her to Earth orbit to rest. The sooner we can do this, the better prepared we will be."

"This is not to say that you are not important. Whether you can return to Earth safe and sound is our top priority, so even if Watney's safety is put before you, we will still make this decision."

Mitchell took another deep breath and leaned back, "At half hour in Houston time, we will send the orbit planning program required for two orbit changes to lift Hermes back to a safe orbit," he said, "Then you have to set the upgrade vehicle on Mars to satellite mode and deploy it in orbit. When you confirm that you have received the orbit correction program, you will change the Earth's transfer orbit according to the orbit change program we sent you. Charlie will be in The Deep Space Communications Network monitors the entire process.”

"We know you want to help, but to be honest, it's impossible for you to go back to find Watney, and it's impossible for Watney to fly up to find you. Even if the Ares IV Mars upgrade vehicle wants to have enough fuel It will take at least 443 solar days to deal with the emergency situation of deorbiting, not to mention that Watney can't reach Ares 4 now, and you can't contact him. You have done your best, and it is time to go home."

The next few seconds. Mi Qie's lips moved, as if he wanted to say something more, but in the end he only uttered a few words, "The call is over."

The communication video ends.

Vogel sighed and leaned back in his chair. "So," he said, "at least we tried," not expecting Louise's objections to change NASA's decision. But he secretly admired her very much. Although her words were gentle, calm and professional, she could convey tense and impassioned meanings. Vogel was convinced, almost German-style.

And, to be honest, he himself would also like to stay a little longer, if possible...if only...

"There must be something more we can do," Johnson muttered.

"You know very well in your heart that we can't do anything." Martinez retorted, patting the armrest of the flight seat hard, "We are too far apart! It's like heaven and hell are as far away."

"At least we have one more chance to fly over a residential area," Lewis insisted. "Are all the cameras ready?"

"The video cameras are working fine," Johnson said.

"Still cameras ready," Vogel replied.

"Arrived at the closest distance to the target in seven minutes, marking the position." Martinez reported.

"Pay attention to the crash location," Lewis said. "Mark was there yesterday and that's where we're most likely to find him...and say goodbye."

"It's not goodbye," Vogel was a little surprised when he said this. He found that his originally gentle voice seemed particularly harsh and sharp, which was unexpected. He forced himself to calm down and added: "Auf Wiedersehen (auf Wiedersehen). We will meet again."

AMICITAS Mission Three – Mission Day 10

ARES III Solar Day 14

"You know what?" Fireball said the first words of the day to the co-pilot, "I never thought I would be able to sit in this seat again."

They dug for a long time and saw the unicorn's stupid stubbornness. The remaining parts of the Amicitas had been dug out of the ground the day before. It was a miracle that the landing gear was virtually undamaged and only one tire needed repair as soon as possible. They spent the whole morning cranking down the landing gear. Fireball was responsible for lifting the four corners of the spacecraft one by one, while "Alien Stinky Ape" and Dragonfly manually operated the crank handle.

Even Starlight tried to use magic to help Fireball lift the spaceship (again? Wasn't it enough yesterday?), and there was still a little energy in the magic battery, so Dragonfly put it back on the spaceship. The spacecraft's magic-to-electricity converter is still working normally, but they have shut down almost all systems on the spacecraft, regardless of whether they can work normally, just to save energy for the last system that has not been shut down - the nose landing gear. control system.

Now, they were slowly following the car of the "Alien Ape Man". To be fair, this rover was towing something several times its own weight. Even if Fireball didn't look down on the alien at all, he was almost impressed by it. The reason why I say almost, not completely convinced, is because the speed of the rover pulling the spacecraft is not as fast as Crackle [Note 1] hit the stalagmite with his head (twice).

Fireball felt that there was something in his nose, so he gathered a small ball of fire to clean it up. I actually miss Crackle? He silently asked himself, this hellish place is starting to affect me too.

"What's wrong?" Tingting asked, sitting in the passenger seat.

"It's okay," Fireball replied, "This scene just reminds me of my hometown. It's nothing serious."

"I can't connect them together," said Dragonfly. "The Barrens [Note 2] is a desert, just a desert where birds don't poop, but this place is against us in every way."

"You think too much." Fireball muttered.

"Who knows," said Tingting, her eyes never leaving the rover in front, "The Queen always said that when she was flying in orbit, she could always feel the unconditional love from nature. I never I haven't felt it before, but here, I feel something... It seems..." Ding Ting's face was focused and solemn, "like a whisper, and vaguely like a layer of mist, shrouded in pure hatred. We don't belong We are not welcome here."

"Heroes see the same thing," said Fireball. "Anyway, I don't like it very much here. If I had the chance, I would have gone home and stayed there long ago."

"I wonder if Xingxing will also look like this?" Tingting murmured.

"Stop it, what I mean is," Fireball said. He was not satisfied with the direction of the topic where Tiao Ting was getting more and more sentimental. "This place is too similar to the Dragon Realm. Add some cliffs and volcanoes and breathable air, and it's just like Home is no different."

"Amicitas, this is Starlight Glimmer." The suit's communication system is completely operated by magic and cannot communicate with Mark's electronic system, but there is no problem in inter-spacesuit communication with other Amicitas crew members. "There are rocks ahead on the right and Mark is turning left."

"Amicitas got it, keep to the left," Fireball replied, pushing the control stick slightly, and the sound of the motor of the nose landing gear suddenly echoed in the originally silent cabin.

"By the way," Starlight added, "check the suit battery level. I have forty percent left."

Fireball checked his spacesuit, "Fifty-two percent remaining."

"Thirty percent left...impossible!" Tingting clicked her helmet visor a few more times, but the number displayed remained unchanged, "I still have thirty-one percent left, Starlight."

"Copy that, I'll inform Mark that this tow operation must be aborted and we need to return to his base within an hour."

"How far away, Starlight?" Fireball asked.

"I can't understand Mark's console yet. I guess we've walked more than half the way, so we're headed in the right direction."

"Back to center," Fireball reported.

"Thirty-one percent," Tingting was still muttering to herself, "I still have the smallest workload among the three of us."

"Yeah, what's going on?" Fireball smiled, "You used to eat a lot, but now you're empty?"

"What's so funny," said Dragonfly, "it's no different to us changelings, and it's as if I can get much love from you."

Fireball still laughed, "Then why are you still staying with me?" he asked, "As long as you don't stay with that ape, you will always stick to me."

"I will spend time with every clan spirit," Dragonfly replied, "but you don't. You keep your distance from all horses."

"Yeah, that's just me," Fireball muttered, "I don't like any of you very much. I think all of you are mentally abnormal."

"Then you also think that alien is abnormal?"

"Especially him. Dragons will not always share their limited food with strange creatures."

"He's a bit like a pony, isn't he?" said Dragonfly.

Fireball thought about it. The alien was always smiling and chatting with other people all the time, even if they couldn't understand what he was talking about; he had no interest in gems at all (and this, in Fireball's opinion , which is extremely abnormal), and he likes to repair broken things and tinker with the muddy ground. "When you put it that way," he replied, "it's a bit like it."

"He's out of his mind like all the other horses."

"That's it."

"Then we non-horse races need to unite."

Fireball felt a little uncomfortable now. "So, that's why you've been bothering me here?" he asked.

"Well," Dragonfly snorted, its wings flapped involuntarily, shaking the booster backpack of the space suit together, "Even though you look lonely, you are the one who hates me the least among us."

"Ah...um...right." Gan. This bug turned the chat into a Ponyville friendly sharing party. "I owe you, I owe you a lot." He chuckled twice, and then continued, "If you are not more crazy than the others, maybe I will like you in the end."

"I remembered...oh no," Dragonfly complained, "here we go again."

There is a shallow ravine in front of the rover.

"Starlight, this is Amicitas," Fireball said, "Stop quickly."

"Thanks, received," Starlight replied, "You know what to do."

"Of course I know," Fireball complained, "I can't wait to do it three times a day. Ouch, my back." The slowly moving spacecraft stopped behind the rover, and he continued, "Whose fucking idea came up with this? The landing gear wheels are designed to be so small. ”

"It was Pony's idea," Dragonfly hissed at him and turned off the power source.

Log - Solar Day 15

These were probably the worst three days of my life.

We worked hard for three days and finally brought the alien spacecraft back to the residential area. On the morning of the thirteenth solar day, I thought it was impossible. On the morning of the fourteenth solar day, I gradually got a clue. When I finally pulled it back, I started to think about why we did this.

To put it bluntly, it's a miracle we do it at all. Thanks to the aliens' obsession with making the spacecraft so strong, and the weight of the ship, the landing gear remained intact and could even be extended. Even so, if it weren't for this domineering dragon and Starlight, I would have had to dig out the spacecraft from the dirt and rocks with my hands. (Yes, only by hand. Although I have many rock and soil sampling tools, they cannot handle so much sand and gravel. Instead, it is much faster by hand.)

In addition, I have to show more respect to Fireball. He is much stronger than he looks. I don't even dare to think how heavy this spaceship is. He can actually lift the nose or wings several times and still hold it up. Wait until someone else puts a rock underneath or rolls the landing gear down. If he insisted on wrestling with me, I would pretend I had a sprained arm in the hope he wouldn't steal my lunch money later. I can't stand such a strong man.

Let’s talk about Starlight, the super-powered genius pony. Taking this trip with them felt like I had spent more than a week with a pony version of Master Yoda and Captain Caveman.

On the thirteenth working day, we spent half of EVA's time but failed to shovel away the rubble. Starlight took out a square box that had been removed from the ship and spoke in alien language, which probably meant " Don't move, let me do it." She then used her telekinesis, and the ship levitated like Luke's X-Wing starfighter. Everything I said is true.

Then, when the spaceship turned towards us in mid-air, the light of super telepathy suddenly flashed several times, and I heard the caveman captain say, "Ugabuga, the magic is exhausted." What followed was spectacular. In the scene, the spacecraft fell back to the ground in slow motion at a speed of 3.7 meters per second. (You want to know how much kinetic energy that sound has in the thin atmosphere of Mars? It’s so big.) After that, we can only carry her back to the rover and drive her back to the living area to let her rest and recover.

After a while, we continued to cast spells until we collapsed and went back to rest. Over and over again, even the fireballs couldn't hold on anymore. We were only ten kilometers away from the residential area, but it took us two full solar days.

Why is this happening, you ask? First, the built-in towing hook of the Mars rover cannot be used here. It is specially used to connect two Mars rovers. In addition to the mechanical hook clamp, it is also equipped with power cords and air supply pipes so that the two rovers can share electrical power and life support systems. With this design, there is no need to worry about a Mars rover suddenly breaking down during extravehicular activities. But the actual point is that a lot of the equipment here is designed to be able to support and drag a rover on the surface of Mars.

I estimate that this alien spacecraft must be at least twelve to twenty times the weight of the Mars rover. After about ten seconds of careful consideration, I blurted out "Fuck you!" and decided to tie the traction rope directly to the frame of the rover.

The kind of rope you can buy at a small hardware store, NASA mission planning officials did not count it as a mission-critical material, so now I don’t even have any rope on hand. I hope NASA guys can give more when conducting interstellar missions in the future.

But I had quite a few cables, in various lengths, and I had an overstocked supply of snake oil spares at the time. From solar panels, research instruments to various systems in residential areas, it is inseparable. I originally thought of braiding them together to make them strong enough to tow the spacecraft, but I soon discovered that this was not necessary. The aliens must have a backup emergency parachute. The main parachute equipped for use on the spacecraft must have opened automatically during landing and was blown away by the sandstorm. But they were so well prepared that they even prepared another copy on the spacecraft so that the spacecraft could be loaded with a new braking parachute for future use! Even NASA couldn't imagine this.

I also have a rope like this, although this rope is a bit weird. The material seems to be made of rubber, and it looks very similar to rubber. It is black and has ugly green stripes across it, but it is not like rubber that will brittle in the dry and cold environment of Mars. And when I found a suitable place to tie the knot on the landing gear, I found that it was really strong enough.

But we still have to face it. It is still a rope without a suitable towing hook. The connection between the rover and the spacecraft relies on a few knots I tied based on the memory of survival training as a boy scout and astronaut. I don't dare risk speed in this matter.

So, this is the first trouble, what is the second trouble? Traction. Fortunately, the Ashidaria Plain area where we are located is mostly flat land. If you encounter a long uphill slope, or even more unlucky, encounter a downhill slope, you will really have to deal with it here. The four wheels of the rover have separate motors that can output extremely strong torque. But this time they have to overcome unusually large inertia. As a constant, inertia is equally huge whether under the gravity of the Earth or the gravity of Mars.

I wandered around in circles for a long time, and finally figured out how to adjust the rover's throttle. And because we can't completely rely on the braking device of the alien spacecraft, I haven't dared to let the speed exceed one kilometer per hour since we set off.

Then we face the third trouble: wheels. The Mars rover is huge and has a high chassis. With a high ground clearance and independent suspension, driving it over large rocks is no problem because its wheels are each 1.3 meters high.

But if you look at the landing gear wheels of the alien spacecraft, they are only about half the size. They are not as big as the wheels of a long trailer, and they are even smaller than the wheels of a jetliner or a space shuttle. In comparison, the rear landing gear is just long enough to allow the wheels to fully extend from the engine room, while the front wheels are long and narrow. No matter how precious and scarce materials they use to build their spacecraft, hitting a small rock is enough to make you overturn.

Fortunately, Long and Chongchong somehow used some method to repair the driving system of the spacecraft, so that they can easily avoid the rocks. But in this way, the speed must not be too fast, because I can't just ignore it like usual, but have to hide. Clear away the rocks on the ground to keep the spacecraft on a flat, hard surface.

This brings us to the final and most troublesome problem: the ground.

From a distance, Asidaria is as flat as a pancake. It is one of the least cratered areas on Mars. We specifically chose to land here, not far from the Maworth Valley area, because it is part of an ancient flood plain. Rivers flowed here from their source in the Arabian Platform and merged into the largest sea on Mars, leaving a wide variety of sediments in the area.

But the point is, since the temperature of Mars dropped sharply, this sea area has long dried up. Just like you saw in the news photos the scene of the cracked ground after the second sandstorm. After the Ashidaria Plain dried up, the ground here also became dry and cracked... and it was cracked over a large area. So today, the surface here is divided into many pieces, each piece is broad and extremely flat, (except for a few craters and condensed ejecta) separated by shallow valleys. The cliffs on both sides are one meter high on average, and the exposed soil is extremely crisp. This surprised me. The first layer of ground beneath the loose soil and loose sand was so hard. But I'm not a geographer, Lewis is.

The rover alone can handle these ravines without even needing to slow down. (Top speed is 25 kilometers per hour, remember? I can ride a beach bike faster than that.) But pulling an alien spaceship? There are no doors.

From Area E to the residential area, we crossed ten such ditches. Without a combination of a lizard hunk and some caveman captain, we probably wouldn't have made it past the first ditch. We have to stop at each pass and carefully plan how to drive down the ditch to ensure that the spacecraft does not flip over, and let the spacecraft follow the rear of the vehicle as closely as possible. We first untie the pulling rope and drive the rover far across the other side. The slope is then connected to the rover and the spacecraft. Then, the fireball pushes from behind, and Starlight uses its superpower to pull the nose of the aircraft in front until the nose landing gear drives over the edge of the ramp. Finally, we drag it all the way After it left the loose and deep soil, we carried our little unicorn hero back to the rover to rest, and then climbed on the Martian ground for more than an hour until we encountered another ditch, and we had to go through the previous process again.

We did not intend to drag the spacecraft back in one go. Every night we had to drive back to the residential area to recharge the Mars rover and extravehicular spacesuit, and to recharge ourselves. We all really needed a break, and thankfully that work is finally done. Now we no longer have to drive an hour and a half to Mars to go to the alien spacecraft. We only need to pass the solar farm, get out of the cabin and walk north for up to three minutes.

Starlight is now resting on her bunk, and Spitfire looks like she's considering tying Starlight to the bed, although I don't think that would calm her down. Every time after lifting the spacecraft, she would sit on the Mars rover with me. In the last three days, she never used psychic skills on either of us again, perhaps to conserve her strength for lifting the spacecraft. But on the fourteenth solar day, she quietly brought the whiteboard and markers to the rover to communicate with me.

Maintaining a speed of one kilometer per hour has its advantages. You don't need to focus on the road, and you are less likely to hit a passing cat or puppy anyway. So when Starlight and I weren't "creating" weird communication drawings, we were teaching each other math.

That's when things went very wrong. Not only do these aliens bring the same food as Earth, but their numbers are exactly the same as Earth's. Except that their 2 and 3 are a little different, ours is curved with some curvature, but they are straight with edges and corners. But all decimal and obvious Arabic numerals are used. Even the basic mathematical operators are exactly the same. It was not until calculus that some differences in symbols began to appear, and even then some were variations on the Greek alphabet. In most cases, Starlight knows what I am calculating, and can even calculate it much faster than I can.

But not the other way around. She wrote something for me to read, and I couldn't understand it, and I still can't understand it. Obviously they are much more advanced than us in some concepts, and ordinary pictures alone cannot explain it clearly, because every time we get to the point, Starlight will touch on other content.

Finally, I took a picture of a whiteboard with math written all over it. Half of it is a seven-pointed star contained in a circle, which looks like a magic circle for summoning demons, used to sell one's soul in exchange for an A in the trigonometry test. But she didn't use any runes, instead it was filled with formulas, and I could only barely recognize half of the symbols she used. But when you find this diary many years later, great reader, I guess it will still take so long for people on earth to understand the photo I took.

But now everything is ready. The alien spacecraft has deployed and parked its landing gear, and a delicate landing ladder has been placed at the airlock door. It only takes a few steps to reach it. Everything is ready, just waiting to finally remove the parts from it. The rover is charging in the residential area. And I am sitting and preparing to enjoy the first full food bag of the day, because this is what I deserve for my hard work.

Since arriving in the residential area, Ting Ting has not eaten any bag of food. I offered some to her, but she waved her hooves and refused, and gave me a hug as a thank you. It's so cute, the kind of cuteness that would make a visitor from hell want a hug. My legs are still weak now that I think about it.

But why would she do this? Is it because of guilt? I mean, sure, she doesn't work miracles like her unicorn pals and dragon brothers, but she works just as hard as I do. I must ask Starlight what's going on.

But I have to wait until I have enough food and sleep. Now I'm hungry and very, very tired. Let's do some relaxing and enjoyable work tomorrow.

For example, working in the fields.

[Note:]

1. Crackle: The background dragon that first appeared in the main drama S02E21 is the body of the camouflage suit used by RR/TS/RD to track Spike in the Dragon Realm.

2. Badlands: CSP inherits the setting. It is the hideout/rocket development base camp found by the changelings after their defeat in Central City. It is located in a barren area with almost nothing.