My Little Pony: My Little Pony The Martian

Mission Log – Solar Day 138

Today we went out to look for salt. The only things I traveled with were Starlight, Rover 2, and the memories of my Pathfinder journey.

We took the rover and drove about 6 kilometers west from the residential area. We found a crater of suitable size and carefully drove into it. What? You ask me why I have to go so far? Because although the explosion of the habitation module and various activities we have carried out recently have already contaminated the location of the habitation area, I still do not want to add fuel to the fire, so as not to cause trouble for Ares and subsequent missions; and what we did today is almost It can make all soil or rock composition analysis results become waste paper.

Well, the reason was that the ponies needed salt—and there wasn't enough of it in alfalfa. Now they have searched every part of the Hab, almost turning it upside down; and it turns out our reserves are running low. It is important to remember that this is not an optional condiment; if there is a lack of salt in the hay, the ponies will suffer from some sort of deficiency that will at least result in a loss of judgment. The last thing you want to encounter on Mars at this moment is to lose your ability to judge - nor do you want an insane creature to appear within a mile around you.

(Of course, these ponies have basically been into seventies music and so-called comedy shows since the beginning, so I think they're probably hopeless. Nevermind, just a casual comment.)

Fortunately, Starlight's previous perchlorate bomb spell was still very handy; with just a few adjustments, she could extract all the salt from the soil as cleanly as those dangerous and toxic explosives before.

And this method actually works quite well - sort of. When Starlight showed off her magical powers in the cave before, she piled up a small mountain of perchlorate; but you must know that here in the northern hemisphere of Mars, the content of perchlorate in the soil is far greater than that of sodium chloride. . So in the end we only found enough salt to fill two medium-sized sample boxes, and this was only after Starlight increased the spell's coverage to one kilometer in diameter and dug five meters into the ground. As expected, today's level of labor directly emptied her magic battery, and the salt will run out in a few months, and we will have to do the same thing again.

There are no other methods. Martian soil contains small amounts of sodium chlorate and sodium perchlorate—also in trace amounts, but more than sodium chloride. When heated to about 400 degrees Celsius in an environment with metallic iron, a large amount of oxygen and salt will react. Of course, the by-products will also include some chlorine and other weird and harmful substances. After all, chemical reactions have always been this way. And since this substance is a rocket oxidizer like the previous magnesium and potassium perchlorate, it is probably unlikely that I will do this kind of experiment in the habitat recently. But this is still a possible research direction; if necessary, I can find a solution or pitch the idea to NASA.

(NASA, did you hear that? Seriously, if you can think of some other simple and fun way to blow up the habitation module and kill us all, just let us know!)

By the way, Starlight has recently been trying to assemble two new magic batteries using giant crystal blocks mined in caves and parts found in the ship's engine room. They have no signs of starting to recharge yet, but every day Starlight will tell me that she has figured out which step she made a mistake in before, and there will definitely be no problems next. I have great confidence in her.

Unfortunately, news soon came from the other side of the earth that Starlight's work in this area may have to come to an end for the time being. After we returned from collecting salt, we found a message from NASA; Starlight seemed to have been officially certified and was rated as the pony with the strongest English speaking and written writing skills, so she would take over the teaching responsibility from me. In fact, Tingting's spoken language is slightly better than Xingguang's, but this is a written test after all, and Xingting's writing is obviously more meticulous.

It might be bad news for her, but I'm quite happy - I won't have to worry about preparing English lessons for them in the future. And Feihuo should be very happy, after all, I won't talk to her in that condescending tone anymore.

One thing is extremely ironic: the three pilots have the worst English skills (Berry is slightly better than Fireball, while Spitfire is at the bottom of the rankings, just behind the first two). If they really plan to operate the MDV flight simulator, they may have to learn faster. The situation on my side will be much easier. I only need to sway the blame with my words: "Now Starlight is responsible for this - just ask her."

I haven't decided yet what I plan to do when I return to Earth, but at least one thing is clear: I'm not an English teacher. For this I offer my sincere apologies to about eleven ladies and two gentlemen; Mr. Lindsay, Mrs. Ventrello, Miss Vaughan, Mrs. Bryszewski, Mrs. Stockdale, Mason Madam, Mr. Brooks... MD, and there are five or six others whose names I can’t even remember, but I have to confess here anyway. I always thought you were all cruel and incompetent bastards who were determined to destroy the beautiful world. Campus life has become a torture that is worse than death.

Sorry, I was wrong. I never realized how hard you work. If I had woken up earlier, I would have cut down the number of slobber balls and table footballs by about half.

But dividing sentences into parts is boring as hell, and I certainly won't apologize for being rude in front of you. Even the detention was worth it, because even my dad told the principal that he agreed with my point of view.