My Little Pony: My Little Pony The Martian

AMICITAS Mission Three – Mission Day 12

ARES 3 solar day 16

"We should save some food," Starlight complained as Spitfire placed a complete meal (Hughton's special spicy bean stew) in front of Starlight.

"The wounded need to get adequate nutrition," Feihuo said coldly, "Don't bite, eat it quickly. If your horn dares to light up for one second, I will poke it out." After a while, she brought another mark. The cup, filled with white liquid, probably reconstituted milk, was placed next to the plate.

Starlight put down the whiteboard and started eating lunch. However, she was still thinking about the urgent problem that she had spent an hour on without making any progress. In fact, she didn't taste the food very much at all. (Fortunately, her body is much more rational, and she stops every 30 seconds to take a sip of what appears to be milk to relieve the heat.)

She didn't speak to Mark at breakfast; she was exhausted and her horns were sore, all symptoms of depleted magic. But when she saw Mark, Berry, Dragonfly and Fireball carrying two shovels and two of the largest plastic boxes in the base out of the airlock after breakfast, she couldn't help but feel curious. Apparently they planned something while she slept.

She kept thinking about what these guys were up to, until Mark and Fireball entered the airlock carrying two boxes of Martian soil. They moved the boxes to the far end of the site...well, not that far—the living area was about the size of an average one-story family cabin—and dumped the dirt onto a patch of floor Mark had carefully cleared.

Seeing this, Starlight (unsurprisingly) decided to put aside the soreness in her horn and used magic to ask some very specific questions.

Q: Why did you move the soil in?

Answer (the translation spell is still not accurate): Grow food.

Okay, there seems to be nothing wrong with it at first glance, but when you think about it, something is wrong. It is true that nothing can grow outside... but there are six creatures living in this small living area, and there is also the [DATA EXPUNGED] box that is currently placed behind the bunk and covered with a curtain, so that even if the lid of the box is closed, The house also smelled like sixty people (horses) lived there. The remaining space is not even suitable for gardening.

Q: How much alfalfa do you think you can grow? Write on the whiteboard.

Answer (Mark did not use the translation spell, but tapped the screen for a while, and then wrote the result on the whiteboard using the numbers they had practiced while moving the spacecraft): 1.5 kg/square meter/65 days. (Mark drew a sunrise to represent "heaven".)

Starlight had seen the "kg" symbol before on a piece of equipment Mark had placed on one of the workbenches. She dragged Mark over, pointed at the guy, and Mark put his coffee cup on top. (She thought it was a coffee cup—it looked similar in shape, but the handle was too small to pick up with her hooves.) A display on one side lit up, with a number with a "kg" symbol next to it. Understood! So this is a steelyard, and kg is a unit of mass. She wanted to know what the full name "kg" stood for.

Now there was still a part of the formula that was not solved, so she lit up the corner again.

Q: Draw a picture of how big this is (point to “square meters” on the whiteboard).

Answer: (This time there was no need for a translation spell. Mark drew an exterior view of the base, wrote an equal sign, and then: "92 square meters")

Starlight thanked Mark, held the whiteboard with her front hooves, used the last bit of magic to hold the marker, and staggered back to the bunk with her hind hooves. Spitfire snatched away the whiteboard (with his wings) and the marker (with his mouth) on the way, roaring and cursing some inconsiderate pony. At the same time, Mark and Fireball took a few small buckets and went out to dig again.

Back on the bunk, Starlight kept coaxing and coaxing her grumpy female nurse to take three food packets from the supply and put them on the alien's scale. The number displayed was large enough to be seen from across the room, and when Spitfire placed the third package on the scale, it read 1.2. In this way, Starlight said to herself, no matter what kg means, it should be very close to Pony's "kilogram". Maybe it's the same thing. Could it be that the kingdom’s old weights and measures standards are also correct? Does Mark also use pounds, quarts and grains? The language barrier still needs to be solved as soon as possible.

Back to the topic. For convenience, she used Mark's mathematical symbols, held a marker in her mouth, and calculated on the whiteboard.

The standard diet for space ponies is high in calories, which is much higher than the calorie requirements of ordinary ponies. For example, a working pony needs two pounds or one kilogram of food per day. If the workload is not heavy, you can reduce the amount as appropriate. (Starlight still can't figure out why Pinkie Pie didn't turn into a fat ball even though she ate almost all sugar and starch, more than twice the normal amount. She's somehow just a little rounder than her friends... and even Ponyville. Certain residents need to be thin, such as Bad Money...and herself, Starlight later notes to her annoyance.)

Never mind, just treat it as the minimum diet for survival: eighty percent of one kilogram per pony per day. Not applicable to Fireball and Dragonfly: Dragonfly doesn't need any real food; Fireball claims he can even eat raw hay, but can't digest it. All in all: three ponies and 2.4kg of alfalfa if not working all day.

马克写的是1.5千克（大概）每“m2”（管它是什么）每65天。而65天内，三只小马按估计至少能吃掉156千克。

1.5 kilograms times 92 "m2" equals... 138 kilograms.

As a result, there was a gap of 18 kilograms that had to be filled with food packages. But by then there will be no food packets left. At a rough estimate, Starlight believed that the food reserves they brought from the ship could barely last until the first harvest... assuming they could grow it today. And judging from the pitifully small floor covered with dirt, there was probably not much hope.

In other words, they still have to rely on Mark's food reserves... But even assuming that Mark can eat alfalfa, this plan can't leave him anything. Except for the fireball, Mark is bigger than the rest, which means he probably has to eat more, and the gap will be bigger, and then...

By the way, I forgot about the fireball. Fireball couldn't use that thing as food.

This plan simply won't work.

Starlight's body finished eating lunch, but her mind was still thinking about it over and over again.

This is not possible. We need more land. Can't drop the fireball and mark yet. Mark may be able to grow things, but can he grow rocks? Or in this low magic energy environment?

Fireball ate one sapphire each night for the first two nights. He has eleven left. On the other hand, he has also begun to save some, so the original 21-day food package can still last for 26 days. But once that's gone, all that's left is Pony and Mark's food packets, and he begins to suffer from malnutrition. He will definitely get sick, but how serious it will be is unknown.

Starlight licked the last bits of the offending food from her mouth as she heard the airlock release pressure. Another batch of dirt has arrived, and judging from the current time, they should also be coming in to eat.

That's good. Starlight wants to hold another team meeting. She was not in the mood to use magic to communicate with Mark right now, but the problem required the cooperation of everyone present.

If they don't find a solution soon, some of the horses will die - and possibly everyone else.

She stared at the planting box. In the box, a small cluster of lush alfalfa seedlings sprouted from the soil. The few green spots were highlighted by the white.

The great cause has not yet begun, but it is already struggling.

Log – Solar Day 16

Sorry! My back is almost exhausted from this work! At least it was better than the last time I towed the spaceship. I had a lot of helpers this time.

After we figured out what we were going to do, we divided the work. Berry and Dragonfly could barely lift the shovels, but Fireball and I were much more efficient with it - long live the fingers - and we only had two sampling shovels. So he and I did most of the digging while the other two scraped away the surface soil with their hooves like dog plows. We filled the small sampling buckets, and then Dragonfly and Berry carried the filled containers back to the airlock and emptied them into the two largest sampling buckets I could find. When those two were full, Fireball and I operated the airlock (it takes about ten minutes to inflate or deflate, depending on the situation), moved the soil into the living area, and poured it out again.

We could have used local materials right next to the airlock, but I didn't want to do that. On the one hand, I don’t want to risk waking up in the morning, going out to clean the solar panels, falling into a hole I dug, and breaking my neck. That way, when I get to heaven, I'll be the permanent laughing stock of every Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo astronaut.

It scares me to think about it. "How did you die, Bessette?" "I missed the runway and drove the jet straight into the factory I was supposed to be inspecting. They found my head in the parking lot." "That's bad. That Whitey What about you?" "I was burned alive in North America's shoddy Apollo 1 mission cabin." "That sucked. How about you, Watney?" "I fell into a pit on Mars." "Watney, you're so fucking stupid. Go find Eugene Cernan, you're so late to meet him."

But more importantly, the top soil doesn't get more than a few inches before it encounters permafrost. The top layer is pretty dry, but go deep enough that there's more ice than you think, and digging becomes a chore. Maybe the sampling drill can be used to hold on for a while, use a shovel? Don't even think about it.

Of course, water-laden soil sounds like a good thing, and it's worth the trouble of digging through the permafrost. Unfortunately, they also come with a lot of nasty substances called perchlorates—mostly potassium and magnesium perchlorate. I don't know if it has any effect on aliens, but it is toxic to humans. Magnesium perchlorate, in particular, is an oxidizing agent and a color development aid in some fireworks.

Chlorates are hydrophilic, which means they absorb moisture from the environment and act as a form of antifreeze. This is why you can see a new stream or other traces of flowing water every now and then. Ares 1 and Ares 2 have found concentrations of up to % in samples from the subsurface of Mars, so I’d rather not chew on this hard nut.

Today we covered fifteen square meters of the residential area with soil. Eventually, the entire residential area will be covered with a layer of soil to a depth of ten centimeters. If it goes any deeper, those critical life-saving machines will be in danger.

At present, my workload is greater than when towing the spacecraft, but I am a lot happier. This was an unprecedented scale of what I had been trained to do, and it was completely beyond the imagination of NASA's mission planners. Once everything is in place, Mars will discover the true power of botany!

I was happy, but my back obviously disagreed. I rummaged through the analgesics in the medical supplies. I skipped paracetamol and ibuprofen and went straight to Vicodin. It will take effect around dinner time. (Alas, I can only eat three-quarters of dinner; yesterday's celebration was a little too much, and today's exertion obviously requires a full meal, but I can't waste two days in a row like this.)

But I don’t seem to have much time to eat at the moment. I also had to moisten the dirt that was brought in. Remember those perchlorates? There are also surface layers, ranging from 0.2% to 1.4%, depending on the region. The surface soil concentration in Asidaria is lower, but still 0.3% by weight - well above safety standards.

Luckily the correct way to remove perchlorate is just that – Dang Dang Dang! --add water! Plants need watering anyway!

Diluting perchlorate reduces the risk while also allowing Earth's soil bacteria to break it down more quickly. There are many bugs on Earth that use perchlorate as a food source, and one of my intended experiments is to introduce them to Martian soil and observe their behavior. This should increase the potassium content of the soil—a good thing, since alfalfa needs a lot of potassium to achieve maximum yields.

I just realized: Today is Thanksgiving. I wonder what my family is thinking. Well, that's not exactly true. I know what they were thinking - they thought I was dead. That means the annual feast at home won't be as joyous as in years past. I hope NASA will not hide the news of my death. If they had to hold a memorial service for me on Thanksgiving—gosh, it’s unthinkable.

I always look forward to Thanksgiving. My team members and I will prepare a dinner party. NASA didn't send a full kitchen or a whole boneless turkey, but they designed a kit that uses a microwave, chemistry lab equipment, and even part of an oxygen generator to reheat or cook several Thanksgiving traditions from scratch. The tedium of dishes.

Now sitting in the pantry is a large portion of boneless reconstructed turkey with stuffing inside. In fact, there was a cooking session during our mission training. It's not bad - not as good as grandma's cooking, but it's doable. But I don’t dare to pierce the window paper yet. Regardless of the fireball, I can't eat meat (well, meat by-products) in front of a bunch of pure herbivores. (The exception is Dragonfly. I always forget she has canine teeth, but such sharp teeth always serve a purpose.)

At least I'm not alone today. Not my family, nor my team members; but it will always have some special meaning for me and a group of aliens to get together today.

I'd better hurry up and add water. I made a circle around the garden using uniforms that many of the team members had discarded, so the next step was to pour in... Let me see, 12 square meters * depth 0.1 meters = 1.2 cubic meters, which means I need 48 liters of water, so... …

...wait a moment...

...It seems like there is a miscalculation somewhere. I might be in trouble.