Obviously I don't expect you to do this overnight. We can't install it until we get to the MAV. But I'm sending you photos and descriptions of the updated system and its specifications, as well as Dragonfly and I can translate them, for you to work from. I'll begin sending as soon as you give me the word.
[09:55] JPL: Starlight, this is Venkat Kapoor. I have some engineers here eager to get started on your project. We've been expecting this for months. Go ahead and begin transmission.
[10:18] WATNEY: Thank you. File transfer begins immediately.
MISSION LOG — SOL 400
Well, it's official; the cave is slowly losing heat. The new solar relays aren't quite providing enough infrared along with the other components of sunlight to compensate for the loss of the water heating system.
It's not an immediate urgent issue; only four degrees Celsius in a week. Also, there's a good probability that the system will reach equilibrium well above freezing. But that's during Martian summer, and the days are growing shorter. If we leave things as they are, eventually overnight temperatures will dip below freezing, and then the temperature won't rise above freezing come the winter solstice. The alfalfa and potato plants above ground would die off, possibly to re-sprout five months later or so— or not. The cherry trees would probably be all right, except that the water recycling system requires magic from the plant life to work, and without that the water would sink to the bottom of the sealed cave chamber, beyond the reach of the roots of those trees. Without water circulation, even the roots and tubers die, and no more magic, no more plants, no more farm. Game over.
Starlight Glimmer says she can do a trick with the rainbow crystals— basically, to turn a few into little heating elements. The problem is, she can't enchant the crystal to only operate at certain temperatures. Enchantments are not very good at making judgments— that's one reason why the ponies ended up here in the first place. So she's thinking about it, trying to come up with a solution.
So tomorrow will be a make-and-mend day. I'll run diagnostics and maintenance on the Hab equipment— probably the last time I'll ever do it. Dragonfly will do maintenance and patching on the pony space suits. They're going to need it more than ever, since three of them will walk almost the entire distance to Schiaparelli. Starlight will be working on the enchantment for keeping the cave temperatures moderate. I don't know what Fireball, Cherry Berry and Spitfire will be doing, but I'm sure there's something constructive on their minds.
Two days from now, we'll attempt Sirius 5C. This time we're going to run until we just barely have the juice to get back to the Hab. If all goes well, we can proceed to the next test: spending the night in the trailer.
I mentioned this fact to my guests. I now know the pony words for "slumber party."
Author's Notes:
Doing okay at Ama-Con. Not feeling all that energetic, though, and definitely not inspired.
I'll be staying over in Amarillo Sunday night— I don't save any money on hotels by trying to get partway home.
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Sols 402-403
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MISSION LOG — SOL 402
Seventy four point three kilometers!
For any of you diligent, detail-obsessed future historians who would never skip a bunch of entries looking for the good bits, the above number is the distance traveled, according to the rover computer, from leaving the Hab this morning to when we pulled back up to the rover charging station with power levels reading 4%, three and a quarter hours later.
Sirius 5C is in the books as an unqualified success, and we're celebrating with... goddamn hay and fucking potatoes, because that's all we have left to celebrate with. But we're still celebrating, because today is a major milestone.
It's about 3200 kilometers from here to Schiaparelli. If we made seventy kilometers every sol, we'd get to the MAV in forty-six sols. Even allowing for losses of time or power due to elevation changes or obstacles, that gets us there with plenty of time to modify the MAV and make our Sol 551 rendezvous with Hermes.
To make things even better, Starlight came up with a brilliantly simple fix that will let her turn some crystals into heating elements for the cave farm. Right now, without the pony life support, the sole source of heat for the cave is the solar relay crystals... which, obviously, don't work at night. So if you make the additional heating elements light-sensitive, they'll run at night but not during the day, keeping temperatures in the cave more stable and preventing overnight freezing. It's not as good as a thermostat, but it's pretty close.
All in all, that's two pretty nice Christmas presents.
We discussed giving each other Christmas things made out of crystals, scrap metal, etc. In the end we decided against it. We won't be able to take much with us when we leave on Sol 551, and whichever homeworld we get to first will have much better stuff in the shops anyway. So tonight we're settling for me teaching them all the Christmas carols I know. (They have all sorts of questions about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.) And, of course, we have the traditional holiday family dinner of fucking hay and goddamn potatoes, because, etc.
Tomorrow we'll take the combined Whinnybago out to the cave, get production started on Starlight's heater crystals, and then have our slumber party in the trailer. There's no reason to wait, after all, and the cave will make just as good shelter as the Hab if something goes wrong with the life support in the trailer.
And if all goes well with that, then a couple days from now we'll attempt Sirius 7: the full dress rehearsal. Out in a straight line as far as we can go, set up the extra solar panels for recharge, stay overnight, then back the next day. If that works, then we're ready to roll.
To be honest, I don't know whether I hope that it works or that something fucks up. On the one hand, I'd like the peace of mind that having everything apparently working would bring. On the other hand, I'd rather find the glitch here close to comparative safety than a thousand klicks from nowhere in the middle of Arabia Terra.
Well, whatever I'm hoping, here's hoping it.
MISSION LOG — SOL 403
Well, fuck.
I'm writing this on a laptop in the cave. It's close to midnight Mars time, and we're all huddled around the pony life support unit and the RTG, both of which we uninstalled in record time when we decided to bail out of the rolling ice box.
In retrospect this was the obvious result. The RTG, by itself, is sufficient to heat the rover interior— a bit more than sufficient, since I had to rip out part of the rover's insulation to keep from roasting. But the open interior of what remains of the pony ship is more than four times the volume of the rover interior, with a corresponding larger surface area.
And the pony ship has no insulation whatever. For reasons which I guess seemed good at the time, the ship insulation was all between the inner and outer hull layers, wrapped around the cooling system pipes and things. When we stripped off the outer hull for scrap metal, we pretty much destroyed the insulation, too. We didn't keep very much of it. One of the largest pieces acted as the makeshift door between the farm and Tangled Hallway.
And now we're regretting that decision, because without that insulation what's left is a naked, highly conductive metal hull that sucks heat out of the interior. By the time we decided to bail out, we could see our breath condensing, it got that cold inside.
There's still a heater inside the ship, but that's for emergencies only. It draws 200 watts, and 200 watt-hours during the overnight hours, less the 100 watts of electricity the RTG produces, is still a bit more than one whole pirate-ninja every night that we won't be using to drive on come morning. The goal is to get through the night on nothing more than the 100 watts the RTG puts out, so that the batteries stay full for the morning's driving.
I'm already working on ideas for fixing the problem. I don't think we can re-insulate the whole ship, and anyway we'd want to stick the insulation on the inside of the hull instead of the outside. That's going to require a lot of work. To save on work, and to concentrate the heat into one place at night, I think we'll focus on just insulating the habitat deck. We'll close the pressure door to the bridge at night and shut off air circulation to the bridge and to the rover, concentrating all the heat sources into that one chamber.
It's going to get cramped; the sleeping bags normally hang from the cabinets, because sleeping is done in zero-G. Also, all the magic batteries except the big ones are in the habitat deck for maximum recharge. Floor space is at a minimum.
Question: where do we get more insulation? What we saved isn't even close to enough to paper the walls of the hab deck. Dragonfly has flatly refused to try spitting up insulation— and I don't blame her. I certainly wouldn't enjoy puking non-stop for a week or so.
We have the hab canvas from the top of the pop-tent we sliced off to provide an electrical ground for the cave farm for the Sol 247 storm. Hab canvas is a better than average insulator. It's built to be, since it not only has to block cosmic radiation but retain heat in the Hab. But that bit of canvas would be about enough to drop like a little doily across the old docking port, which is in the top of the habitat section of the ship. The only other sources are the second pop tent and the Hab, and it's a little early for us to cannibalize the place that's mostly kept us alive for four hundred sols.
The other source for insulation is the Rover 1 cabin. Remember, that was removed intact from the chassis and became a permanent radio shack connecting Pathfinder with the Hab. We wear space suits on the rare occasions we go inside anyway to save on air, since the only life support remaining inside is an air tank. The problem is that it's foam insulation, nearly impossible to remove or transport intact.
There's one other possibility; taking whatever hay the ponies aren't going to eat and turning that into insulation. It's not going to smell pleasant after one hundred and fifty sols, but it might help, so it's worth thinking about, provided there's enough of it.
Maybe the problem will seem simpler when I wake up in the morning. Maybe all we have to do is shut air circulation down, and the RTG will be enough to keep just the habitat deck warm.
Maybe the Princess of Mars will appear, command me to be her concubine, and make the others her ladies-in-waiting.
But for now, I'm going to find a spot in the sleep-pile with the others and hope body heat keeps us comfy tonight.
MISSION LOG — SOL 403 (2)
Hi to humans. I am Spitfire. I write this because Mark is hurt. He got in way of my rear hooves when I felt something poke me in rump. I am sorry but can't help it.
Starlight Glimmer won't stop laugh. She says I thought it funny when happen to her on Pathfinder trip. I remember not that way.
MISSION LOG — SOL 403 (3)
Mark here. She got me right in the solar plexus. Made breathing real interesting for about half an hour. I don't think anything's actually ruptured, though. If I start seeing blood in my urine, then I'll begin worrying.
It's about three in the oh-my-god-ning. Maybe we can get through three hours of actual sleep without a jackhammer to the gut...
Author's Notes:
Feeling a bit better today, but will still be very glad to get home. That's tomorrow's drive, by the way.
Anyone who saw this one coming, score yourself five bonus smug points. Collect twenty-five and trade them in for one genuine I Told You So.
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Sol 405
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AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE — MISSION DAY 412
ARES III SOL 405
"It'd be easier if Starlight was helping us."
"Yeah," Dragonfly replied absently in Equestrian, focusing her attention on turning her ratchet while Fireball turned his. She hoped the dragon didn't follow that thought any further. Yes, having the unicorn present would speed up the process of stripping down Amicitas's habitat deck to bare walls, but she was more useful helping Mark cut the insulation out of Rover 1's dismounted cabin. This job could be done with muscle, but that job required a more careful and delicate touch— and magic.
So she was there and they were here, and complaining wouldn't change that.
"Where the heck are we going to put these anyway?" Fireball asked, pausing to point to the cabinet he was dismounting. "The bridge is crammed full already so we can barely get out the airlock. I'm not even sure these would fit in the airlock with either of us."
"We don't need to take them out of here," Dragonfly said. "We can work around them. We just need to get the walls clear for insulation."
"Oh. Okay. Where do you want the bolts?"
"Caddy in the top of the tool box. The one with the lid."
"Okay." More ratcheting. "Why don't you use your magic? Make this go faster."
"First, you know exactly why I want to use magic as little as possible," Dragonfly said, a little testily. "Second, I will be using my magic later. So I can't afford to use it right now doing something we can do by hoof."
"Yeah, yeah," Fireball grumbled. "This just takes forever, is all." Giving the lie to his statement, he dropped the last bolt from the current cabinet into the tool box, slid it up and off the bracket that held it in place, and looked for a place to put it. "You sure you can work around this?"
"Just a moment." Dragonfly pulled the last bolt out of her own cabinet, the one which had been beneath Fireball's, and slid the cabinet out of its groove in the deck. "The cabinets interlock. Take a couple bolts and thread them through the bottom mounting holes. You can link these two cabinets together that way, and they can just sit together in the middle of the deck." She forced herself not to look at the rather small deck area available for things to sit in.
"Right," Fireball muttered. "Two down, ten to go, then."
"Eh, we're almost done," Dragonfly said. "The hard part was clearing everything else out first."
