Just making this trip, it occurred to me that we never got around to giving proper names to any of the features around the Hab. I checked with NASA, and it turns out they've stuck with the placeholder names given in the mission briefings.
So I discussed the matter with the aliens, and we decided to fill the gap ourselves. I mean, why not? I've already named a valley after Commander Lewis during the Pathfinder trip.
So, let's go down the list of features, beginning with the five geology sites we trained for. Site Alpha was just the flat ground the Hab sits on. That already has a name, though none of us ever used it except Lewis: Fertility Base. (Acidalia means "named for Venus", Roman goddess of love and fertility. And since I was along as a botanist, performing the first experiments with live plants on the Martian surface, some higher-up decided it rhymed with Tranquility Base. But none of us liked it, so aside from Lewis declaring Fertility Base fully operational at the end of Sol 2, we all just called it the Hab.)
Site Beta was going to be the nearest gully. The problem is that the eight gullies that run across the path between the Hab and the cave farm are pretty much interchangeable and uninteresting. So are the ones we crossed going south on the Pathfinder trip until we got into Chryse Planitia. Neither I nor the ponies feel like they deserve names, but if we don't somebody will. So we officially name them after dwarves: Doc, Grumpy, Sneezy, Bashful, Sleepy, Happy, Dopey and Tyrion, for the gullies going east to west from the Hab to Site Epsilon. If the others need naming, between the Lord of the Rings and Terry Pratchett there's plenty of names. Just use Bombur for a really wide gully, okay?
Site Gamma is the crater behind the Hab— well, technically Site Gamma and Site Delta both. Gamma was the outside of the rim, and Delta was the dunes inside the crater proper. The crater is nothing in Martian terms— only a few hundred meters across. There are millions like it around the planet. But this one is ours, so it gets a name. The ponies have no attachment to it, so I'm calling it Martinez Crater, after our pilot who used it as a landmark on the way to sticking a perfect landing.
That leaves Site Epsilon, the old volcano where we found the crystal cave. I let the ponies have that, and they've decided to name it after their ship, Mount Friendship. Actually, they asked me to give it a Latin name like Acidalia. I think "friendship" in Latin is something like amicitas. So Site Epsilon, once we leave, shall forever be Mount Amicitas. The cave gets its own name: Salvation Cave, because it definitely saved our asses.
Finally, there's the trans-Epsilon mountain. Since our name for the crest of the mountain is "the beauty spot". I'm naming it Mt. Johannsen. The big weathered rock on the outcrop overlooking the valley is Vogel Peak, after our silent stone man from Germany. And, since it gets my naming-shit-for-my-crew task over with at one shot, the valley the Beauty Spot and Vogel Peak both overlook will be Beck Valley.
Tomorrow I'll send in my naming requests, along with the requests for that flood channel in Ares Terra that I named for Lewis. We'll see how many NASA and the astronomical community approve. I suspect the names for the Ares III crew won't stick. Naming features for wives and kids works sometimes, but the bureaucrats frown on us naming stuff for ourselves. And, of course, NASA will be gun-shy about lawyers from Disney or the George R. R. Martin estate.
But if they say no to Mt. Amicitas, we'll go to the mat for it. The ponies are strongly for it, and I'm on their side; more than anything else except the existence of that cave, friendship is the reason we survived this long. And friendship deserves a name on a map.
It deserves that at the very least.
Author's Notes:
Buffer is gone. We'll see if I can get something written tomorrow.
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Sol 439
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AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE — MISSION DAY 447
ARES III SOL 439
[09:50] JPL: Mark, just letting you know that there's been no significant change in that dust storm in Arabia Terra. It's moving westward at about four kilometers per hour with no real signs of strengthening. If this continues a small detour of about one hundred kilometers should be enough for you to avoid the dangerous parts of the storm.
[10:44] JPL: Mark, is everything okay down there? Pathfinder shows as fully active, but we don't see your response.
[11:31] JPL: Ares III Hab, this is JPL, communications check, please repond, over.
[11:53] WATNEY: Sorry. We've been busy this morning. Mainly, we just realized that what's left of the pony ship doesn't have a decontamination shower. The ponies used wipes for hygiene, now all expended. So this morning we had a line for the shower followed by discussions about rigging up a bathtub, since this is our last chance to be even sort of clean for the next hundred-plus sols.
[12:04] HERMES: One hundred sols? NASA, are there any procedures for manufacturing gas masks from materials on the ship? Come Sol 551 we're going to need some...
[12:15] WATNEY: Ha ha, guys. By the way, my response cost me my place in line for Second Shower. And you would not believe how long Dragonfly spends in there if left alone. I think she flosses the holes in her legs.
Author's Notes:
There probably won't be a hot tub this time. Replacing and recycling the water between users would be a bit much for the water reclaimer, and dumping water brought into the Hab from pony life support would be hot, sweaty, I-need-another-bath work.
Sorry for the brief gag, but I got home at 11:40 PM, and I'm about to go sack out.
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Sol 443
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AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE — MISSION DAY 451
ARES III SOL 443
Dragonfly took a closer look at one arm of Fireball's space suit. "Right elbow," she said. "Outer layer fraying. Pass me the scope."
The scope was a bit of improvisation using one of the arm-mounted cameras from a spare Ares suit and a small flashlight from Dragonfly's toolbox. It worked much better than just holding an open space suit to the light or, worse, turning it inside out (a task which ranged from difficult to impossible depending on the part). A quick look at the Hab's main projector screen, which had been set to show the scope's video output, confirmed Dragonfly's fears. "Worse on the inside," she said. "The middle layers are probably damaged, too. I'll have to patch that one inside and out."
Starlight Glimmer had made her edict stick, all but eliminating the use of magic from the crew. This chore, however, was a vital exception; this was, in essence, the last chance Dragonfly had to patch and maintain the worn-out, scuffed-up pony space suits. That task required both surplus food and enough magic to replace what the changeling used up producing the quick-setting rubbery substance that acted as patches for the suits.
But in order to conserve the magic batteries, this time Dragonfly was going through all the suits and making a list of all the necessary repairs (aside from the obligatory re-soling of the suit hooves, which all of them needed). Only with a firm plan in mind would she go forward with the repairs, using as little time as possible while two magic batteries provided power for the operation. (To further save time and energy, Starlight would smooth scuffs and scratches on the helmets and visors at the same time.)
"I've been thinking," Starlight said. "About how difficult would it be to install the radio from one of Mark's spacesuits into one of ours?"
Dragonfly paused in her inspection to consider this. "Pretty tough," she said. "We'd have to wear the batteries inside our suits, with the radios constantly on. The last thing we want to do is punch holes in our suits for control interfaces, so we couldn't turn the radios on or off or switch channels on the fly. Why?"
"Well, Cherry Berry will need one for the launch," Starlight said. "That is, if she gets the okay to fly the ship. Using Mark's radios means we don't have to activate the telepresence spell and burn mana. And I was thinking it'd be good for you to have a comm system that your body wasn't actively sucking the power out of."
"Look, last I counted, Mark had five space suits functional," Dragonfly said. "He can't wear two, but they're still good for parts. He's taking two functional suits with him on the trip. That leaves only three spare radios. There's five of us."
"Spitfire's still struggling with English," Starlight said. "And I won't be scouting the trail with you because of this big suit patch." She tapped her own suit, which lay on the table under the one Dragonfly had been inspecting. "And neither of us will have any significant role during the launch unless things go really badly. That leaves you, Fireball and Cherry, all of whom have important jobs either during the trip or the flight."
Dragonfly still looked doubtfully at Starlight. "We'll have to test the range," she said. "The aerial would have to be somewhere inside the suit, too. Not in the helmet, either— too crowded. And I don't know where we'd mount the microphone. And that all assumes the radios can be removed from those suits. What I saw looked really complicated, with that whole helmet and backpack assembly thing and-"
A small black rectangle clattered onto the worktable. A moment later, a cable flopped on top of it, followed by the clatter of a small radio aerial.
"Three minutes per suit," Mark said. "They have their own built-in batteries good for four hours in case main suit power runs out. Need to scrounge some connectors to link the aerial and antenna cable. Microphone will have to be tied to the body— it threads through the helmet normally. No big problem."
Starlight and Dragonfly watched as Mark walked over to the Hab's spacesuit rack to pop another radio out of the unused suit harnesses.
"Is it me," Starlight said, "or has he been getting more smug the closer we get to departure day?"
"It's not just you," Dragonfly said.
MISSION LOG — SOL 443
The ponies spent today on suit maintenance. We took advantage of the suit down time to pop three surplus suit radios out of the suits we're going to leave behind (Johanssen's, Lewis's, Vogel's) and put together a harness so that the ponies can wear them under their own suits. It was Starlight's idea, and it's not a bad one. The suit radios use very little juice and have four-hour emergency batteries built in, so recharging them from the Whinnybago system amounts almost to a rounding error in the energy budget.
But the work on suits got me thinking about my own suit, and one problem I probably should have given more thought to— specifically, air.
The rover will get all its air from the trailer. The trailer hitch includes electrical and air linkages that allow one rover to keep the other running in case of emergency. In this case we're using it to let the magic pony life support provide air, leaving the original Rover 2 life support for emergency backup. But there's a major problem with this— namely that this system doesn't provide compressed pure O2 and N2 for my suit to recharge its internal tanks from.
My original plan was to just bring along tanks from the Hab. Twenty-five liters of compressed O2 and ten liters of compressed N2 would be more than enough for my suit, with plenty to spare for charging up the MAV's life support tanks. But compressed air tanks aren't all that lightweight. I'd much prefer to use much smaller tanks if possible. And I think I've figured out how.
I may have mentioned that the pony ship airlocks dispose of air by gradually venting it into space. Not so either the Hab airlocks or the rover airlocks. Our airlocks have high-power compressors that put the air into small holding tanks. Those tanks can then be uncoupled, swapped around, whatever. The practical upshot of this is that I can stash air from the pony life support link and use that to refill my suit tanks.
Of course, it's not perfect. My suit is designed to hold one liter of oxygen and two liters of nitrogen. The rover compressor can't separate the two— that's what the atmospheric regulator does in the Hab. So the suit will have to cope with an atmospheric mix instead of pure gases in each tank. I have no idea what kind of glitches that will cause.
But it saves a bit of weight— and, much more important, a ton of space in the rover. So that's the plan I'm going with. I've passed on the idea to NASA, and they've given tentative approval, though they're going to rush a ton of tests through to make sure it works before we leave here.
The ponies are rolling their eyes at me, but I don't care all that much. I'm solving problems using good old human know-how and good old human-built equipment! Hell, if I only had a few more parts, I could probably convert the whole cave into a giant spaceship, which we would then use to escape Mars (after the inevitable first-person-shooter adventure in which we defend it from vaguely insectoid aliens and an insane AI).
Seriously, ever since we began work on the Whinnybago I've felt like a window pops up over my head to say ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED! every time I fix something or solve a problem. It's a damn good feeling. It makes me feel like I'm in control of my own destiny for a change.
Yes, I know Mars will find some way to leave me helpless and at the mercy of my currently annoyed pony roommates. But I'm a space pirate. I live in the moment.
Arrrrr.
Author's Notes:
About to play some anime music stuff (as in, right after I post this— 9 PM Central 8-21-18) at http://listen.dementiaradio.org/ . Tomorrow night's regularly scheduled show is the Music Lessons playlist.
Mark, better ease off the ego trip. Yes, you can fix things. No need to brag.
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Sol 449
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AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE — MISSION DAY 457
ARES III SOL 449
[10:04] WATNEY: We just used the pony ship radio to do a final comms check with Hermes. Fireball is sitting in the trailer waiting for the response. We're pretty sure we'll get one, though, since we've checked the system five times in the past two weeks.
Almost everything is done. All the medicines, all the tools, all the remaining spare canvas, sealing resin and seal-strips have been loaded. One hundred twenty days of food is crammed into the habitat compartment of the trailer, including over 200 kilograms of pre-baked potatoes. We've bathed, cut hair, shaved, filed, done all the hygienic things we can. The last medical information went out over this chat and the pony water-telegraph yesterday. The suits are patched as well as we can manage. All that remains is to load the components for the Sparkle Drive and the seven tons of magic batteries we'll be hauling to Schiaparelli.
