The Martian (27 page)

The Atmospheric Regulator doesn't run constantly. The freeze-separation speed is driven by the weather outside. So the returning frigid air doesn't come as a steady flow. And the RTG generates a constant, predictable heat. It can't “ramp up” its output.

So I'll heat water with the RTG to create a heat reservoir, then I'll make the return air bubble through it. That way I don't have to worry about when the air comes in. And I won't have to deal with sudden temperature changes in the rover.

When the Vicodin wore off, my back hurt even more than before. I'm going to need to take it easy. I can't just pop pills forever. So I'm taking a few days off from heavy labor. To that end, I made a little invention just for me...

I took Johanssen's cot and cut out the hammock. Then I draped spare Hab canvas over the frame, making a pit inside the cot, with extra canvass around the edges. Weighing down the excess canvass with rocks, I now had a water-tight bathtub!

It only took 100L to fill the shallow tub.

Then, I stole the pump from the Water Reclaimer. (I can go quite a while without the Water Reclaimer operating). Hooking it up to my RTG-water-heater, I put both the input and output lines in the tub.

Yes, I know this is ridiculous, but I hadn't had a bath since Earth, and my back hurts. Besides, I'm going to spend 100 sols with the RTG anyway. A few more won't hurt. That's my bullshit rationalization and I'm sticking with it.

It took two hours to heat the water to 37C. Once it did, I shut off the pump, and got in. Oh man, all I can say is “Ahhhhhh.”

Why the
hell
didn't I think of this before?

LOG ENTRY: SOL 207

I spent the last week recovering from back problems. The pain wasn't bad, but there aren't any chiropractors on Mars, so I wasn't taking chances.

I took hot baths twice a day, laid in my bunk a lot, and watched shitty '70's TV. I've already seen Lewis's entire collection, but I didn't have much else to do. I was reduced to watching reruns.

I got a lot of thinking done.

I can make everything better by having more solar panels. The 14 panels I took to Pathfinder provided the 18kwh that the batteries could store. When traveling, I stowed the panels on the roof. The trailer gives me room to store another 7 (half of its roof will be missing because of the hole I'm cutting in it).

This trip's power needs will be driven by the Oxygenator. It all comes down to how much power I can give that greedy little fucker in a single sol. I want to minimize how often I have days with no travel. The more juice I can give the Oxygenator, the more oxygen it'll liberate, and the longer I can go between those “air-sols.”

Let's get greedy. Lets say I can find a home for 14 more panels instead of 7. Not sure how to do that, but let's say I can. That would give me 38pn to work with, which would net me 5.1 sols of oxygen per air-sol. I'd only have to stop once per five sols. That's much more reasonable.

Plus, if I can arrange battery storage for the extra power, I could drive 100km per sol! Easier said than done, though. That extra 18kwh of storage will be tough. I'll have to take 2 of the Hab's 9kwh fuel cells and load them on to the rover or trailer. They aren't like the rover's batteries; they're not small or portable. They're light enough, but they're pretty big. I may have to attach them to the outside hull, and that would eat in to my solar cell storage.

100km per sol, stopping every fifth sol to reclaim oxygen. If I could pull that off, I'd get there 40 sols. That would be sweet!

In other news, It occurred to me that NASA is probably shitting bricks. They're watching me with satellites, and haven't seen me come out of the Hab for six days. With my back better, it was time to drop them a line.

I headed out for an EVA. This time, being very careful while lugging rocks around, I spelled out a Morse code  message: “INJURED BACK. BETTER NOW.  CONTINUING ROVER MODS.”

That was enough physical labor for today. I don't want to overdo it.

Think I'll have a bath.

LOG ENTRY: SOL 208

Today, it was time to experiment with the panels.

First, I put the Hab on low power mode: No internal lights, all nonessential systems offline, all internal heating suspended. I'd be outside most of the day anyway.

I detached 28 panels from the solar farm and dragged them to the rover. I spent four hours stacking them this way and that. The poor rover looked like the Beverly Hillbillies truck. Nothing I did worked.

The only way to get all 28 on the roof was to make stacks so high they'd fall off the first time I turned. If I lashed them together, they'd fall off as a unit. If I found a way to attach them perfectly to the rover, the rover would tip. I didn't even bother to test. It was obvious by looking and I didn't want to break shit.

I haven't removed the chunk of hull from the trailer yet. Half the holes are drilled, but I'm not committed to anything. If I left it in place, I could have four stacks of seven cells. That would work fine; it's just two rovers worth of what I did for the trip to Pathfinder.

Problem is, I need that opening. The regulator has to be in the pressurized area and it's too big to fit in the rover. Plus which, the Oxygenator needs to be in a pressurized area while operating. I'll only need it every 5 sols, but what would I do on that sol? No, the hole has to be there.

As it is, I'll be able to stow 21 panels. I need homes for the other seven. There's only one place they can go: The sides of the rover and trailer.

One of my earlier modifications was “saddlebags” draped over the rover. One side held the extra battery (stolen from what is now the trailer) while the other side was full of rocks as counterweight.

I won't need them this time around. I can return the second battery to the trailer whence it came. In fact, it'll save me the hassle of the mid-drive EVA I had to do every day to swap cables. When the rovers are linked up, they share resources including electricity.

I went ahead and reinstalled the trailer's battery. It took me two hours but it's out of the way now. I removed the saddlebags and set them aside. They may be handy down the line. If I've learned one thing from my stay at Club Mars, it's that
everything
can be useful.

I had liberated the sides of the rover and trailer. After staring at them for a while, I had my solution.

I'll make L-brackets that stick out from the undercarriages, with the hooks facing up. Two brackets per side to make a shelf. I could set panels on the shelves and lean them against the rover. Then I'd lash them to the hull with homemade rope.

There'll be four “shelves” total; two on the rover and two on the trailer. If the brackets stick out far enough to accommodate two panels, I could store 8 additional panels that way. That would give me one more panel than I'd even planned for.

I'll make those brackets and install them tomorrow. I would have done it today, but it got dark and I got lazy.

LOG ENTRY: SOL 209

Cold night last night. The solar cells were still detached from the farm, so I had to leave the Hab in low-power mode. I did turn the heat back on (I'm not insane), but I set the internal temperature to 1C to conserve power. Waking up to frigid weather was surprisingly nostalgic. I grew up in Chicago, after all.

But nostalgia only lasts so long. I vowed to complete the brackets today, so I can return the panels to the farm. Then I can turn the damn heat back on.

I headed out to the MAV's landing strut array. Most of the MAV was made from composite, but the struts had to absorb the shock of landing. Metal was the way to go.

Each strut is 2 meters long, and held together by bolts. I brought them in to the Hab to save myself the hassle of working in an EVA suit. I took each strut apart, yielding a bunch of metal strips.

Shaping the brackets involved a hammer and... well that's it, actually. Making an “L” doesn't take a lot of precision.

I needed holes where the bolts would pass through. Fortunately, my Pathfinder-murdering drill made short work of that task.

Attaching the brackets to the undercarriages of the rover and trailer was easy. The undercarriages come right off. I bolted the brackets in place and returned the undercarriages where they belonged. Important note – an undercarriage is
not
part of the pressure vessel. The holes I drilled won't let my air out.

I tested the brackets by hitting them with rocks. This kind of sophistication is what we interplanetary scientists are known for.

After convincing myself the brackets wouldn't break at the first sign of use, I tested the new arrangement. Two stacks of seven solar cells on the rover; another seven on the trailer, then two per shelf. They all fit.

After lashing the cells in place, I took a little drive. I did some basic acceleration and deceleration, turned in increasingly tight circles, and even did a power-stop. The cells didn't budge.

28 solar cells, baby! And room for one extra!

After some well-earned fist-pumping, I unloaded the cells and dragged them back to the farm. No Chicago morning for me tomorrow.

LOG ENTRY: SOL 211

I am smiling a great smile. The smile of a man who fucked with his car and
didn't break it
. This is considerably more rare than you might think.

I spent today removing unnecessary crap from the rover and trailer. I was pretty damn aggressive about it, too. Space inside the pressure vessels is premium. The more crap I clear out of the rover, the more space there is for me. The more crap I clear out of the trailer, the more supplies I can store in it, and the less I have to store in the rover.

First off: Each vehicle had a bench for passengers. Bye!

Next: there's no reason for the trailer to have life support. The oxygen tanks, nitrogen tanks, CO2 filter assembly... all unnecessary. It'll be sharing air with the rover (which has its own copy of each of those) and it'll be carrying the regulator and Oxygenator. Between the Hab components it'll be carrying and the rover, there'll be two redundant life support systems. That's plenty.

Then I yanked the driver's seat and control panel out of the trailer. The link-up with the rover is physical. The trailer doesn't do anything but get dragged along and fed air. It doesn't need controls or brains. However, I did salvage its computer. It's small and light, so I'll bring it with me. If something goes wrong with the rover's computer en-route, I'll have a spare.

The trailer had tons more space now. It was time for experimentation.

The Hab has twelve 9kwh batteries. They're bulky and awkward. Over two meters tall, a half-meter wide, and 3/4 meter thick. Making them bigger makes them take less mass per kwh of storage. Yeah, it's counter-intuitive. But once NASA figured out they could increase volume to decrease mass they were all over it. Mass is the expensive part about sending shit to Mars.

I detached two of them. The Hab mostly uses the batteries at night. As long as I return them before the end of the day, things should be fine.

With both of the trailer's airlock doors open I was able to get the first battery in. After playing real-life Tetris for a while I found a way to get the first battery out of the way enough to let the second battery in. Together, they eat up the whole front half of the trailer. If I hadn't cleared the useless shit out earlier today, I'd never have gotten them both in.

The trailer's battery is in the undercarriage, but the main power line runs through the pressure vessel. I was able to wire the Hab batteries directly in. (No small feat in the damn EVA suit).

A system check from the rover showed I had done the wiring correctly.

This may all seem minor, but it's awesome. It means I can have 29 solar cells and 36kwh of storage. I'll be able to do my 100km per day after all.

4 days out of 5, anyway.

According to my calender, the Hermes resupply probe is being launched from China in two days (if there were no delays). If that screws up, the whole crew will be in deep shit. I'm more nervous about that than anything else.

I've been in mortal danger for months; I'm kind of used to it now. But now I'm nervous again. Dying would suck, but my crewmates dying would be way worse. And I won't find out how the launch went till I get to Schiaparelli.

Good luck, guys.

“Hey, Melissa...” said Robert. “Am I getting through? Can you see me?”

“Loud and clear, babe,” said Commander Lewis. “The video link is solid.”

“They say I have 5 minutes,” Robert said.

“Better than nothing,” Lewis said. Floating in her quarters, she gently touched the bulkhead to stop drifting. “It's nice to see you in real-time for a change.”

“Yeah,” Robert smiled. “I can hardly notice the delay. I gotta say, I wish you were coming home.”

Lewis sighed, “Me too, babe.”

“Don't get me wrong,” Robert quickly added, “I understand why you're doing all this. Still, from a selfish point of view, I miss my wife. Hey, are you floating?”

“Huh?” Lewis said. “Oh, yeah. The ship isn't spinning right now. No centripetal gravity.”

“Why not?”

“Because we're docking with the
Taiyang Shen
in a few days. We can't spin while we dock with things.”

“I see,” said Robert. “So how are things up on the ship? Anyone giving you shit?”

“No,” Lewis shook her head. “They're a good crew; I'm lucky to have them.”

“Oh hey!” Robert said. “I found a great addition to our collection!”

“Oh? What'd you get?”

“An original production 8-track of
Abba's Greatest Hits
. Still in the original packaging.”

Lewis widened her eyes. “Seriously? A 1973 or one of the reprints?”

“1973 all the way.”

“Wow! Good find!”

“I know, right!?”

With a final shudder, the jetliner came to a stop at the gate.

“Oh gods,” said Venkat, massaging his neck. “That was the longest flight I've ever been on.”