The Martian (37 page)

The good news is I'm off the Ramp. I camped out as soon as the terrain flattened out. I've already overdone my driving time for the day. I could go further, I still have 15% battery power or so, but I want to get as much daylight on my solar cells as I can.

I'm in the Schiaparelli Basin at last! Far from the crater wall, too. I get a full day of sunlight every day from now on.

I decided it was time for a very special occasion. I ate the meal pack labeled “Survived Something That Should Have Killed Me.” Oh my god, I forgot how good real food tastes.

With luck, I'll get to eat “Arrival” in a few sols.

LOG ENTRY: SOL 503

I didn't get as much recharge I usually would yesterday. Because of my extended driving time, I only recharged to 70% before night fell. So today's driving was abbreviated.

 I got 63km before I had to camp out again. But I don't even mind. Because I'm only 148km from the MAV. That means I'll get there the sol after tomorrow.

Holy hell, I'm really going to make it!

LOG ENTRY: SOL 504

Holy shit this is awesome! Holy shit! Holy shit!

Ok calm. Calm.

I made 90km today. By my estimate, I'm 50km from the MAV. I should get there some time tomorrow. I'm excited about that, but here's what I'm really stoked about: I caught a blip from the MAV!

NASA has the MAV broadcasting the Ares 3 Hab homing signal. Why wouldn't they? It makes perfect sense. Unlike my worn out shit,  the MAV is a sleek, perfectly functional machine, ready to do what it's told. And they have it pretending to be the Ares 3 Hab so my rover will see the signal and tell me where it is.

That is an
exceptionally
good idea! I won't have to wander around looking for the thing. I'm going straight to it.

I only caught a blip. I'll get more as I get closer. It has three redundant methods of communicating with Earth, but they're extremely directed and are designed for line-of-sight communication. It's strange to think that a sand dune will stop me from hearing what the MAV has to say, but it can talk to Earth no problem. Well, there aren't any sand dunes between it and Earth when they talk.

Somehow they messed with things to make a radial signal, however weak it may be. And I heard it!

My message for the day was “GOT BEACON SIGNAL.” If I'd had enough rocks, I would have added “AWESOME FUCKING IDEA!!!” But it's a really sandy area.

The MAV waited in southwestern Schiaparelli. It stood an impressive 27 meters tall, its conical body gleaming in the midday sun.

The rover crested a nearby dune with the trailer in tow. It slowed for a few moments, then continued toward the ship at top speed. It came to a stop 20 meters away.

There it remained for ten minutes while the astronaut inside suited up.  

He stumbled excitedly out of the airlock, falling to the ground then scrambling to his feet. Beholding the MAV, he gestured to it with both arms, as if in disbelief.

He leaped in to the air several times, arms held high with fists clenched. Then he knelt on one knee and fist-pumped repeatedly.

Running to the spacecraft, he hugged Landing Strut B. After a few moments, he broke off the embrace to perform another round of leaping celebrations.

Now fatigued, the astronaut stood with arms akimbo, looking up at the sleek lines of the engineering marvel before him.

Climbing the ladder on the landing stage, he reached the ascent stage and entered the airlock. He sealed the door behind him.

LOG ENTRY: SOL 505

I finally made it! I'm at the MAV!

Well, right this second, I'm back in the rover. I did go in to the MAV to do a systems check and boot-up. I had to keep my EVA suit on the whole time because there's no life support in there just yet.

It's going through a self check right now, and I'm feeding it oxygen and nitrogen with hoses from the rover. This is all part of the MAV's design. It doesn't bring air along. Why would it? That's a needless weight when you'll have a Hab full of air right next door.

I'm guessing folks at NASA are popping champagne right now and sending me lots of messages. I'll read them in a bit. First things first: Get the MAV some life support. Then I'll be able to work comfortably inside.

And then I'll have a boring conversation with NASA. The content may be interesting, but the 14-minute transmission time between here and Earth will be a bit dull.

[13:07]HOUSTON: Congratulations from all of us here at Mission Control! Well done! What's your status?

[13:21]MAV: Thanks! No health or physical problems. The rover and trailer are getting pretty worn out, but still functional. Oxygenator and Regulator both working fine. I didn't bring the Water Reclaimer. Just brought the water. Plenty of potatoes left. I'm good to last till 549.

[13:36]HOUSTON: Glad to hear it. Hermes is still on track for a Sol 549 flyby. As you know, the MAV will need to lose some weight to make the intercept. We're going to get you those procedures within the day. How much water do you have? What did you do with urine?

[13:50]MAV: I have 550L of remaining water. I've been dumping urine outside along the way.

[14:05]HOUSTON: Preserve all water. Don't do any more urine dumps. Store it somewhere. Turn the rover's radio on and leave it on. We can contact it through MAV.

“So is it ready?” Venkat asked.

“Yes, it's ready.” Bruce said. “But you're not going to like it.”

“Go on.”

“Bear in mind,” Bruce said, producing a booklet from his briefcase, “This is the end result of thousands of hours of work, testing, and lateral thinking by all the best guys at JPL.”

“I'm sure it was hard to trim down a ship that's already designed to be as light as possible,” Venkat said.

Bruce slid the booklet across the desk to Venkat. “The problem is the intercept velocity. The MAV is designed to get to Low Mars Orbit, which is 4.1kps. But the Hermes flyby will be 5.8kps.”

Venkat flipped through the pages. “Care to summarize?”

“Firstly, we're going to add fuel. The MAV makes its own fuel from the Martian atmosphere, but it's limited by how much Hydrogen it has. It brought enough to make 19,397kg of fuel, as it was designed to do. If we can give it more hydrogen, it can make more.”

“How much more?”

“For every kilogram of hydrogen, it can make 13 kilograms of fuel. Watney has 550 liters of water. We'll have him electrolyze it to get 60kg of Hydrogen.” Bruce reached over the desk and flipped a few pages, pointing to a diagram. “The fuel plant can make 780kg of fuel from that.”

“If he electrolyzes his water what'll he drink?”

“He can electrolyze urine, so we only need to set a few liters aside for the last couple of days.”

“I see. And what does 780kg of fuel buy us?” Venkat asked.

“It buys us 300kg of payload. It's all about fuel versus payload. The MAV's launch weight is over 12,600kg. We need to get that down to 7,300kg. That's accounting for the bonus fuel. So the rest of this booklet is how to remove over five thousand kilograms from the ship.”

Venkat leaned back. “Walk me through it.”

Bruce pulled another copy of the booklet from his briefcase. “There were some gimmies right off the bat. The design presumes 500kg of Martian soil and rock samples. Obviously we won't do that. Also, there's just one passenger instead of six. That saves 500kg when you consider their weight plus their suits and gear. And we can lose the other 5 acceleration chairs. And of course, we'll remove all nonessential gear. The med kit, tool kit, internal harnessing, straps, and anything else that isn't nailed down. And some stuff that is.

“Next up,” he continued, “We're ditching all life support. The tanks, pumps, heaters, air lines, CO2 absorption system, even the insulation on the inner side of the hull. We don't need it. We'll have Watney wear his EVA suit for the whole trip.”

“Won't that make it awkward for him to use the controls?” Venkat asked.

“He won't use any controls,” Bruce said. “Major Martinez will pilot the MAV remotely from Hermes. It's already designed for remote piloting. It was remotely landed, after all.”

“What if something goes wrong?” Venkat asked.

“Martinez is the best trained pilot,” Bruce said. “If there is an emergency, he's the guy you want controlling the ship.”

“Hmm,” Venkat said cautiously. “We've never had a manned ship controlled remotely before. But ok. Go on.”

“Since Watney won't be flying the ship,” Bruce continued, “he won't need any of those controls. We'll ditch the control panels and all the power and data lines that lead to them.”

“Wow,” Venkat said. “We're really gutting this thing.”

“I'm just getting started,” Bruce said. “The power needs will be dramatically reduced now that life support is gone, so we'll dump three of the five batteries and the auxiliary power system. The Orbital Maneuvering System has 3 redundant thrusters. We'll get rid of those. Also, the secondary and tertiary comm systems can go.”

“Wait, what?” Venkat said, shocked. “You're going to have a remote controlled ascent with no backup comm systems?”

“No point,” Bruce said. “If the comm system goes out during ascent, the time it takes to reacquire will be too long to do any good. The backups don't help us.”

“This is getting really risky, Bruce.”

Bruce sighed. “I know, Venkat. There's just no other way. And I'm not even to the nasty stuff yet.”

Venkat rubbed his forehead. “By all means, tell me the nasty stuff.”

“We'll remove the nose airlock, the windows, and Hull Panel 19.”

Venkat blinked. “You're taking the front of the ship off?”

“Sure,” Bruce said. “The nose airlock alone is 400kg. The windows are pretty damn heavy, too. And they're connected by Hull Panel 19 so may as well take that, too.”

“So he's going to launch with a big hole in the front of the ship?”

“We'll have him cover it with Hab canvas.”

“Hab canvas? For a launch to orbit!?”

Bruce shrugged. “The hull's mostly there to keep the air in. Mars's atmosphere is so thin you don't need a lot of streamlining. By the time the ship's going fast enough for air resistance to matter, it'll be high enough that there's practically no air. We've run all the simulations. Should be good.”

“You're sending him to space under a tarp.”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“Like a hastily loaded pick up truck.”

“Yeah. Can I go on?”

“Sure, can't wait.”

“We'll also have him remove the back panel of the pressure vessel. It's the only other panel he can remove with the tools on-hand. Also, we're getting rid of the auxiliary fuel pump. Sad to see it go, but it weighs too much for its usefulness. And we're nixing a Stage One engine.”

“An engine?”

“Yeah. The Stage One booster works fine if one engine goes out. It'll save us a huge amount of weight. Only during the Stage One ascent, but still. Pretty good fuel savings.”

Bruce fell silent.

“That it?” Venkat asked.

“Yeah.”

Venkat sighed. “You've removed most of the safety backups. What's this do to the estimated odds of failure?”

“It's about 4%.”

“Jesus Christ.” Venkat said. “Normally we'd never even consider something that risky.”

“It's all we've got, Venk,” Bruce said. “We've tested it all out and run simulations galore. We should be ok if everything works the way its supposed to.”

“Yeah. Great.” Venkat said.

[08:41]MAV: You fucking kidding me?

[09:55]HOUSTON: Admittedly, they are very invasive modifications, but they have to be done. The procedure doc we sent has instructions for each of these steps with tools you have on hand. Also, you'll need to start electrolyzing water to get the hydrogen for the fuel plant. We'll send you procedures for that shortly.

[09:09]MAV: You're sending me into space in a convertible.

[09:24]HOUSTON: There will be Hab canvas covering the holes. It will provide enough aerodynamics in Mars's atmosphere.

[09:38]MAV: So it's a ragtop. Much better.

LOG ENTRY: SOL 506

On the way here, in my copious free time, I designed a “workshop.” I figured I'd need space to work on stuff without having to wear an EVA suit. I devised a brilliant plan whereby the current bedroom would  become the new home of the Regulator and Oxygenator, and the now-empty trailer would become my workshop.

It's a stupid idea and I'm not doing it.

All I need is a pressurized area that I can work in. I somehow convinced myself that the bedroom wasn't an option because it's a hassle to get stuff into it. But it won't be that bad.

It attaches to the rover airlock, so the only way to get stuff in is annoying. Bring the stuff into the rover, attach the bedroom to the airlock from the inside, inflate it, bring the stuff in to the bedroom. I'll also have to empty the bedroom of all tools and equipment to fold it up any time I need to do an EVA.

So yeah, it'll be annoying, but all it costs me is time. And I'm actually doing well on that front. I have 43 more sols before Hermes flies by. And looking at the procedure NASA has in mind for the modifications, I can take advantage of the MAV itself as a workspace.

The lunatics at NASA have me doing all kinds of rape to the MAV, but I don't have to open the hull till the end. So the first thing I'll do is clear out a bunch of clutter, like chairs and control panels and the like. Once they're out, I'll have a lot of room in there to work.

But I didn't do anything to the soon-to-be-mutilated MAV today. Today was all about system checks. Now that I'm back in contact with NASA, I have to go back to being all “safety first.” Strangely, NASA doesn't have total faith in my kludged-together rover or my method of piling everything into the trailer. They had me do a full systems check on every single component.

Everything's still working fine, though it's wearing down. The Regulator and Oxygenator are less than peak efficiency (to say the least) and the trailer leaks some air every day. Not enough to cause problems, but it's not a perfect seal. NASA's pretty uncomfortable with it, but we don't have any other options.