LOG ENTRY: SOL 79
It’s the evening of my 8th day on the road. “Sirius 4” has been a
success so far.
I’ve fallen in to a routine. Every morning I wake up at dawn. First
thing I do is check oxygen and CO2 levels. Then I eat a breakfast pack
and drink a cup of water. After that, I brush my teeth, using as little water
as possible, and shave with an electric razor.
The rover has no toilet. We were expected to use our suits’
reclamation systems for that. But they aren’t designed to hold twenty
days worth of output.
My morning piss goes in a resealable plastic box. When I open it, the
rover reeks like a truck-stop men’s room. I could take it outside and let it
boil off. But I worked hard to make that water, and the last thing I’m
going to do is waste it. I’ll feed it to the Water Reclaimer when I get
back.
Even more precious is my manure. It’s critical to the potato farm and
I’m the only source on Mars. Fortunately, when you spend a lot of time in
space, you learn how to shit in a bag. And if you think things are bad after
opening the piss box, imagine the smell after I drop anchor.
Then I go outside and collect the solar cells. Why didn’t I do it the
previous night? Because trying to dismantle and stack solar cells in total
fucking darkness isn’t fun. I learned that the hard way.
After securing the cells, I come back in, turn on some shitty ‘70’s
music, and start driving. I putter along at 25kph, the rover’s top speed.
It’s comfortable inside. I wear hastily made cut-offs and a thin shirt while
the RTG bakes the interior. When it gets too hot I detach the insulation
duct-taped to the hull. When it gets too cold, I tape it back up.
I can go almost 2 hours before the battery runs out. I do a quick EVA
to swap cables, then I’m back at the wheel for the second half of the day’s
drive.The terrain is very flat. The undercarriage of the rover is taller than
any of the rocks around here, and the hills are gently-sloping affairs,
smoothed by eons of sandstorms.
When the other battery runs out, it’s time for another EVA. I pull the
solar cells off the roof and lay them on the ground. For the first few sols,
I lined them up in a row. Now I plop them wherever, trying to keep them
close to the rover out of sheer laziness.
Then comes the incredibly dull part of my day. I sit around for 12
hours with nothing to do. And I’m getting sick of this rover. The inside’s
the size of a van. That may seem like plenty of room, but try being
trapped in a van for 8 days. I look forward to tending my potato farm in
the wide open space of the Hab.
I’m nostalgic for the Hab. How fucked up is that?
I have shitty ‘70’s TV to watch, and a bunch of Poirot novels. But
mostly I spend my time thinking about getting to Ares 4. I’ll have to do it
someday. How the hell am I going to survive a 3,200km trip in this thing?
It’ll probably take 50 days. I’ll need the Water Reclaimer and the
Oxygenator, maybe some of the Hab’s main batteries, then a bunch more
solar cells to charge everything… where will I put it all? These thoughts
pester me throughout the long boring days.
Eventually, it gets dark and I get tired. I lay among the food packs,
water tanks, extra O2 tank, piles of CO2 filters, box of pee, bags of shit,
and personal items. I have a bunch of crew jumpsuits to serve as bedding,
along with my blanket and pillow. Basically, I sleep in a pile of junk
every night.
Speaking of sleep… G’night.
LOG ENTRY: SOL 80
By my reckoning, I’m about 100km from Pathfinder. Technically it’s
“Carl Sagan Memorial Station.” But with all due respect to Carl, I can
call it whatever the hell I want. I’m the King of Mars.
As I mentioned, it’s been a long, boring drive. And I’m still on theoutward leg. But hey, I’m an astronaut. Long-ass trips are my business.
Navigation is tricky.
The Hab’s nav beacon only reaches 40km, then it’s too faint. I knew
that’d be an issue when I was planning this little road trip, so I came up
with a brilliant plan that didn’t work.
The computer has detailed maps, so I figured I could navigate by
landmarks. I was wrong. Turns out you can’t navigate by landmarks if
you can’t find any god damned landmarks.
Our landing site is at the delta of a long-gone river. If there are any
microscopic fossils to be had, it’s a good place to look. Also, the water
would have dragged rock and soil samples from thousands of kilometers
away. With some digging, we could get a broad geological history.
That’s great for science, but it means the Hab’s in a featureless
wasteland.
I considered making a compass. The rover has plenty of electricity
and the med kit has a needle. Only one problem: Mars doesn’t have a
magnetic field.
So I navigate by Phobos. It whips around Mars so fast it actually rises
and sets twice a day, running west to east. It’s isn’t the most accurate
system, but it works.
Things got easier on Sol 75. I reached a valley with a rise to the west.
It had flat ground for easy driving, and I just needed to follow the edge of
the hills. I named it “Lewis Valley” after our fearless leader. She’d love it
there, geology nerd that she is.
Three sols later, Lewis Valley opened into a wide plain. So, again, I
was left without references and relied on Phobos to guide me. There’s
probably symbolism there. Phobos is the god of fear, and I’m letting it be
my guide. Not a good sign.
But today, my luck finally changed. After two sols wandering the
desert, I found something to navigate by. It was a 5km crater, so small it
didn’t even have a listed name. But to me, it was the Lighthouse of
Alexandria. Once I had it in sight, I knew exactly where I was.
I’m camped near it now, as a matter of fact.
I’m finally through the blank areas of the map. Tomorrow, I’ll havethe Lighthouse to navigate by, and Hamelin crater later on. I’m in good
shape.
Now, on to my next task: Sitting around with nothing to do for 12
hours.
I better get started!
LOG ENTRY: SOL 81
Almost made it to Pathfinder today, but I ran out of juice. Just another
22km to go!
An unremarkable drive. Navigation wasn’t a problem. As Lighthouse
receded into the distance, the rim of Hamelin Crater came in to view.
I left Acidalia Planitia behind a long time ago. I’m well into Ares
Vallis now. The desert plains are giving way to bumpier terrain, strewn
with ejecta that never got buried by sand. It makes driving a chore; I have
to pay more attention.
Up till now, I’ve been driving right over the rock-strewn landscape.
But as I travel further south, the rocks are getting bigger and more
plentiful. I have to go around some of them or risk damage to my
suspension. The good news is I don’t have to do it for long. Once I get to
Pathfinder, I can turn around and go the other way.
The weather’s been very good. No discernible wind, no storms. I think
I got lucky there. There’s a good chance my rover tracks from the past
few sols are intact. I should be able to get back to Lewis Valley just by
following them.
After setting up the solar panels, I went for a little walk. I never left
sight of the rover; the last thing I want to do is get lost on foot. But I
couldn’t stomach crawling back into that cramped, smelly rat’s nest. Not
right away.
It’s a strange feeling. Everywhere I go, I’m the first. Step outside the
rover? First guy ever to be there! Climb a hill? First guy to climb that
hill! Kick a rock? That rock hadn’t moved in a million years!
I’m the first guy to drive long-distance on Mars. The first guy tospend more than 31 sols on Mars. The first guy to grow crops on Mars.
First, first, first!
I wasn’t expecting to be first at anything. I was the 5th crewman out of
the MDV when we landed, making me the 17th person to set foot on Mars.
The egress order had been determined years earlier. A month before
launch, we all got tattoos of our “Mars Numbers.” Johanssen almost
refused to get her “15” because she was afraid it would hurt. Here’s a
woman who had survived the centrifuge, the vomit comet, hard landing
drills and 10k runs. A woman who fixed a simulated MDV computer
failure while being spun around upside-down. But she was afraid of a
tattoo needle.
Man, I miss those guys.
I’m the first person to be alone on an entire planet.
Ok, enough moping. Tomorrow, I’ll be the first person to recover a
Mars probe.
LOG ENTRY: SOL 82
Victory! I found it!
I knew I was in the right area when I spotted Twin Peaks in the
distance. The two small hills are under a kilometer from the landing site.
Even better, they were on the far side of the site. All I had to do was aim
for them until I found the Lander.
And there it was! Right where it was supposed to be!
Pathfinder’s final stage of descent was a balloon-covered tetrahedron.
The balloons absorbed the impact of landing. Once it came to rest, they
deflated and the tetrahedron unfolded to reveal the probe.
It’s actually two separate components. The Lander itself, and the
Sojourner rover. The Lander was immobile, while Sojourner wandered
around and got a good look at the local rocks. I’m taking both back with
me, but the important part is the Lander. That’s the part that can
communicate with Earth.
I excitedly stumbled out and rushed to the site.I can’t explain how happy I was. It was a lot of work to get here, and
I’d succeeded.
The Lander was half buried. With some quick and careful digging, I
exposed the bulk of it, though the large tetrahedron and the deflated
balloons still lurked below the surface.
After a quick search, I found Sojourner. The little fella was only two
meters from the Lander. I vaguely remember it was further away when
they last saw it. It probably entered a contingency mode and started
circling the Lander, trying to communicate.
I quickly deposited Sojourner in my rover. It’s small, light, and easily
fit in the airlock. The Lander was a different story.
I had no hope of getting the whole thing back to the Hab. It was just
too big. It was time for me to put on my mechanical engineer hat.
The probe was attached to the central panel of the unfolded
tetrahedron. The other three sides were each attached with a metal hinge.
As anyone at JPL will tell you, probes are delicate things. Weight is a
serious concern, so they’re not made to stand up to much punishment.
When I took a crowbar to the hinges, they popped right off!
Then things got difficult. When I tried to lift the central panel
assembly, it didn’t budge.
Just like the other three panels, the central panel had deflated balloons
underneath it.
Over the decades, the balloons had ripped and filled with sand.
I could cut off the balloons, but I’d have to dig to get to them. It
wouldn’t be hard, it’s just sand. But the other three panels were in the
damn way.
I quickly realized I didn’t give a crap about the condition of the other
panels. I went back to my rover, cut some strips of Hab material, then
braided them in to a primitive but strong rope. I can’t take credit for it
being strong. Thank NASA for that. I just made it rope-shaped.
I tied one end to a panel, and the other to the rover. The rover was
made for traversing extremely rugged terrain, often at steep angles. It
may not be fast, but it has great torque. I towed the panel away like a
redneck removing a tree stump.Now I had a place to dig. As I exposed each balloon, I cut it off. The
whole task took an hour.
Then I hoisted the central panel assembly up and carried it
confidently to the rover!
At least, that’s what I wanted to do. The damn thing is still heavy as
hell. I’m guessing it’s 200kg. Even in Mar's gravity that's a bit much. I
could carry it around the Hab easily enough, but lifting it while wearing
an awkward EVA suit? Out of the question.
So I dragged it to the rover.
Now for my next feat: Getting it on the roof.
The roof was empty at the moment. Even with mostly-full batteries, I
had set up the solar cells when I stopped. Why not? Free energy.
I’d worked it out in advance. On the way here, two stacks of solar
panels occupied the whole roof. On the way back, they would be a single
stack. It’s a little more dangerous; they might fall over. The main thing it
they’ll be a pain in the ass to stack that high.
I can’t just throw a rope over the rover and hoist Pathfinder up the
side. I don’t want to break it. I mean, it’s already broken, they lost
contact in 1997. But I don’t want to break it more.
I came up with a solution, but I’d done enough physical labor for one
day, and I was almost out of daylight.
Now I’m in the rover, looking at Sojourner. It seems all right. No
physical damage on the outside. Doesn’t look like anything got too baked
by the sunlight. The dense layer of Mars crap all over it protected it from
long-term solar damage.
You may think Sojourner isn’t much use to me. It can’t communicate
with Earth. Why do I care about it?
Because it has a lot of moving parts.
If I establish a link with NASA, I can talk to them by holding a page
of text up to the Lander’s camera. But how would they talk to me? The
only moving parts on the Lander are the high gain antenna (which would
have to stay pointed at Earth) and the camera boom. We’d have to come
up with a system where NASA could talk by rotating the camera head. It
would be painfully slow.But Sojourner has six independent wheels that rotate reasonably fast.
It’ll be much easier to communicate with those. If nothing else, I could
draw letters on the wheels, and hold a mirror up to its camera. NASA’d
figure it out and start spelling things at me.
That all assumes I can get the Lander’s radio working at all.
Time to turn in. I’ve got a lot of backbreaking physical labor to do
tomorrow. I’ll need my rest.
LOG ENTRY: SOL 83
Oh god I’m sore.
But it’s the only way I could think of to get the Lander safely on to
the roof.
I built a ramp out of rocks and sand. Just like the ancient Egyptians
did.
And if there’s one thing Ares Vallis has, it’s rocks!
First, I experimented to find out how steep the grade could be. Piling
up some rocks near the Lander, I dragged it up the pile, then down again.
Then I made it steeper, etc. I figured out I could pull it up a 30 degree
grade. Anything more was too risky. I might lose my grip and send the
Lander tumbling down the ramp.
The roof of the rover is over 2 meters from the ground. So I’d need a
ramp almost 4 meters long. I got to work.
The first few rocks were easy. Then they started feeling heavier and
heavier. Hard physical labor in a spacesuit is murder. Everything’s more
effort because you’re lugging 20kg of suit around with you, and your
movement is limited. I was panting within 20 minutes.
So I cheated. I upped my O2 mixture. It really helped a lot. Probably
shouldn’t make that a habit. Also, I didn’t get hot. The suit leaks heat
faster than my body could ever generate it. The heating system is what
keeps the temperature bearable. My physical labor just meant the suit
didn’t have to heat itself as much.
After hours of grueling labor, I finally got the ramp made. Nothingmore than a pile of rocks against the rover, but it reached the roof.
I stomped up and down the ramp first, to make sure it was stable, then
I dragged the Lander up. It worked like a charm!
I was all smiles as I lashed the Lander in place. I made sure it was
firmly secured, and even stacked the solar cells in a big single stack (why
waste the ramp?).
But then it hit me. The ramp would collapse as I drove away, and the
rocks might damage the wheels or undercarriage. I’d have to take the
ramp apart to keep that from happening.
Ugh.
Tearing the ramp down was easier than putting it up. I didn’t need to
carefully put each rock in a stable place. I just dropped them wherever. It
only took me an hour.
And now I’m done!
I’ll start heading home tomorrow, with my new 100kg broken radio.