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 theintercept. 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 forthe 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 bedramatically 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 weighstoo 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.
Then, they had me run a full diagnostic on the MAV. That's in much
better shape. Everything's sleek and pristine and perfectly functional. I'd
almost forgotten what new hardware even looks like.
Pity I'm going to tear it apart.
“You killed Watney,” Lewis said.
“Yeah,” Martinez said, scowling at his monitor. The words “Collision
with Terrain” blinked accusingly.
“I pulled a nasty trick on him,” Johanssen said. “I gave him a
malfunctioning altitude readout and made engine 3 cut out too early. It's a
deadly combination.”
“Shouldn't have been a mission failure,” Martinez said. “I should
have noticed the readout was wrong. It was way off.”
“Don't sweat it,” Lewis said. “That's why we drill. You've still got
three weeks to get it right.”
“Will do,” Martinez said.
“We only got a week of remote launch training,” Johanssen said. “It
was only supposed to happen if we scrubbed before landing. We'd launch
the MAV to have it act as a satellite. It was a cut-your-losses scenario.”
“It's mission-critical now,” Lewis said. “So get it right.”
“Aye, Commander.” Martinez said.
“Resetting the Sim,” Johanssen said. “Anything specific you want to
try?”
“Surprise me,” Martinez said.
Leaving the control room, Lewis made her way to the reactor.
Climbing “up” the ladder toward the center of the ship, the centripetal
force on her diminished to nearly zero as she reached the core. Vogel
looked up from a computer console. “Commander?”
“How are the engines?” She asked, grabbing a wall-mounted handle to
stay attached to the slowly turning room.
“All working within tolerance,” Vogel said. “I am now doing adiagnostic on the reactor. I am thinking that Johanssen is busy with the
launching training. So perhaps I do this diagnostic for her.”
“Good idea,” Lewis said. “And how's our course?”
“All is well,” Vogel said. “No adjustments necessary. We are still on
track to planned trajectory within 4 meters.”
“Keep me posted if anything changes.”
“Ja, Commander.”
Floating to the other side of the core, Lewis took the other ladder out,
again gaining gravity as she went “down”. She made her way to the
Airlock 2 ready room.
Beck held a coil of metal wire in one hand and a pair of work gloves
in the other. “Heya, Commander. What's up?”
“I'd like to know your plan for recovering Mark.”
“Easy enough if the intercept is good,” Beck said. “I just finished
attaching all the tethers we have into one long line. It's 214 meters long.
I'll have the MMU pack on, so moving around will be easy. I can get
going up to around 10 meters per second safely. Any more and I risk
breaking the tether if I can't stop in time.”
“How fast a relative velocity can you handle, you think?”
“You mean once I get to Mark? I can grab the MAV easily at 5 meters
per second. 10 meters per second is kind of like jumping on to a moving
train. Anything more than that and I might miss.”
“So, including the MMU safe speed, we need to get within 20 meters
per second of his velocity.”
“And the intercept has to be within 214 meters,” Beck said. “Pretty
narrow margin of error.”
“We've got a lot of leeway,” Lewis said. “The launch will be 52
minutes before the intercept and it takes 12 minutes. As soon as Mark's
S2 engine cuts out we'll know our intercept point and velocity. If we don't
like it, we'll have 40 minutes to correct. Our engine's 2 millimeters per
second may not seem like much, but in 40 minutes it can move us up to
5.7 kilometers.”
“Good,” Beck said. “And 214 meters isn't a hard limit, per se.”
“Yes it is,” Lewis corrected.“Nah,” Beck said. “I know I'm not supposed to go untethered, but
without my leash I could get way out there-”
“Not an option.” Lewis said.
“But we could double or even triple our safe intercept range-”
“We're done talking about this.” Lewis said sternly.
“Aye, Commander.”
LOG ENTRY: SOL 526
There aren't many people who can say they've vandalized a three
billion dollar spacecraft. But I'm one of them.
I've been pulling critical hardware out of the MAV left and right. It's
nice to know that my launch to orbit won't have any pesky back-up
systems weighing me down.
First thing I did was remove the small stuff. Then came the things I
could disassemble. Like the crew seats, several of the back-up systems,
and the control panels.
I'm not improvising anything. I'm following a script sent by NASA,
which was set up to make things as easy as possible. Sometimes I miss
the days when I made all the decisions myself. Then I shake it off and
remember I'm infinitely better with a bunch of geniuses deciding what I
do than making shit up as I go along.
Periodically, I suit up, crawl into the airlock with as much junk as I
can fit, and dump it outside. The area around the MAV looks like the set
of Sanford and Son.
I learned about Sanford and Son from Lewis's collection. Seriously,
that woman needs to see someone about her 70's problem.
LOG ENTRY: SOL 529
I'm turning my pee in to rocket fuel. It's easier than you'd think.
Urine is mostly water. Separating hydrogen and oxygen only requiresa couple of electrodes and some current. The problem is collecting the
hydrogen. I don't have any equipment for pulling hydrogen out of the air.
The Atmospheric Regulator doesn't even know how. The last time I had
to get hydrogen out of the air (back when I turned the Hab in to a bomb) I
burned it to turn it in to water. Obviously that would be counter-
productive.
But NASA thought everything through and gave me a process. First, I
disconnected the rover and trailer from each other. Then, while wearing
my EVA suit, I depressurized the trailer and back-filled it with pure
oxygen at one fourth of an atmosphere. Then I opened a plastic box full
of urine and put a couple of electrodes in. That's why I needed the
atmosphere. Without it, the urine would just boil immediately and I'd be
hanging around in an piss-based atmosphere.
The electrolysis separated the hydrogen and oxygen from each other.
Over time, it reduced the urine to a really gross sludge as it pulled the
water out. Now the trailer was full of even more oxygen and also
hydrogen. Pretty dangerous, actually.
Then I fired up the Atmospheric Regulator. It doesn't even recognize
hydrogen, but it knows how to yank oxygen out of the air. I broke all the
safeties and set it to pull 100% of the oxygen out. After it was done, all
that was left was hydrogen. That's why I started out with an atmosphere
of pure oxygen. So the regulator could separate it later.
Then I opened the inner airlock door and had it evacuate the trailer. It
pumped all the air in to the airlock's holding tank. And there you have it,
a tank of pure hydrogen.
The final step was to take the airlock's holding tank to the MAV and
transfer the contents to the MAV's hydrogen tanks. I've said this many
times before but: Hurray for standardized valve systems!
Once I fed it the hydrogen, I fired up the fuel plant and it got to work
making the additional fuel I'd need.
I'll need to go through this process several more times as the launch
date approaches. I could have done this all at once, but NASA doesn't
want me to run low on water until we're close to launch. They'd rather I
electrolyze urine over time because I've already “used” that water.If I survive this, I'll tell people I pissed my way in to orbit.
[19:22]JOHANSSEN: Hello, Mark.
[19:23]MAV: Johanssen!? Holy crap! They finally
letting you talk to me directly?
[19:24]JOHANSSEN: Yes, NASA gave the OK for
direct communication an hour ago. We're only 35
light-seconds apart, so we can talk in near-
realtime. I just set up the system and I'm testing
it out.
[19:24]MAV: What took them so long to let us
talk?
[19:25]JOHANSSEN: The psych team was worried
about personality conflicts.
[19:25]MAV: What? Just cause you guys abandoned
me on a godforsaken planet with no chance of
survival?
[19:26]JOHANSSEN: Funny. Don't make that kind
of joke with Lewis.
[19:27]MAV: Roger. So uh... thanks for coming
back to get me.
[19:27]JOHANSSEN: It's the least we could do.
How is the MAV retrofit going?
[19:28]MAV: So far, so good. NASA put a lot of
thought into the procedures. They work. That's not
to say they're easy. I spent the last 3 days
removing Hull Panel 19 and the front window. Even
in Mars-G they're heavy motherfuckers.
[19:29]JOHANSSEN: When we pick you up, I will
make wild, passionate love to you. Prepare your
body.
[19:29]JOHANSSEN: I didn't type that! That was
Martinez! I stepped away from the console for like
10 seconds![19:29]MAV: I've really missed you guys.
LOG ENTRY: SOL 543
I'm... done?
I think I'm done.
I did everything on the list. The MAV is ready to fly. And in 6 sols,
that's just what it'll do. I hope.
It might not launch at all. I did remove an engine, after all. I could
have fucked up all sorts of things during that process. And there's no way
to test the ascent stage. Once you light it, it's lit.
Everything else, however, will go through tests from now until
launch. Some done by me, some done remotely by NASA. They're not
telling me the failure odds, but I'm guessing they're the highest in history.
Yuri Gagarin had a much more reliable and safe ship than I do.
And Soviet ships were fucking deathtraps.
“All right,” Lewis said, “tomorrow's the big day.”
The crew floated in the Rec. They had halted the rotation of the ship
in preparation for the upcoming operation.
“I'm ready,” Martinez said. “Johanssen threw everything she could at
me. I got all scenarios to orbit.”
“Everything other than catastrophic failures,” Johanssen corrected.
“Well yeah,” Martinez said. “Kind of pointless to simulate an ascent
explosion. Nothing we can do.”
“Vogel,” Lewis said, “How's our course.”
“It is perfect,” Vogel said. “We are within one meter of projected path
and two centimeters per second of projected velocity.”
“Good,” she said. “Beck, how about you?”
“Everything's all set up, Commander,” Beck said. “I linked all the
tethers I could find and spooled them up in Airlock 2. My suit and MMU
are prepped and ready.”“Ok,” Lewis said. “The battle plan is pretty obvious. Martinez will fly
the MAV, Johanssen will sysop the ascent. Beck and Vogel, I want you in
Airlock 2 with the outer door open before the MAV even launches. You'll
have to wait 52 minutes, but I don't want to risk any technical glitches
with the airlock or your suits. Once we reach intercept, it'll be Beck's job
to get Watney.”
“He might be in bad shape when I get him,” Beck said. “The stripped-
down MAV will get up to 12 g's during the launch. He could be
unconscious and may even have internal bleeding.”
“Just as well you're our doctor,” Lewis said. “Vogel, if all goes
according to plan, you're pulling Beck and Watney back aboard with the
tether. If things go wrong, you're Beck's backup.”
“Ja,” Vogel said.
“I wish there was more we could do right now,” Lewis said. “But all
we have left is the wait. Your work schedules are cleared. All scientific
experiments are suspended. Sleep if you can, run diagnostics on your
equipment if you can't.”
“We'll get him, Commander,” Martinez said. “24 hours from now,
Mark Watney will be right here in this room.”
“Let's hope so, Major.” Lewis said. “Dismissed.”
“Final checks for this shift are complete,” Mitch said in to his
headset. “Timekeeper.”
“Go, flight,” said the Timekeeper.
“Time until MAV launch?”
“16 hours, 9 minutes, 40 seconds... mark.”
“Copy that. All stations: Flight Director shift change.” He took his
headset off and rubbed his eyes.
Brendan Hutch took the headset from him and put it on. “All stations,
Flight Director is now Brendan Hutch.”
“Call me if anything happens,” Mitch said. “If not, I'll see you
tomorrow.”
“Get some sleep, boss,” Brendan said.Venkat watched from the observation booth. “Why ask the
Timekeeper?” he mumbled. “It's on the huge mission clock in the center
screen.”
“He's nervous,” Annie said. “You don't often see it, but that's what
Mitch Henderson looks like when he's nervous. He double and triple
checks everything.”
“Fair enough,” Venkat said.
“They're camping out on the lawn, by the way,” Annie said.
“Reporters from all over the world. Our press rooms just don't have
enough space.”
“The media loves a drama,” he sighed. “It'll be over tomorrow, one
way or another.”
“What's our role in all this?” Annie said. “If something goes wrong,
what can Mission Control do?”
“Nothing,” Venkat said. “Not a damned thing.”
“Nothing?”
“It's all happening 12 light-minutes away. That means it takes 24
minutes for them to get the answer to any question they ask. The whole
launch is 12 minutes long. They're on their own.”
“Oh,” Annie said. “So we're just observers in all this?”
“Yes,” Venkat said. “Sucks, doesn't it?”
LOG ENTRY: SOL 549
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't shitting myself. In 4 hours, I'm going to
ride a giant explosion into orbit. This is something I've done a few times
before, but never with a jury-rigged mess like this.
Right now, I'm sitting in the MAV. I'm suited up because there's a big
hole in the front of the ship where the window and part of the hull used to
be. I'm “awaiting launch instructions.” Really, I'm just awaiting launch. I
don't have any part in this. I'm just going to sit in the acceleration couch
and hope for the best.
Last night, I ate my final meal pack. It's the first good meal I've hadin weeks. I'm leaving 41 potatoes behind. That's how close I came to
starvation.
I carefully collected samples from my entire journey. But I can't bring
any of them with me. So I put them in a container a few hundred meters
from here. Maybe some day they'll send a probe to collect them. May as
well make them easy to pick up.
This is it. There's nothing after this. There isn't even an abort
procedure. Why make one? We can't delay the launch. Hermes can't stop
and wait. No matter what, we're launching on schedule.
I face the very real possibility that I'll die today. Can't say I like it. It
wouldn't be so bad if the MAV blew up. I wouldn't know what hit me.
If I miss the intercept I'll just float around in space until I run out of
air. I have a contingency plan for that. I'll drop the oxygen mixture to
zero and breathe pure nitrogen until I suffocate. It wouldn't feel bad. The
lungs don't have the ability to sense lack of oxygen. I'd just get tired, fall
asleep, then die.
I've had my last Martian potato. I've slept in the rover for the last
time. I've had my last EVA on the surface. I'm leaving Mars today, one
way or another.
About fucking time.